Should college football be banned?

Santa Monica College VS. Cerritos College - flickr.com-Parker Michael Knight

College football is just a distraction that adds on to student's college life. It has no academic purpose and that's a reason why people want it to be banned. Student athletes are spending a lot of their time in college playing football instead of studying. Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger argued for banning college footbal during the Intelligence Squared debate, he said, "As a school’s football team wins more games, grades drop and drinking rises among male students."

Another issue with college football is money. During the Intelligence Squared debate Bissinger said, "In the Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision, schools spend an average of $13,471 per student. When you hone in specifically on athletes, that number jumps to $91,053. Coaches, for their part, receive an average salary of $1.47 million a year, far more than college presidents and 500 percent more than coaches earned in the mid ‘80s." A lot of college students are paying these extra fees that they are not going to use during the school year. A lot of the money is being spent on football instead of other equipment in school that everyone can use.

Football is dangerous for players. Over the course of one football season, a college football player will take about 1,000 hits to the head. Each hit damages the brain. This leads to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease that causes memory loss, confusion, and depression. CTE can only be diagnosed when the person has a autopsy, so there is no way to find out if the person has CTE until the person dies. One example would be University of Pennsylvania's offensive lineman, Owen Thomas, a 21-year-old junior. He committed suicide by hanging himself in his apartment on April of 2010. After his death he was diagnosed with CTE.

Banning college football might not be a good idea, but what other solutions can there be? By banning college football, colleges and universities can save a lot of money. The money can go towards education instead of football. If students really want to play football they should join programs that pay them, instead of playing for free and at the same time worrying about school work.