Sports, Study, Or Sleep: Understanding the Student-Athlete's College Experiences Book 9783030613259, 9783030613266

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Sports, Study, or Sleep Understanding the StudentAthlete’s College Experiences Dinur Blum

Sports, Study, or Sleep

Dinur Blum

Sports, Study, or Sleep Understanding the Student-Athlete’s College Experiences

Dinur Blum California State University Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-61325-9 ISBN 978-3-030-61326-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Alex Linch/shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For everyone who encouraged me, supported me, and believed in me even when I didn’t.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge and thank Linda Braus, Meera Mithran, and the rest of the publishing team at Palgrave MacMillan for helping turn my idea into this book. I would also like to acknowledge and thank Christian G. Jaworski and Dr. Adam G. Sanford for their help in proofreading and editing chapters; this book could not have happened without your help and guidance, and I appreciate it greatly. This book is based on and expands upon my dissertation completed at University of California, Riverside, The Books or the Ballgames: Understanding Student-Athletes’ Experiences in School (2018).

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Contents

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“Why Should We Have to Go to Class If We Came Here to Play Football?” What This Book Is About What Do We Think We Know About Student-Athletes? NCAA Grade Requirements for Eligibility Methodology What Is This Book About? References “If I Wanted to Play, I Had to Bring Home the Grades”: Interviews with Former Student-Athletes Messages About Academic Success Messages About Athletic (Sport) Success Structural Support Offered and Perceptions of Teammates’ Successes and Attitudes in Class When Class and Sports Schedules Conflict, and the Role Scholarships Play Priorities: School or Sports Differences Between Easier and Harder Classes Defining Academic Success Defining Athletic Success Discussion References

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13 14 15 20 22 24 27 28 30 32 34

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“Emptying the Tank”: Current Student-Athletes Messages Received from Family and Coaches Differences Between Community Colleges and Four-Year Schools Pressures Student-Athletes Face How Student-Athletes View the Role of Counselors and Advisors Teammates Who Struggle Academically Defining Academic Success Defining Athletic Success Defining Professional Success Reference

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“Going into Classes Blind”: Comparing Student-Athletes’ Challenges and Experiences Obstacles Faced and Pragmatic Responses: Scheduling Classes Time and Energy Management Being a Student-Athlete: A Challenging Balancing Act The Importance of Grades and Education The Importance of Grades for Teammates and Coaches Final Impressions and Looking Toward Solutions from the NCAA, Faculty, and Student-Athletes Themselves “Professional Sports Are a Well-Paying Temporary Job”: Messages from Coaches Power-Five Football and Men’s Basketball School vs. Sports: What Gets Emphasized? Differences Among Different Schools “What Patterns Have You Noticed in Patterns in Terms of Who Succeeds the Most in Classes and Who Struggles the Most?” How Do Coaches Define Success for Their Student-Athletes? What Do You Want People to Know About Coaching in College? How Has Your Role Changed Since Campuses Closed? How Can Coaches Help Student-Athletes? References

35 36 37 41 44 50 53 54 57 57

59 59 62 63 66 69 72

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92 97 98 100 102 103

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“The Importance of Having a Plan B”: Academic Personnel Who Work with Student-Athletes Power-Five Schools vs. Everyone Else Advisors’ Goals for Student-Athletes How Do Schools Help Student-Athletes Reach Higher Grades? Three Challenges Student-Athletes Face Challenges Student-Athletes Face: School Transitions Advisors as Academic Liaisons References Reimagining College Sports and Student-Athletes Maximizing Effort in the Classroom: Fighting the Apathetic Student-Athlete Image, and a New Way of Examining Student-Athlete Attitude NCAA Policy, Team, and School-Specific Suggestions References

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105 106 111 113 115 122 124 127 129

134 137 141

Appendices

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Bibliography

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Name Index

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Subject Index

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CHAPTER 1

“Why Should We Have to Go to Class If We Came Here to Play Football?” What This Book Is About

Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS. (Clayton 2012)

In 2012, then-freshman and third-string quarterback Cardale Jones of Ohio State University posted this message from his Twitter account. As a freshman (first-year undergraduate), Jones was new to being a college student. As a third-string quarterback, he was not receiving playing time as he would need. Two injuries (to the two quarterbacks ahead of him on the depth chart listing who gets the bulk of the playing time at each position) would give him the playing time and to be noticed by professional football (NFL) scouts. Years later, he claimed this tweet was born out of frustration for how he had done on (of all things) a sociology exam, and he became their starting quarterback. Jones’ tweet highlights a discrepancy for many student-athletes, and serves as the catalyst for this book, which focuses on how student athletes have to be proficient at both academics and athletics, and the obstacles they face succeeding in school. In 2014, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported that more than three thousand (3000) of its undergraduate students, including student-athletes, had been funneled into so-called “paper courses” (Ganim and Sayers 2014), in which little, if any, work was required to pass the class. These courses allowed student-athletes to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Blum, Sports, Study, or Sleep, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6_1

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remain academically eligible for intercollegiate competitions, as they artificially inflated students’ grade point averages. As a result of an investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the University of North Carolina received accreditation probation for one year in 2015. While the university was exonerated in 2017, following its own investigation into these classes, the mere fact that these classes were offered was a source of concern and potential embarrassment for the school. Studentathletes were funneled into majors like Swahili, but when asked if they could speak or write in Swahili, many said no. Effectively this meant that students, especially student-athletes, were graduating with degrees, but had not improved on their academic or professional skills, and were lacking both skills and knowledge. While North Carolina provides a high-profile example of an institution promoting its student-athletes for minimum effort in the classroom, it is hardly the only school in which non-students helped student-athletes remain eligible by completing assignments or tests them (Wolverton 2014). College sports are a lucrative business, especially if one focuses on football and basketball at “power-five” schools. The power-five is the collective name for the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big 10, Big 12, Pacific (Pac) 12, and Southeastern Conference (SEC). The member schools for each conference can be found in Appendix A. As of 2020, NCAA makes almost one billion dollars in ad revenue from the annual men’s basketball national tournament (“March Madness”). This is in addition to the lucrative television broadcasting rights for the tournament on national television, along with individual TV deals that member conferences have for broadcasting regular season games, and from gate revenue and merchandise sales (Lisa 2020). The basketball money (mainly generated from the March Madness tournament) is added to the money produced from football, and is distributed to participating schools. On its website, the NCAA boasts it awards roughly 3.5 billion dollars in athletic scholarships to more than 180,000 student-athletes (NCAA.org), but only began rewarding academic achievement in 2019–2020 by increasing the amount schools receive from television broadcast rights (NCAA.org). Prior to this, academics took a clear back seat to sports, with only $25.1 million allocated to “academic enhancement.” This money was divided among all 65 teams in the tournament, meaning each school received between $350,000 and $400,000 for academics. For smaller schools, this money is a nice boost, but it pales in comparison to the revenue spent

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on the sports themselves. Student-athletes are pressured to succeed, especially those competing in high-profile sports and at high-profile schools. This pressure comes from media attention, zealous fans, intense coaches, and the players themselves. On the other hand, academics take a back seat to sports. After all, fans are not watching these student-athletes take tests or give class presentations, and coaches do not get contract extensions when their student-athletes ace classes, nor are they fired if a student struggles in a class. Coaches are rewarded with contracts or extensions for winning and or penalized and fired for losing games. While the NCAA invests heavily in athletes, fewer than 2% of the undergraduate student-athletes go on to play professional football (NFL) or basketball (NBA) in the United States, and while others have professional athletic careers overseas in basketball or in other sports, the overwhelming majority of student-athletes embark on careers other than “professional athlete.”

