Comments about ‘Sports, coaches hold sway at many colleges’

When Ricks College became BYU-Idaho and became a four year university offering bachelor’s degrees, they also dropped interschool sports. Officials at the college contacted the universities that came to campus to recruit students to transfer from Ricks to their universities to inform them of the change. One of the university presidents, when told that BYU-I would not have interschool athletics said, “That’s the smartest thing you can do!” It’s a no-brainer—what in the world does interschool athletics have to do with real education? Nothing. BYU-Idaho has an excellent academic reputation in spite of the fact that many predicted that BYU-I would fail because they didn’t have an interschool athletic program. (to be continued)

(continued) President Bednar was put under a lot of pressure and was highly criticized for dropping sports, but he didn’t fold. And thousands of students have been blessed because of that decision. They have an excellent, student-run, sports and activities program that involves many more students than an expensive traditional football, basketball, track program would. Students love it. Hopefully, other colleges and universities will follow BYU-I’s example and drop these expensive, non educational interschool athletic programs and start focusing on education instead. Perhaps even our public supported high schools could also drop sports and focus attention on education instead. Now that really would help our students!

at JSB: The Ricks model is not for everyone. The problem is that if you want coaches who focus on not just winning, then make them professors with the possibility of tenure like the other profs get. Also, if you think that athletics has no value, then talk to former athletes who have had their lives positively changed from athletics. I would prefer the model coming from the serive academies rather than ricks. You get the best of both worlds at a service academy or Ivy League.