The main threat: college football

Many people have been debating the topic of banning college football. It has come to people's attention that college football is a major medical and educational threat for the players. College football fans get their entertainment and excitement, but on the other hand, the players don't get anything other than a scholarship. One thing they don't realize they are receiving each and everyday as an outcome of taking brutal hits from practice and games are the long term effects it brings.

Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling New Yorker writer said on May 8th during the Intelligence Squared debate on banning college football at the New York University's Skirball Center, "It's not the hard hits that each player takes, but it's the thousand of tiny hits that they take." A hard hit once in a while may lead to a concussion, but the thousand of tiny hits that Gladwell is referring to can lead to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE. CTE is a condition that is found in athletes and recently in football players. CTE leads to memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and eventually, progressive dementia. There are college football players of 18 years out there with CTE.

Education is one of the biggest factors in a person's life. It contributes to everything you accomplish in the future. This doesn't seem to be true for college football players. Football seems to be more important and something more valuable than education. Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Friday Night Lights said during the debate, "Players get the option to go to class, if they want to, I bet most wouldn't". The number of hours a college student uses for studying had decreased from 40 to 13 as a result of college football. Football is a distraction. Bissinger said, "Football. It sucks all the air out of the room."

College football has to be banned. It is time to realize that it is cheating on us for the lives of many young adults. Their lives are being threatened by their own inspiration. Something have to be done and banning college football is the perfect solution. We can save the lives and education of college students before it's too late. We can live without football, but we can't survive without an education. Football won't kill you, it'll just destroy and corrupt your brain. Football is an enemy, not a friend.

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.

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.