What Do We Think We Know About Student-Athletes? The academic literature paints a rather bleak image of college studentathletes. Studies done from the 1980s through early 2000s explain that student-athletes begin college with expectations of doing well in their sports and school, but their various experiences on campus, such as being talked down to by their professors or classmates, push them away from school and into their sports, where they are treated as more competent than in the classroom. These studies suggest student-athletes have little control over the courses they take, with academic advisors choosing “easy” classes for them, in order to give them a way of staying eligible (Adler and Adler 1985; Benson 2000; Watt and Moore 2001). This led to continuing the stereotypes that student-athletes either could not handle academically-challenging courses, or that they did not care about doing well in classes, choosing instead to focus on their sport. What fueled this further is student-athletes perceived their teachers as not caring whether they attended class, because roll was not called, and assumed they could do extra-credit work if they fell behind in class, because of their status as student-athletes. This led to student-athletes not being taken seriously by their professors as students, compared to their non-athlete peers (Aries et al. 2014). In schools where student-athletes dorm together, they create a subculture in which academics take a back

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seat to sports (Engstrom and Sedlacek 1991; Sedlacek and Adams-Gaston 1992; Gayles 2009). Because of this subculture, and feeling their efforts in the classroom are devalued by classmates and professors, student-athletes are reportedly more focused on establishing a reputation and identity as athletes in their sports, and their personal relationships influenced their commitment to their sport—as respect and validation rose, so did sport commitment (Comeaux and Harrison 2011). In addition to the academic literature referenced above, there are examples from popular media that illustrate the problems with collegiate sports. Documentary series such as At All Costs and Last Chance U on Netflix show the high-stakes world of youth and collegiate sports, placing the spotlight on the sports but downplaying academics. Last Chance U shows community college football players who are competing at a lower level, with less media and fan attention, in order to transfer successfully to a four-year school, preferably a power-five school with a scholarship. Student-athletes shown in the series are woefully unprepared for class, needing their advisor (Brittany Wagner, in the two seasons filmed in Mississippi) tell them to bring pencils and paper to class, and likening class attendance and participation to practice in terms of being prepared. During the show’s third season (first season filmed in Kansas), the head coach exhorts his players to do well in their classes, angrily yelling at players who are struggling in their classes by having players who are late to class or skipping class do extra exercises at practice (e.g. lunges before running plays), starting practice before sunrise, or announcing players’ failing grades in the locker room in front of all of the players and coaches. It is unclear whether the struggling students are singled out for struggling, or whether the problems of being underprepared are widespread. Nevertheless, the struggling student-athletes on Last Chance U are not alone in having difficulty in their classes. The problems may be exaggerated for the sake of compelling watching, but they are real concerns. At All Costs follows the world of youth basketball, as children as young as seven years old play in Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball in a series of high-stakes auditions, trying to get noticed and evaluated by professional scouts and high-profile college coaches. AAU sports work around academic schedules, with high-profile tournaments taking place over summer. This means that formally, grades are not a consideration for the players in these tournaments. AAU is more formal than playground leagues, and players are constantly trying to stand out individually within

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the context of a team sport, while having new sets of teammates and new coaches from year to year. In order to stand out as individual stars, top players have to be recognized by their teammates and coaches, and treated as stars (Brooks 2009). This means there is a large social component to star players that is complementary to their talent in the sport—the recognition of this talent and the placement of the player into a position to show it off. In basketball, star players take more shots than their teammates, because their teammates defer to them, and their coaches structure the offense to flow through these players. In football, star wide receivers have more passes thrown their way than other receivers on the team; in baseball, star hitters bat anywhere from 1 to 6 in the lineup, depending on their speed (top of the lineup) or power (middle of the order), and star hockey players more ice time in games than some of their teammates, especially when their team is on the power play following an opposition penalty. This extra ice time allows more opportunities for star players to score goals and is seen as a reward from coaches. AAU tournaments are huge opportunities for visibility and publicity for participating players. These tournaments are how athletes “get known”— or get recognized favorably—by college coaches. AAU basketball is a higher level of competition than playground basketball, and involves offensive and defensive strategies based around players’ skills and abilities to work together as a collective unit (Brooks 2009). Colleges recruit heavily at these tournaments because they are viewed as high-level competition based on age groups in a centralized location (e.g. Las Vegas, Orlando, Los Angeles). Games in these tournaments have scores and player statistics kept and are refereed by certified officials, some of whom are trying to work their own ways up into the college and professional ranks. AAU teams are coached professionally, with ziprecruiter.com reporting coaches earning an average of around $40,000 for this work. Players get known and recognized for their prowess on the court or field, not for their acuity in the classroom. For some players, sports offer a chance for community recognition, a chance to be supervised and busy outside of school hours (thus keeping them out of trouble), and a highly recognized and visible path to upward social mobility. It does not matter that the odds of making a power-five football or basketball roster are small, and the odds of playing professionally even smaller; sports are on TV, and are seen as accessible and available ways of “making it”—attaining high status and a high payday. Coaches are aware of the odds against their players advancing, but engage in what May (2008) calls “the dirty trick”

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(May 2008: 151) of telling the players to focus on their sports-related skills, to keep them motivated, hopeful, and contributing to the team. For many aspiring athletes, the first time their grades can formally affect their playing opportunities is high school. By the time student-athletes reach high school, they have participated in a series of competitive auditions, and are recognized, praised, and evaluated primarily as athletes, not as students. Student-athletes are socialized into a specific social world as they compete, modeling and imitating behavior designed to advance them in the sports world (e.g. basketball players working on their jump shots before or after practice; football players lifting weights or running before or after practice) (Beamon 2010). The energy and time devoted to honing these skills is not necessarily repeated in the classroom. Some student-athletes develop their personal identies around being athletes and struggle to develop an identity as students (Beamon 2012), and this is reinforced with consistent practices and competitions where they are treated as aspiring competitive athletes. These student-athletes are rewarded and praised for their athletic prowess, but scant attention is paid to their academics beyond eligibility or being recognized as an Academic All-American, a student-athlete with an exceptionally high grade-point average. Student-athletes interviewed in this book highlight their families and schools as socializing influences. Family is the first group we are born into, and offer a strong socializing influence from an early age. This means when parents emphasize the importance of school by insisting on finishing homework before playing, and offer an environment where doing homework well is possible, student-athletes learn to prioritize schoolwork. It doesn’t mean student-athletes love to do homework, but they know that their academics matter if they want to play. During high school, studentathletes begin to learn the issues of managing their time and energy, and this stays with them into their college career. However, high school classes meet more frequently, and student-athletes’ schedules are more regimented in high school than in college, meaning that in high school, student-athletes have their time structured somewhat uniformly within their teams. In college, student-athletes have differing course schedules, and often live with their student-athlete peers in dorms that are separate from non-athlete students. The attitudes their teammates have permeate the practice field and the weight room, but also their living areas, and they are surrounded by messages and attitudes from their teammates and other student-athletes. If high-status players on a team (e.g. team captains; star

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players) are seen as caring about their grades, then younger teammates follow suit. If these players miss classes or aren’t regularly studying, that is interpreted as student-athletes not caring about their classes.

NCAA Grade Requirements for Eligibility Before a student-athlete can compete for a university, they have to meet certain eligibility requirements for the NCAA. The current requirement is that student-athletes have a C+ (2.3 GPA) average in 16 core courses and score 900 (out of 1600) on the SAT. If the grades are lower, then the SAT score has to be higher, and vice versa. This means that outside of these 16 courses, it does not matter how a student-athlete does in school. 10 of these core courses must be completed prior to the student’s seventh semester (by the end of junior year). Seven of these ten courses have to be English, math, or natural of physical science courses. Outside of these core courses, student-athletes are neither rewarded for high grades nor penalized for low grades in terms of NCAA eligibility in order to qualify to be collegiate student-athletes. The NCAA focused on grades for eligibility in the 1980s. The NCAA’s Proposition 48, enacted in 1986, introduced a minimal level of academic qualifications for freshman participation in college athletics. This built on a series of academic policies that set to strike a balance between academic success and athletic eligibility. Prior to Proposition 48, student-athletes were required to earn a 1.6 grade-point average across their high school courses. After that, the grade-point average requirement was raised to 2.0, but only in a set number of courses. While these changes ostensibly show that student-athletes needed higher- and higher-grade point averages in order to compete, realistically, it means that student-athletes can focus on a few classes, do poorly in others, and still remain eligible to play sports. If nothing else, this means there is incentive for student-athletes to focus most of their studies on the core courses, as the other courses don’t give them a boost if they excel in them, nor do they jeopardize their athletic eligibility or scholarship if they perform poorly in those classes (Mondello and Abernethy 2000).

