College football down the drain?

College Football Game / Fabien Martinez / Flickr

College football is a highly popular American sport that brings attention from across the world. It gives young talented athletes a chance to shine and a hope for the future. Die hard fans can’t wait until Saturday, when their team takes the field once again. Many would claim it is a great American tradition. What if it was all gone?

On May 8th this question was debated. Buzz Bissinger and Malcom Gladwell supported the motion of banning college football while Tim Green and Jason Whitlock defended college football.

And yes, college football should be banned. Football is a very dangerous sport and players constantly take hard hits to the head, which has a bad impact on them after they retire. Many players have had cases of dementia at very young ages. Gladwell and Bissinger also argue that it is morally wrong. Football encourages young men to hit each other very hard. A study conducted in 2000 showed, that of 1090 former NFL players, 60 percent had at at least one concussion in their career. The brutality in the NFL is no different than in college.

Bissinger argues that sports are distracting students from their education and are taking away their possible intellectual ideas. He called it, “the distracted university,” in his argument. Not only are players concentrated on football, but so are thousands of college fans.

“A great country changes,” Bissinger said in the debate. College football has had many bad effects on players and colleges in general. It is time for a change. Continuing to play college football with rule changes to prevent injuries is not enough. The injury rate will still be high. Why don’t we just get rid of the whole thing?

Banning college football

College football has become a major part of college campus life. For some colleges it is the major focus, even more than actual education. That is a problem. It is a distraction for the players, where only a small percentage of them actually get to play professional football, colleges spend insane amounts of money on the football program, and finally it causes the unpaid players to get hurt. Banning college football might be the only solution.

College football is a major distraction for the players themselves, but also the students that don’t even play football. Journalist Buzz Bissinger said during an Intelligence Squared debate, “It sucks all the air out of the room.” The player themselves spend nearly all their time on playing, not only during the season but also in the off-season to train, instead of doing what they really should at a college; learn.

College football costs a lot of money. The money goes to coaches, stadiums, gear, and so on. Urban Meyer, head coach for The Ohio State University, earned $24 million over six seasons. The University of Maryland spent $50.8 million to modernize their stadium. "These schools travel enormous distances to play games. So that means you're missing class, you're spending money," Bissinger said to Gothamist.com. This is a college. Colleges are for education, so shouldn’t all these millions be spent on better education than sports programs?

Playing football causes major brain injuries. Professional football players know the risks, and get compensated for it by earning a lot of money. College football players get a scholarship to the school, but does this really make up for the brain injury they may suffer? “I have no problem whatsoever with grown men choosing to participate in a potentially lethal profession. But college is a different matter,” journalist Malcolm Gladwell said to Sportsillustrated.com.

Banning it does seem like a very drastic solution, but maybe the only one. Make a minor league paid by the NFL instead of having players play at college. That way it won’t be a distraction for college students, while football players playing in the minor league will be able to focus their full attention on playing, instead of also trying to pass their classes. Also the focus of colleges and universities, and thereby money, will turn back to education.

Should college football be banned?

Football is one of the most popular sports in the United States; it’s played everywhere and by people of all ages. College football is a level below the biggest stage in football, the NFL. Although college football is widely accepted by fans and players, some people feel that football has an overall negative effect on players’ physical and academic progress.

Even though college football can help college students succeed in sports and have the opportunity to attend college because of scholarships, it does cause students to consider football over academics. Football exploits  players for their school's selfish purposes, but one of the main reasons for banning college football is the amount of head injury players receive during their football playing career and the negative impact there is on their future. Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian author and journalist, spoke in a nytimes.com article about the pictures he’s seen of people’s brains and how it looked like they were run over by a truck. “I’ve seen pictures of the brain scans of people with C.T.E.,” he said, referring to the trauma-induced disease, “and it looks like someone drove a truck across their brain.” Gladwell is concerned about how football negatively affects a player’s brain in the long run to a point where the brain can no longer function properly because of the amount of hits they take. 

College football should be banned because players that don’t make it to the NFL end up finishing college with mediocre grades and have to give up their football dream. In the long run the former football players will develop conditions like Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) because of the hard hits received to the head. Overall playing football for four years in college isn’t worth the amount of pain you’ll receive in the future when the players start noticing the affects of their concussions.