universities should not have competitive sports teams

Since he jumped right into it, I will do the same. Each of his points will be addressed as presented. 1) Sports and Education have nothing to do with each other ed"u"ca"tion (j-kshn) n. 1. The act or process of educating or being educated. 2. The knowledge or skill obtained or developed by a learning process. 3. A program of instruction of a specified kind or level: driver education; a college education. 4. The field of study that is concerned with the pedagogy of teaching and learning. 5. An instructive or enlightening experience: Her work in the inner city was a real education. Given these definitions, it is clear that education does not limit itself to institutions of higher learning, rather, education in itself can be broadened to the general process of learning. One can be educated or taught about sports and the rules, techniques, and skills required to play them. "Sports education", though not directly linked to collegiate academia, is still a form of education, and can be learned within colleges. Therefore, sports and education can relate. "In education one nurtures the brain, in football you get brain concussions" Because sports involve learning, the brain is indeed being "nurtured" as it is developing and utilizing new information, both while learning and executing all the factors that goes into playing a sport. Yes, there are risks, but the risks are mostly due to the nature of the player and players, not the sport itself. 2) Sports teams are a distraction from learning. Again, playing sports is just another way of learning. But "Distraction", in regards to college academics, is mostly dependent on the student and how they choose to delineate their time. The article my opponent posted on this matter linked success of a football game to alcohol consumption. As the article suggests, the decline in grades are not ultimately due to playing football, but to the student's choice to consume alcohol and party instead of focusing on their studies. Athletic success is a factor, but it's not the pivotal factor, as the students could just as easily choose not to drink. My opponent could also just as easily say that "students should not drink" or "students should not party". And be that true or not, all of these factors are dependent on the priorities of the student, not the parties, not the alcohol, and not the sport. The end of the article tacks on this bit of information: "Students at others universities may not be affected by the fortunes of the football team in the same way. Consider Akron: the football team went 3-9 in 2010 and 1-11 this year " while the student body"s G. P. A. declined as well. " Firstly, the article failed to explain how large the decline in G. P. A. was. We do not know Akron's average GPA to begin with, and we do not know what it fell down to and how far it fell. For all we know, the average G. P. A. was a 4.0 and it lowered to a 3.9. Therefore, we cannot accurately gauge the true severity and seriousness of this decline, and we especially cannot use that decline as the basis for deciding whether or not sports should be eliminated from colleges. The article would have also done well to explain how football directly correlates with the student body's lowered G. P. A. Rather, it ends there and leaves its readers to ponder the hidden variables that could have just as easily affected the students' academic performance. The average reader knows nothing about Akron, its ranking, its academic integrity, its curriculum, difficulty of the classes, its professors, its environment, its acceptance rate, its financial stability, and the type of students in attendance. None of these factors include football, but they all could just as easily affect the G. P. A. reports. 3) Competitive College Sports leads to corruption and academic fraud and even pedophilia "Money corrupts. A lot of money goes around in college sports (even though athletic departments are often not profitable) and this can lead to corruption, harming the integrity of the academic institution. " A lot of money goes into the college itself. The thousands upon thousands of dollars that students pay (or take loans out for) goes to tuition, room and board, and other fees and costs for college education, staff, instruction, clubs, prestige, and so on and so forth. . http://usatoday30.usatoday.com... This article shows that utilization of tuition dollars goes to a range of functions, some necessary, some seemingly superficial. The driving point is that if money does indeed "corrupt", the Institution itself is up for corruption, not just its sports department. On a more rational level, however, we know that money is not just some evil entity that causes corruption. Money, in this economy, is a necessity and without it, there wouldn't be any institutions of higher learning (or institutions of any learning) to begin with. In terms of the examples of "corruption" my opponent used, situations such as the Penn State sex scandal that did indeed harm the integrity of the school was not due to the game of football or the school's sports department. It was due to the individual and his poor choices. ------------------------------------------------- I would also like to point out that my opponent's topic addresses competitive sports as a whole, but his examples only point to possible pitfalls with football. Therefore the argument against competitive sports as a whole, on his part, has yet to be fully explicated. I look forward to my opponent's responses. Sources: 1) . http://www.thefreedictionary.com... 2) . http://www.nytimes.com... (as provided by black_squirrel) 3) . http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...