Methodology I approach this project from two different perspectives. I am an avid sports fan and part-time amateur sports photographer of professional

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and college athletics. I am also an instructor at the university level. I grew up watching college football and college basketball in the San Francisco Bay Area, regularly attending Cal Golden Bears, Stanford Cardinal, and San Jose State Spartans football and basketball games. To this day I remain an avid Golden Bears fan (roll on, you Bears!). When I am not teaching or working on research, I am a part-time amateur sports photographer, primarily for hockey and minor league baseball, but I have also photographed college football and basketball games over the years. Sports photography has allowed me to develop relationships with current and former student-athletes, both during their time as students and after their graduation. I interviewed 38 student-athletes (20 former, 18 current), 11 coaches, and 10 academic personnel (advisors and learning specialists). Each interview typically lasted 1–2 hours. Everyone interviewed in this book is identified with pseudonyms. I describe, but do not name, the universities they attended, currently attend or work at in terms of NCAA division, power-five status or not, and rough geography. This allows interviewees to discuss potentially-sensitive information, as a few measures of confidentiality are offered. All this is done in an attempt to protect the confidentiality of interviewees and their responses, as well as give them some control over how they are portrayed in the current study. Methods are more thoroughly discussed in Appendix B.

What Is This Book About? The major research questions that I ask and try to answer in this book are: • What messages do student-athletes receive from family, coaches, teammates, and advisors about succeeding in classes, compared to succeeding in their sports? • What hidden challenges do student-athletes face in the classroom? • How do student-athletes define success for themselves in terms of their sport, classes, and after graduation? • What should non-student-athletes know about being a studentathlete? • How can student-athletes be helped in the classroom?

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If Cardale Jones’ tweet and attitude in 2012 is typical of studentathletes in their early collegiate years, his aggravated tweet becomes less surprising. These are student-athletes navigating a higher level of school, and a higher level of competition, than they have faced up through high school. They have had to develop intelligence in the context of their sport, and now have to worry about grades on top of playing sports competitively. They have had to navigate the politics of their sport, all while learning different ways of playing their sport(s) of choice, and do so year after year with new teammates and coaches. Now that they are in college, this continues with pressures to stand out individually, win games collectively, and succeed in the classroom. Ways to help these student-athletes focus on academics may be a combination of controllable factors: interesting majors, having the university adjust schedules so more difficult courses are offered in the off-season, encouraging support in academics among teammates and developing friendships and relationships that emphasize school, and simply allowing for maturity over time. Chapter 2 interviews twenty former (graduated) student-athletes, looking at the messages they received on succeeding athletically and in the classroom from people who matter to them; how they viewed their own teammates’ efforts in the classroom; how they define success athletically, academically, and professionally; and what earning a degree means to them. These included, but were not limited to, former football players at power-five schools. Chapter 3 interviews eighteen current student-athletes, mostly those in non-power-five schools and who were mostly in non-big money sports. Like Chapter 2, it examines the messages student-athletes receive as well as the messengers, but also examines differences faced in attending a junior or community college compared to a four-year university and the pressures these student-athletes face as both students and athletes, as well as how they define success and what they want people to know about being a student-athlete. Chapter 4 gives a brief comparison between the patterns found in Chapters 2 and 3, and looks at time and energy management for student-athletes as an area to focus on and improve. It offers simple solutions to help student-athletes and non-athletes manage their time, so college courses are less overwhelming. This chapter also serves as a bridge between student-athletes and the adults they work most closely with during their academic careers: their coaches and various academic personnel, such as advisors, who work for athletic departments.

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Chapter 5 interviews eleven coaches, to get their perspectives on the importance of a college education for their student-athletes, and the patterns they see from their student-athletes. It asks coaches what challenges their student-athletes face in the classroom, and also looks to understand how these coaches define success for their players while in college and afterwards. It also asks them how they have seen their job or role change since campuses closed in March and April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The early part of Chapter 5 focuses on revenuegenerating sports at power-five schools, and the later part focuses on interviews with coaches at non-power five schools. Chapter 6 talks with ten academic personnel who work exclusively with student-athletes. These are advisors and learning specialists who work with the university, but not a specific academic department, helping student-athletes graduate. Like coaches, these academic personnel offer their views on challenges student-athletes face, and offer insight into how to help student-athletes succeed in the classroom. The last chapter in this book looks at the patterns in student-athletes’ challenges, and offers solutions in terms of helping student-athletes graduate, as well as graduate with higher grade-point averages than are currently seen. It pushes for a reimagination of college sports by looking at the course-load requirement student-athletes take while their sport is in season, a new way of allowing student-athletes to register early for classes, and new ways of funding academic excellence for universities and specific teams in terms of grade-point averages and graduation rates. This book challenges the literature suggesting that student-athletes struggle in classes due to their attitudes or their lack of ability. It highlights time and energy management as an area student-athletes need help developing, and suggests ways the NCAA and their schools can help them excel in the classroom. It also sheds light on the hidden aspects of the student-athlete experience, and offers insights into how student-athletes can also succeed in the classroom. Finally, it examines how studentathletes structure their class schedules and decide what to study—whether they are following a major due to intellectual curiosity and interest, whether there are pragmatic concerns such as team schedules, or both.

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References Adler, Peter, and Patricia A. Adler. 1985. From Idealism to Pragmatic Detachment: The Academic Performance of College Athletes. Sociology of Education 58 (4): 241–250. Aries, Elizabeth, Danielle McCarthy, Peter Salovey, and Mahzarin R. Banaji. 2004. A Comparison of Athletes and Nonathletes at Highly Selective Colleges: Academic Performance and Personal Development. Research in Higher Education 45 (6): 577–602. Beamon, Krystal. 2010. Are Sports Overemphasized in the Socialization Process of African American Males? A Qualitative Analysis of Former Collegiate Athletes’ Perception of Sport Socialization. Journal of Black Studies 41 (2): 281–300. Beamon, Krystal. 2012. “I’m a Baller”: Athletic Identity Foreclosure among African-American Former Student-Athletes. Journal of African American Studies 16 (2): 195–208. Benson, Kirsten F. 2000. Constructing Academic Inadequacy. Journal of Higher Education 71 (2): 223–246. Brooks, Scott N. 2009. Black Men Can’t Shoot. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Clayton, Andy. 2012. Ohio State’s Third-String QB Cardale Jones Tweets That Classes Are ‘Pointless’ … Saying He Went to College to Play Football. New York Daily News, October 6. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/col lege/ohiostate-player-tweets-classes-pointless-article-1.1176616. Accessed 6 Jan 2015. Comeaux, Eddie, and Keith C. Harrison. 2011. A Conceptual Model of Academic Success for Student-Athletes. Educational Researcher 40 (5): 235– 245. https://doi.org/10.2307/41238944. Engstrom, Catherine, and William E. Sedlacek. 1991. A Study of Prejudice Toward University Student-Athletes. Journal of Counseling & Development 70 (1): 189–193. Ganim, Sara, and Devon Sayers. 2014. UNC Report Finds 18 Years of Academic Fraud to Keep Athletes Playing. https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/ unc-report-academic-fraud/index.html. Gayles, Joy Gaston. 2009. The Student Athlete Experience. New Directions for Institutional Research 144 (Winter 2009): 33–41. Lisa, Andrew. 2020. The Money Behind the March Madness NCAA Basketball Tournament. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/money-behind-marchmadness-ncaa-194402803.html. May, Reuben A.Buford. 2008. Living Through the Hoop: High School Basketball, Race, and the American Dream. New York and London: New York University Press.

