You dont need to dedicate 1/2 of your budget to sports as a coming of age activity.

Indeed. So much, that an inheritance left by a librarian to further the education of the youth was wasted on a new stadium instead of anything else.

I fully agree. I think that athletic scholarships are still bad. A better way to handle this is to have an intramural mandate for able scholarship recipients. As it stands it is providing a level of pressure and commitment that hinders a youth’s education in exchange for a chance at a commitment that leaves little time or energy for rigorous study in a free bachelors program. And with the added benefits of only going to the most athletically gifted students, many of whom see it as a stepping stone to a non academic career and potentially with anywhere from a chance to a guarantee of brain damage depending on the sport.

College level intramural athletics are wonderful and should be pushed harder. Athletic scholarships and college sports as it is now are generally bad and I’d much rather we give those scholarships to the people we claim they benefit without making them play games instead of study.