Impacts of College Football Realignment…
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The folks at Fast Company saw my LGM post reacting to the destruction of the Pac-12 and asked me to elaborate on some points…
As someone who has worked in higher education for twenty-six years, I have some personal experience with elite student athletes; I tutored football players and other athletes at the University of Washington, and I teach in a graduate program at the University of Kentucky, which has enrolled current and former NCAA athletes, including football players at the very apex of the sport. Of the athletes I tutored, some were not faintly prepared to be in college courses, and some were smart but uninterested in college beyond athletics, but the vast bulk were smart young people who found it difficult to navigate both a college career and their extremely demanding job, technically limited to 20 hours per week but in practice often much longer. Of my graduate students I can say that most have gone on to highly successful careers in private business and public service. These are good students, and the best of them weather the demands of athletics successfully. But every additional travel demand makes their juggling act more difficult and complex, and even good students will find themselves pressed to the absolute breaking point.