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Mondello, Michael J., and Amy M. Abernethy. 2000. An Historical Overview of Student-Athlete Academic Eligibility and the Future Implications of Cure Implications of Cureton v. NCAA. Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal 7 (1): 127. Sedlacek, William E., and Javaune Adams-Gaston. 1992. Predicting the Academic Success of Student-Athletes using SAT and Noncognitive Variables. Journal of Counseling and Development 70: 724–727. Watt, Sherry K., and James L. Moore III. 2001. Who Are Student Athletes? New Directions for Student Services 93: 7–18. Wolverton, Brad. 2014. Confessions of a Fixer. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/30/2014. Accessed 1/7/15. http://chronicle.com/article/Confes sion-of-aFixer/150891/.

CHAPTER 2

“If I Wanted to Play, I Had to Bring Home the Grades”: Interviews with Former Student-Athletes

This chapter focuses on the messages received by student-athletes who had graduated by the time they were interviewed for this project. These messages were imparted during their playing days, and I asked them to discuss the pressures and obstacles they faced. I examine patterns across different sports and schools. This chapter focuses on the messages college student-athletes receive from people close to them, and looks at the effects of these messages, specifically: 1. What messages did student-athletes who graduated from college receive about success in terms of academics? Who gave them these messages? Were these messages explicit or implied? 2. What messages did they receive about success in terms of their sport? Were they encouraged to focus on athletics in the hopes of a professional sports career, or were they guided toward academics? Who gave them these messages? Were these messages explicit or implied? 3. How did student-athletes who graduated prioritize academics or sport, based on the relative importance of these messages? How did they choose which classes to take? I interviewed 20 former student-athletes who had already graduated to dive into their experiences of messages they received on these questions, and compare them with the academic literature where applicable. I © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Blum, Sports, Study, or Sleep, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6_2

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also asked these former student-athletes how they defined success in the classroom, on the field, and professionally. These former student-athletes are atypical in one key sense: most of them have had some professional athletic career following graduation (13 out of the 20). Less than 2% of student-athletes make the NFL or NBA, so having 65% of interviewees play a sport professionally stands out as atypically successful. Some of these players competed professionally outside of North American professional leagues, and many played in North American minor leagues. These minor leagues are professional and affiliated with teams in the big leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB); some interviewees were drafted and trying to play their way up to the major league in their sport. The student-athletes interviewed in this chapter are success stories in another way, even for those without a professional sports career—as they had earned a college degree by the time they were interviewed. The former student-athletes interviewed in this chapter participated in different sports and attended different universities (public and private). They participated in different athletic conferences and in different NCAA divisions, which affected scholarship availability, and were located in different areas of the United States. These former student-athletes discussed messages they received from their coaches, teammates, friends outside of sports, families, and significant others. The next section focuses on academic literature as it relates to the research questions set forth earlier in this chapter.

Messages About Academic Success As discussed in Chapter 1, the academic literature paints a picture of student-athletes as having low confidence in their academic abilities—a situation that is worsened by the culture of their athletic peers, the opinions of their non-athlete peers, and their professors’ reactions to their presence in class and their requests for help. This seems to drive studentathletes into abandoning academic pursuits, something they do not feel competent in, and focusing mainly on the game, where their competence is recognized and praised. Student-athletes enter college with the hopes of being viewed as competent or excellent both in their sport and in the classroom, but after regularly encountering negative opinions about their academic performance, many choose to focus exclusively on athletic success and become detached from their classes. The repeated negative

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messages and doubts wear down their desire to do well in the classroom. This is the story told in the academic literature (Adler and Adler 1985; Engstrom and Sedlacek 1991; Gayles 2009; Gayles and Hu 2009; Beamon 2010). However, this was not the case for the former student-athletes interviewed in this chapter. They mentioned grades mattering to their parents, romantic partners, and other people close to them, as far back as junior high school. Even if these people had not graduated themselves, the idea of a college degree as a hallmark of success was emphasized for studentathletes, and they responded accordingly. Many parents used sports as a reward for doing well in the classroom, and would disallow sports if grades weren’t sufficiently good.

Messages About Athletic (Sport) Success The interviews in this chapter suggest that for graduated student-athletes, the messages they receive from intimate others, such as their immediate family or significant others, play an important role in how they view the value of both sports and education. Interviewees highlighted family, college teammates, and high school as influencing them to succeed academically and athletically, with most (70%) mentioning their family— especially parents—as pushing them to succeed in the classroom. This is perhaps expected, as siblings would assume (1) the presence of siblings, meaning student-athletes who are only children would not have siblings, and (2) parents are who children learn from first, so anything parents say carries a lot of importance. Joe, a former football player at a power-five school in Northern California, explains: The emphasis for my mother (she was the boss) was always school, she did not care about sports at all. Sports was a bargaining tool – it was a real thing – she took me off of track because I got a bad grade on a pop quiz. I got an A in the class, but my mom meant business. She did it one more time in 7th grade with basketball. Growing up, I loved sports, and I got the message – if I wanted to play, I had to bring home the grades. In 8th grade I wanted to go to [Private University], and I wanted to get the grades for myself – they had the best of both worlds, top notch athletics and academics, and that pushed me to dominate on the field and in the classroom.

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For Joe and many former student-athletes, sports were viewed as a reward for getting good grades, with the priority being on schoolwork and grades. Joe emphasized the bad grade was on a quiz, not for an entire course, yet that was sufficient reason for his mother to remove him from the track team. Joe’s interview shows how parental influence can affect how student-athletes view sports and school, and he mentions his high school as fueling his competitiveness in the classroom and on the field. Similarly, Alex, one of Joe’s teammates, said his parents emphasized school over sports: I couldn’t play until homework was done, and I couldn’t play if my grades slipped. They saw the importance of sports, but cared far more about grades. My family is all about schooling, so I had many influences [with respect to grades]. Ultimately, graduating was a bigger goal, although playing at the next level wasn’t far behind.

Matthew, who played football at a Division 1-A school in Idaho, echoed these sentiments when he explained, “My parents knew I loved sports and threatened to take them away if I didn’t do well academically.” The threat of having sports taken away by parents served as an incentive for some student-athletes to keep their grades at a sufficiently high level. From a young age, the message of sports acting as a reward for grades being sufficiently high for someone in a position of power was sent. And student-athletes view this as a fair trade-off: spend time making sure homework is done and that you’re ready for a test, and you get to practice and play the sport(s) you love with your teammates. The difference with college sports is as children, the authority is parental and based on close ties by people at home, while in college, the authority is the NCAA and the coaching staff of each team, neither of whom lives with the studentathletes themselves. In both cases, the message of grades being a priority are sent, but sent from different parties. Parents were not the only influence on student-athletes’ grades outside of school; student-athletes’ romantic partners cared about their grades as well. Alex explained: My wife, girlfriend at the time, pushed me very hard to get my degree within the five years of my athletic scholarship. My parents would check on me but had very little affect [sic] since they were too far away. My wife just wanted me to stay healthy while playing, success on the field wasn’t as important to her.

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This was echoed by Derek, a basketball player at a Division-1AA public university in Southern California, who explained, “My girlfriend always pushed me to getting good grades and finishing my degree while playing ball.” This kind of support assumes a student-athlete (1) is in a committed and serious relationship while in school and (2) their partner values education highly. However, it does show the power of love and having strong, consistent support from people close to the student-athlete. It shows these partners and families are not looking for the payday from a professional sports career, as much as they want these student-athletes to succeed in the classroom as well as in their sport(s). Trevor, who was a baseball player at a power-five school in Texas, emphasizes the importance of his teammates (rather than a romantic partner or family) and maturity. Trevor explains that “[My] teammates held their own with grades. My teammates who were sophomores and up excelled pretty well in the classroom. The freshmen were just feeling it out and not working too hard.” In his statement, Trevor highlights there is a range of attitudes about succeeding in the classroom among his teammates, but what is interesting is the newer students did not maximize their effort. Instead, that came after a year or so of getting used to being student-athletes. Ty, who played baseball at a Division-2 school in Ohio, drew attention to messages from his parents, coaches, and teammates as influencing him to succeed in the classroom, stating: When I was 13, 14, I looked up to my coach – dad was my biggest role model – he was an amazing guy, we’d practice, and he’d talk to us about life after. He was huge in my maturation, especially during those years. He said you need to do your best to excel in whatever you do – if you don’t try in class, what makes you think you’ll try on the field? My parents took it bigger than that, and if I didn’t do schoolwork or chores, I would miss a game… In college, my role models in college were the head coach and pitching coach. Pitching coach taught me the work ethic – he’d work us hard, and I loved it. As far as grades go, they were more important than in high school, but to a lot of guys – for 25%, very important, 50% were flip of the coin – “I’ll do more than a C average to be eligible, but if it’s less than a 3.0, then no big deal) I think 2.5 put you on academic probation. The last 25% were like “whatever”, I’m sure they were smart enough to pass, but cared more about playing/partying.

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In Ty’s case, as with many other student-athletes, coaches and parents consistently preach academic effort and excellence, while teammates had more of a mixed reaction. Some student-athletes put in more effort for their classes than others, and that reflects in their grades. Kyle, who played hockey at a Division 1-A school in Massachusetts, focuses on the roles coaches played in players maintaining their grades, telling: Grades were very important as if you didn’t meet a certain GPA set by the coaches, you could not play. So, obviously, you had to take your grade seriously and coaches would randomly check classes throughout the year to make sure that you were attending, and if you were caught not in class, not sitting in the first three rows, or wearing a hat in class, you would face some sort of punishment. All the guys on the team knew they had to take classes seriously and attend or you basically would not play.

Matthew shows this emphasis on education was not universal, explaining that his “coaches weren’t that strict – if you missed class or an assignment, they would punish you, but they wanted us to play. They would have us do extra running/conditioning if we missed class and were caught.” This punitive approach for being caught with low grades contrasts with Ty, who says his coaches emphasized academic success, but did so in a positive manner by naming student-athletes who had reached the Dean’s List or improved their grades throughout the season so they could be recognized by their teammates. Coaches preached a consistent message of maximizing effort and achieving good grades was preached, but there was no mention of punishment short of academic probation if grades were below a certain threshold. This highlights a discrepancy in how grades are handled by coaches—are messages consistently encouraging, supporting, and motivating student-athletes to try in their classes and taking note of improved grades? Or are messages only negative, using corporeal punishment for assumed laziness in classes, reduced playing time for low grades, or a combination of these? Trevor, Matthew, and Kyle highlight the roles that coaches can play in emphasizing grades as a marker of academic success, largely enforcing academic goals by using varying degrees of punishment for studentathletes not living up to the coaches’ academic performance standard. While coaches can check on student-athletes attending classes and their grades, any discipline the student-athletes faced is limited to either extra work during practices or limiting playing time. While the incentive of

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playing time can potentially influence whether a player would be seen by professional scouts, neither punishment—reducing playing time or increasing exercises—ensure that grades remain at a high level, and the interviewees’ comments suggest athletic eligibility is the baseline coaches emphasize to their players. Coaches enforce compliance with grade-point average through coercion, either through additional exercises, which players do not enjoy, or through reducing playing time, which hurts players both in the interim (as players want to compete), as well as in the future (as there is less tape for professional scouts to evaluate them with), and players are stigmatized for missing games for any reason other than serious injury or personal or family matters. Thus, a student missing games due to low grades may be viewed as a disciplinary issue, or as being unable to balance the responsibilities of academics and athletics, and that may warn other teams to stay away from said player. Rather than viewing struggling academics as a price paid for academic success, the label applied suggests a level of immaturity on the player’s part, especially if the label is applied repeatedly. A student-athlete missing a game or two for academics may be viewed as lazy or problematic, with no context offered for why grades may be lower than desired. Matthew further explains, “It’s not like our teammates were pushing each other to go to class or get better grades—we had the coaches and the department down our throat about grades, so players weren’t on each other’s cases. The guys who were slacking off had extra study hall hours, and some guys had people showing up to their apartments telling them to go to classes.” Student-athletes highlighted study hall hours being offered for student-athletes who need to raise their grades, as well as highlighted surveillance—not only are student-athletes watched on the field and in the classroom, but run the potential risk of personal home (dorm room) visits by their coaches if caught missing classes. Rather than viewing teammates not emphasizing academics as a sign of apathy, the lack of informal social control was viewed as a sign of camaraderie among teammates. For them, if the coach is already on someone’s case, why should they have more people, especially teammates (their colleagues), asking them about classes? This civil inattention to grades is less apathy about success and more an empathetic, compassionate, and understanding apathy of camaraderie. Student-athletes know when their teammates are struggling with classes, but are sympathetic, as they know coaches act in a panoptic fashion, keeping tabs on who attends classes and is on top of their grades, so they feel less need to be extra eyes for the coaching staff themselves.

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Structural Support Offered and Perceptions of Teammates’ Successes and Attitudes in Class Colleges’ athletic departments, especially those with larger budgets (1-A schools in general; power-five schools specifically) offer tutoring to all student-athletes. While coaches care about academic success to some extent (discussed in further detail in Chapter 5), what matters to many student-athletes is how they view their teammates’ successes in sports and in the classroom, and those teammates’ attitudes towards academic success. I emphasize “to some extent,” because while coaches offer support programs in terms of study halls, and while they do surveillance on their players, they do not offer any flexibility in terms of missing practices to accommodate class requirements. Thus, players are offered many sticks if their grades slip, but few carrots or rewards for maintaining high grades. The student-athletes interviewed in this chapter had specific observations of their teammates’ successes and attitudes in the classroom. A common theme from student-athletes is at least half of their teammates, if not more, take their studies and grades seriously, and have no conflict between succeeding academically and athletically. It’s not success in either sports or school; it’s trying to succeed in both areas. Some interviewees placed themselves in the camp that did not take academics seriously at the beginning of their college career, but as they advanced through college, they placed more importance on succeeding in the classroom. However, teammate attitudes were mentioned after family and romantic interests, suggesting that while spending time with teammates and seeing their attitudes can influence a player, those who matter more are people close to the student-athlete as a person—family or romantic interests. Bruce, a football player at a Division-1 public university in California, explains: The majority of my teammates did well and were great students. My coaches always did class checks and checked our notes from class. They made sure we gave them our course syllabus and kept us accountable for assignments. It took me two or three years to take my academics serious. Once I got the hang of it, I did well. I struggled initially and found it difficult to manage my time. To be eligible, you needed to maintain a 2.0 GPA (C average) Most of the guys took their academics serious. The ones that didn’t usually became ineligible or dismissed from school…I would say 85% of the team was serious and cared about school. The other 15%

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was more concerned with football. Initially, I was part of the 15% and just wanted to schedule classes that I knew weren’t that difficult.

Kyle echoes this when he says roughly half of his teammates could either care or be ambivalent about their classes, and about one quarter of them did not care beyond eligibility. Matthew echoes this by saying: To be eligible, I believe cumulative GPA (grade point average) had to be 2.0 (meaning C-average) and quarter grades were the same, 2.0. I know some circles of teammates had school as first priority, while the majority of the team valued football much more. There were a few that didn’t care about school at all but they don’t last too long, so the common theme is good grades off season and bad grades during season.

The idea of maintaining the 2.0 for eligibility was frequently mentioned, as were teammates’ attitudes toward grades. Other studentathletes, like Jason, a Division-1 football player in California, also mention taking easier courses while in season to maintain eligibility, rather than getting bad grades in season, and compensating with higher grades during the off-season. This suggests that while the NCAA discusses cumulative grade-point averages, players can improvise a way to maintain a high grade-point average while they play by taking easier classes during the season, and more difficult or rigorous classes in the off-season. If messages received from family and significant others can be viewed as informal motivation and social control, then the formal motivation student-athletes receive and formal social control they are subject to revolve around the need to maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average (C) to maintain academic eligibility and scholarships. Few of the interviewees mention their coaches having a higher-than-minimum GPA for eligibility, suggesting that for these coaches, eligibility is the goal, and anything above it is acceptable, but not emphasized. Student-athletes who played football and basketball (regardless of NCAA division) mention the 2.0 baseline exclusively, while those in other sports mention having team-specific grade-point averages that were substantively higher than the NCAA threshold. For example, Ty, a baseball player from a Division-1A public school in the northwest, explained that on his team, “Grades were very important; team GPA was very highly stressed. A team GPA of 3.0 was a team goal.” Al, who played college baseball at a Division-1A public school in the Midwest, explained that:

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Grades were extremely important to our coaches in college. Not only did good grades ensure that we were gonna [sic] be able to play baseball, but it also made our coaches look good if their players had good grades. We had mandatory study hall hours every week, along with tutors for certain classes we struggled with. Big universities made it hard for a student to fail at school due to all the help they give you to make you successful.

Tim echoes Al and Ty’s sentiments, saying: It was all football all the time, but it was also all academics all the time. It was NEVER ‘you’re an athlete, we’ll let you skate by.’ It was academically rigorous, but we were expected to keep up. We had study halls, they helped us as much as possible… I don’t even think we had an issue with grades. I don’t remember anyone having trouble – we had tutors, we had all the support we needed. I was on two different teams [football and track and field], never an issue.

When coaches emphasize academics for their student-athletes, they do so partly out of practicality—making sure their players are eligible to play, and thus, offer the team the best chance of winning—and partly out of wanting to present themselves well publicly, as coaching student-athletes who do well in their classes. This would offer the message that studentathletes are expected to excel in the classroom and on the field, with tutoring offered as a resource on campus.

When Class and Sports Schedules Conflict, and the Role Scholarships Play When classes and practice or game travel schedule overlap, studentathletes were proactive in talking to their professors. In addition to notifying their professors with an official letter from the school’s athletic department, saying which days they would be away from campus for games, student-athletes deal with scheduling conflicts with their professors if travelling for a game meant missing a day (or more) of classes, and making alternate arrangements if they missed an exam or a paper. Arrangements included taking tests before their classmates, taking tests after returning from their games, or, for extended absences, taking tests in the team hotel while being supervised by a coach. While this academically-proactive approach may be attributed to student-athletes wanting to portray a positive, responsible self-image,

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there are also practical considerations to this behavior. By discussing scheduling conflicts and making alternative testing arrangements, studentathletes portray themselves as responsible to their instructors. This image could lead to greater leeway if needed, and signals that student-athletes care about academics—at least enough to maintain eligibility. This positive image could affect how both instructors and coaches viewed the studentathletes, and allow for more compassion if a student-athlete missed a class. Unlike the academic literature, the student-athletes interviewed in this chapter did not mention having hostile instructors when they requested alternative testing dates/assignment due dates due to conflicts between academics and athletics. Rather than assuming that sports and academics are constantly conflicting with one another for student-athletes’ attention, being proactive allowed for both facets of being a student-athlete to work together. Given that athletic scholarships are the main avenue student-athletes have towards maintaining their academic and athletic careers, staying healthy while maintaining academic eligibility is crucially important. Bruce explains that “Grades were not important to me until I wanted a football scholarship. Prior to that, I was a below average student.” Alex echoes similar feelings, stating that “as long as grades earned are C or better, then coaches, presumably, were happy, and players could continue to get playing time.” Alex links his academic performance to his health, explaining, “my grades plummeted my sophomore season after I broke my leg. I wasn’t travelling with the team on the road, so I was either in bed all day or partying, because I knew I wasn’t playing anyway.” Having less supervision by his coaches and teammates influenced Alex to neglect academics, and he eventually lost his athletic scholarship. He argues if he had not been injured, he would have maintained higher grades, because there would have been incentive to keep the grades at eligibility (or better) levels so that he could play with his teammates. But once he realized his career would end from his injury, the incentive to remain eligible disappeared, as he would not be able to play, regardless of his performance in the classroom. Without that motivation, Alex did what many young students do, and socialized or stayed at home, depending on mood.

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Priorities: School or Sports Literature shows student-athletes’ relationships with others are an important factor in how they set their priorities between sports and schooling (Comeaux and Harrison 2011), and the findings in this chapter support this point. Student-athletes interviewed in this chapter mentioned the need to remain eligible academically in order to compete, and schedule their coursework accordingly. The need to remain eligible to compete affects how student-athletes prioritize their sport while in season, and explains why academics are prioritized during the off-season. While inseason, interviewees describe scheduling their classes around practice times, so they could be with their teammates and prepare for upcoming games. Out of season, players report taking more challenging courses or those related to their major, as there are no set practice or game times, and no travel for games or competitions. The structure of consistent practices and games provides some support and framework for time management in terms of support from teammates and coaches, but academics were not necessarily prioritized while in-season. Instead, while in-season, the primary focus of coaches and players is winning, and student-athletes will do what they can to remain academically eligible, but have no incentive to go beyond that. During the off-season, without the constraints of practice, travel, and game times, athletes take more challenging courses as they can devote more time and energy to hitting the books in the off-season. Further, they mention their teammates’ attitudes toward classes as being important both for their own class choices as well as the general attitude of the team toward school. Derek explains that “Class choices revolved heavily on practice schedule…off season is when we would take hard courses, and during season I always looked for electives or teachers that were recommended because of their understanding with athletes.” Derek’s comment suggests that courses taken are not based necessarily on academic interest in the course material, whether the course was major-specific, or because of the course schedule during the week. Rather, professors’ reputation in terms of attitudes and personality toward working with student-athletes takes precedence. Having flexible due dates for assignments and showing empathy and understanding for student-athletes’ pressures are things student-athletes value. Kyle explains choosing his courses “based around practice time and having some down time,” and Jason echoes this, explaining, “grades were largely secondary to playing time. No one

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was being evaluated on the field for their performance in the classroom. I think there was a broad spectrum of attitudes regarding grades and classes—some obviously caring more than others.” Jason’s comment highlights that student-athletes are aware that people are paying tickets to watch them compete as athletes, rather than seeing them succeed academically as students. Given that, many student-athletes care more about being able to play, as they are competitive but also get evaluated positively regularly (by coaches, teammates, and fans), and academics might be an afterthought for some of them. However, Jason also emphasizes there is a range of attitudes, so it is inaccurate and unfair to assume a universal student-athlete attitude toward academics. Virtually every interviewee in this chapter mentioned scheduling courses around practice times. This is a practical concern for studentathletes, especially those in team sports. Attendance at practice is mandatory, as players need to develop both individual strengths as well as work with their teammates. This means any practices missed do not just affect individual student-athletes. They affect the team, because the team is forced to substitute a different, potentially less-experienced or less-skilled player, either in practice or in a game. This places the team at a competitive disadvantage. Given that teams are comprised of student-athletes in various stages of their academic careers, it is not feasible to have all members of a team take the same classes during the season. However, practice times remain a constant constraint that student-athletes must consider, so they schedule classes around their practices, knowing their participation in practice is expected daily. Bruce says his teammates cared about grades depending on what they were studying: We had a handful of pre-med on the football team, and they took grades seriously because of wanting to attend med school. Eligibility never played a factor for 99.9% of football players, and our track guys – 1/3 of our guys were pre-med. We had engineers and scientists, everybody worked as hard in the classroom as they did on the field. We had both clever guys and smart guys: clever guys find a way to do well without putting in the same effort…they would figure out what classes to take with a high GPA, but with much less work. Smart guys maxed out [gave full effort] in their classes for their grades, while clever guys found ways of getting good grades without doing that.

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Bruce highlights teammates as influencing attitude toward succeeding in the classroom, as well some of the pragmatic considerations studentathletes have. For Bruce, some teammates choose less-demanding classes while in season to maintain a high grade-point average. This higher gradepoint average allows for eligibility and makes both the student-athlete and their team look good to others. Taking courses that are easier in some shape or form, whether through instructor flexibility with test dates, ease of tests and assignments, professor’s attitudes, or a class being interesting and/or in a student-athlete’s major, are all considerations student-athletes have when selecting their schedules. This is due to the need to remain eligible while regularly practicing and competing. Student-athletes spend a lot of time and energy on their sport while in season as they train and compete, and they have to do so while keeping their grades at a certain level (2.0 average). However, once out of season, the NCAA pays less attention to these student-athletes’ grades, as there are no upcoming games a student-athlete risks missing if their grades are not up to par, and so many student-athletes choose to take more difficult classes when they are in their off-season. Doing so allows them to expend more energy in the classroom, as there are no games for a given academic term, and practices are less frequent. This approach highlights student-athletes’ pragmatic considerations of academic and athletic eligibility. Tim focuses on course workload in terms of his teammates’ attitude in knowing where to maximize efforts and where to perhaps not be as intensely focused on academics. His distinction between clever and smart based on effort put into classwork suggests that to be smart is both a matter of understanding the material and putting effort into classwork. On the other hand, being clever means having academic competence, but finding classes that demand less work to have visible academic success (a high grade-point average) without having to put the same amount of work or effort in. Being clever exemplifies rationalistic thinking—how to get maximum output or results from minimal input or efforts, or finding a balance between effort and results that keeps the student-athlete eligible. However, this way of thinking is needed, given the demands of maintaining a certain grade-point average to be eligible to play and receive an athletic scholarship. In order to do so, many employ this rationalistic thinking, not necessarily out of laziness, but out of getting the best results for their efforts.

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Differences Between Easier and Harder Classes Student-athletes differ in how they schedule their classes and the rationale behind it, whether going with value-rational thinking (education is good in and of itself, and should be prioritized because learning is valued by the student-athlete) and maximizing efforts in all classes due to interest in the material, or whether to go with instrumental-rational thinking (grades are necessary in order to keep playing, which is what the student-athlete wants to do) in selecting some classes that allow for good grades earned with less than maximum effort spent. Most (15) of the student-athletes in this chapter emphasized they enjoyed taking courses in their major specifically, due to interest in the major and thus, its focal classes. Because of the interest in the material, the classes seemed easier, because they were more willing to maximize efforts in order to learn more. However, four student-athletes interviewed in this chapter mention they did not consider any of their classes especially easy, whether in terms of interest or workload. In addition to course material, six of the athletes indicate that a professor’s openness to students voicing opinions in class made courses easier for them. Chris, who played football at a power-five school in California, explains: Well I wouldn’t say that any class was particularly “easy”. Most of the classes I took involved interesting material and themes that made it “easy” to want to study and get involved in the class. My time management skills, which were already well-tested in HS were further honed at [School], which made it so that I rarely felt overwhelmed with my class load, leading to each class being relatively easy to handle and manage by my ability to devote the necessary time and energy.

Thus, even though the workload and requirements for classes may not be particularly light, and the course material not easy, interest in the material fueled academic interest for Chris and others, and this made difficult classes seem easier, as the effort was voluntarily offered. Howard, who played hockey at a public university in New England, echoes similar thoughts to Chris when he explains, “Some of the easiest classes for myself were the classes that were in my major, psychology. I think the main reason for this was because I was very interested in the material so I enjoyed studying these topics.” For student-athletes like Chris and Howard, class difficulty is related to whether a class is in their major, fueling an interest in the topics of the class. This intellectual curiosity

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mattered more their professors’ reputations, class timing (both in terms of days and time of day) or workload. This highlights the importance of student-athletes selecting their majors individually, rather than having advisors or others choose for them, as classes in the major pique and fuel student-athletes’ interest in the material, allowing them to excel academically. Chris also highlights an aspect from high school that translates well to succeeding in college—developing time-management skills. Student-athletes have multiple time demands from their sport (practice time, weightlifting and conditioning time, travel time, and game time) as well as taking a full course load. Knowing how to manage one’s time and energy is paramount in order for a student-athlete to succeed in both of these roles. Al offered a different opinion on what made his classes easy, as he emphasizes the freedom to express opinions in the classroom: Any classes that allowed me to form my own opinions were usually easy. For example, if we were learning about theories or political views and asked to compare one to another, I always found it easy to back up my own belief or preference. It wasn’t about workload necessarily. It was about how the information applied to me.

Like many other student-athletes, Al did not focus on the workload for a class in determining how easy it was, instead focusing on how comfortable he felt expressing his opinions in class and if course material was applicable to him. Thus, this shows that while student-athletes may look to make their course schedules “easier”, what constitutes “easier” is defined differently, whether it is workload, instructor attitudes in terms of accommodating schedules and due dates, comfort in the classroom, or interest in the material. The next two sections focus on how graduated student-athletes define success for themselves academically and athletically.

Defining Academic Success Just as student-athletes have different definitions for what makes their courses easy or difficult, they also define their successes differently, both in the classroom and in their sport. Chris found his college experience transformative, and explains the importance of earning a degree for him:

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A college degree meant and still means a lot to me. Beyond the inscriptions and lettering on the degree itself, when I look at that hallowed piece of paper I am reminded of thousands of memories, both positive and challenging, that resulted in my four years at [school] to be tremendously transformative, especially from a personal maturity standpoint.

Bruce echoes similar sentiments to Chris, explaining: Given where I was raised, what I had seen & what I’ve been through…a degree was much more than a piece of paper. It gave me validity. That I wasn’t just some gang member from LA. That I was competent and powerful. Capable of doing anything in the world if I put my mind to it. I don’t think many my peers felt the same way about their degree as I did about mine. Only 3% of the student population was black, most were athletes. Even out of that 3%, most were not raised by a single parent in Watts & Inglewood. Personally, my degree(s) means the world to me.

Student-athletes have immense pride not only in both their on-field successes and their successes in the classroom. While George highlights personal growth he noticed, Bruce compares social expectations based on how and where he grew up and outperforming them by earning his degree. Howard emphasizes his pride in earning his degree because of his family background and what a degree means professionally outside of sports, stating: I was determined to get my degree because my father and mother never went to college and I wanted to become the first in my family to graduate. I took a lot of pride in doing the best possible job I could in school throughout my studies with this in the back of my mind to make my family proud. As I look back on it some six years ago I believe my parents are really proud of me and my brother for graduating college, and being very successful because of the opportunities it has given us.

While pride in achieving a college degree is a common theme, it is not universal. Matthew explains for him, a college degree did not open as many doors professionally as he had hoped, and thinks his struggles in the classroom were due to being in a new place, both geographically and in terms of class and sports demands:

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I think I was better off not going to college, but I do appreciate my experience – it’s a culture shock, and the friends I made were amazing, I had a few friends who played in the NFL. It kind of worked out, but I’m paying for it – I’m working a job where I get paid $14 per hour (code enforcement for a home owners association), so I can go to school for my teaching credential.

While Matthew has doubts about whether he should have attended college, he expressed interest in returning to school for an advanced degree in education. Similarly, other student-athletes interviewed in this chapter returned to school for advanced professional degrees in law and medicine, suggesting they, like other undergraduates, used the Bachelor’s degree to springboard their professional careers. Matthew was the only student-athlete interviewed in this chapter who expresses some hesitation or doubts about his college experience. Most student-athletes mention pride in earning their degree because of their families, further suggesting that the family is a source of inspiration and amplifying the message of earning a college degree, even if—or perhaps, because of—them not earning a degree and seeing how difficult life could be. Other sources of pride for student-athletes include personal growth and seeing the degree and education earned leading to a professional career, even if outside of sports. Significant others were mentioned alongside family, suggesting that those who are close to student-athletes personally, though not necessarily professionally, express more pride in the academic achievement of earning a degree. While coaches emphasize academic success, the studentathletes interviewed in this chapter did not mention their coaches or teammates as a source of pride for the degree. This does not imply that coaches or teammates are ashamed or apathetic about academic success; rather, it highlights that those who are more intimately known by a student-athlete carry more weight in terms of pride in these achievements.

Defining Athletic Success The academic literature does not ask how student-athletes define success for themselves athletically, academically, or professionally. It assumes that the goal of all athletes is to win and to play sports professionally, but this is not explicitly discussed. Further, just as easiness of classes varied among interviewees, as did sources of pride for academic success, so did their definitions of athletic success. Tony, a former football player at a

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power-five school in California, explains what athletic success looked like to him: My definition of athletic success was as varied as it was one singular percentage. My first goal was to not get cut from the team during week 1. I ended up finding myself in the starting lineup (…only through the grace of God, I can assure you!!). From then my goal became earning the starting spot and being placed on scholarship…As I talk through the varying stages of what I deemed to be success athletically, the singular metric of success that seemed to hang over my head as if a neon sign everilluminated was my field goal percentage. As a kicker, that number loomed over me with impending power and I was desperate to make sure it was “good”; before my senior year I deemed “good” to be above 85%.

As a kicker, Tony was in a unique spot, as he focused on an individual statistic within the context of a team sport. This is similar to a basketball player focusing on their shooting percentage or points per game, rather than strictly looking at the team’s win-loss record. While players certainly look at their playing stats throughout their seasons and careers, there are more components that go into how well a quarterback, receiver, or running back do because of their on-field interdependence on each other and the offensive line. For specialists like kickers and punters, on-field successes or failures are attributed solely to them as they are the focus of attention on kicking plays. A wide receiver can have a poor game because their quarterback had a rough day, but for a kicker, no such understanding exists. After all, no one knows who the long-snapper or the holder are, and the kicker is in the spotlight. Tony defines his athletic success based on how many kicks he successfully made and whether he kept his scholarship. Conversely, Howard a hockey player from a Division-1 school in Massachusetts, explains for him, athletic success meant “[being] the best possible guy on the ice every night. It was not all about points but how I was going to make my team better and ultimately I would be successful.” While all student-athletes are competitive, neither Tony nor Howard define their personal success by team record. Instead, they either focus on something tangible (a higher individual success rate or statistic) or on something intrinsic to them—knowing their efforts helped their team win. Athletic success can be related to a financial incentive (i.e. receiving and maintaining a scholarship) that is related to on the field success (in Tony’s case, determined by his field goal percentage), but it also includes

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the idea of “being a good teammate” in addition to being a proficient kicker. Being a good teammate means supporting teammates on the field, checking on their emotional well-being (especially when struggling), and could include encouraging success in the classroom or allowing privacy in that area, depending on their teammates’ wishes. “Athletic success” is multi-faceted and means more than statistics, although individual statistics are a metric of success. However, sometimes success does not show up in box scores. Student-athletes like Howard, Derek, Jason, and Kyle explain that the best player on the team may not show a lot of offensive success some nights, but may be instrumental on defense, and as long as the team wins, that is a successful game. The best student-athletes are not necessarily those with the gaudiest numbers, but instead are the ones who make their teammates better. For some of these former student-athletes, being successful athletically meant consistently giving their best efforts when playing, even if their individual statistics did not stand out.

Discussion Academic literature asserts, “social imitation theory maintains that individuals learn roles and behaviors vicariously by observing them and their consequences” (Beamon 2010: 297). The student-athletes interviewed in this chapter were socialized to emphasize sports by their teammates, while their families and romantic or marital significant others emphasized academic success. While few of the interviewees mentioned their coaches caring about grades beyond eligibility, none of those interviewed said they felt pressured by coaches to prioritize athletics over academics. Student-athletes’ decisions about the balance between the books and the playing field are largely based on pragmatic considerations, such as taking harder classes in the off-season. However, their intimate personal connections with family and significant others have an influence on whether they exercise that pragmatism, or emphasize athletic success over academic success. Maturity and aging also appear to have some effect on increasing pragmatism and academic focus for some student-athletes; as they progress through college, sports’ importance diminished and putting a priority on getting good grades increased. This is related to receiving feedback about whether a professional athletic career is feasible, whether from coaches, scouts or teammates.

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Most of the interviewees discussed participating in professional leagues as a big motivator for pursuing their sport, but again, intimate personal connections created pressure to finish school and get the degree. Having a major that interests them encourages them to focus on academics, as Cory’s comment about his interest in psychology indicates. Apart from scholarships that allow student-athletes to remain in school and on the team, none of the interviewees mentioned money as a motivating factor for playing college sports. Rather than an immediate payday, studentathletes emphasize the hope of competing professionally following their collegiate careers, and the joy of their success and competence in the game, which motivate their athletic endeavors. Virtually all (19 out of 20) of the student-athletes interviewed in this chapter are explicitly proud of graduating with a degree, and speak of their collegiate experience in reverent terms. However, this reverence seems to conflict with the idea of scheduling easy classes when in season, or figuring out which classes demand less work. This can be explained as student-athletes needing to be pragmatic when going through school, in terms of taking full course loads and working long hours both as students an as athletes, but being able to reminisce about the academic journey after it had been completed, and feeling proud in navigating both rules as intercollegiate athletes and as undergraduate students concurrently. Even student-athletes who may have been ambivalent about their grades at some point in their academic career discuss the pride they feel in graduating and earning a degree. Some of the interviewees discuss continuing their education, either earning a professional school (medical school or law school) degree or a graduate degree, and credit their experiences as athletes as getting them used to working long hours, dealing with highpressure situations, assessing a lot of rapidly-changing information, and adapting to it or thinking quickly on their feet. The student-athletes interviewed here report that intimate relationships, their majors, and having classes that interested them served as motivators to keep them focused on academics. Additionally, studentathletes had to consider the timing of their classes, both with respect to practices in-season and in terms of ease of maintaining their eligibility while in-season. The pragmatic adjustment of taking harder classes in the off-season makes sense, and colleges should investigate the possibility of structuring course loads such that these classes are offered in the off-season for student-athletes. The next chapter examines similar themes from student-athletes who are currently enrolled in school.

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References Adler, Peter, and Patricia A. Adler. 1985. From Idealism to Pragmatic Detachment: The Academic Performance of College Athletes. Sociology of Education 58 (4): 241–250. Beamon, Krystal K. 2010. Are Sports Overemphasized in the Socialization Process of African American Males? A Qualitative Analysis of Former Collegiate Athletes’ Perception of Sport Socialization. Journal of Black Studies 41 (2): 281–300. Comeaux, Eddie, and Keith C. Harrison. 2011. A Conceptual Model of Academic Success for Student-Athletes. Educational Researcher 40 (5): 235– 245. https://doi.org/10.2307/41238944. Engstrom, Catherine, and William E. Sedlacek. 1991. A Study of Prejudice Toward University Student-Athletes. Journal of Counseling & Development 70 (1): 189–193. Gayles, Joy Gaston. 2009. The Student Athlete Experience. New Directions for Institutional Research 144 (Winter 2009): 33–41. Gayles, Joy Gaston, and Shouping Hu. 2009. The Influence of Student Engagement and Sport Participation on College Outcomes Among Division I Student Athletes. Journal of Higher Education 80 (3): 315–333.

CHAPTER 3

“Emptying the Tank”: Current Student-Athletes

While Chapter 2 focused on student-athletes who had finished their college careers when I interviewed them, this chapter focuses on 18 student-athletes (seven women, eleven men) who are enrolled college students at the time of their interviews. These interviews were done prior to college campuses closing in March 2020 due to the COVID19 pandemic. The student-athletes interviewed in this chapter primarily compete in baseball, basketball, and track and field. Most (15) of these student-athletes attend schools that are lower than Division-1, meaning they are not competing for or against power-five schools. Their level of competition means there is less media attention on them, there are fewer athletic scholarships available (especially compared to power-five schools), and sports are not the financial drivers of their universities the way football and basketball are for power-five schools. For this group, athletic scholarships are offered one year at a time (rather than multiple years at once), and are renewable based on athletic and academic performance. These scholarships are highly competitive given their scarcity, and can cover tuition, books, room and board, and student fees, either completely or partially. Similar to Chapter 2, this chapter focuses on the messages that current student-athletes receive from people close to them, considerations taken when choosing course schedules, how important grades are for them and

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for their teammates, what their teammates do when they struggle academically, and how advisors help them succeed in school. It concludes by asking current student-athletes what being a student-athlete means to them, what they would like people to know about the student-athlete experience, and comparing similarities and differences among former and present student-athletes. Current student-athletes range from those in their first year of college to those in their fourth year. More than one-third of these studentathletes (seven of the 18) attended a junior or community college prior to transferring to a four-year university. The chapter also discusses the similarities and differences in their experiences between these two types of schools.

Messages Received from Family and Coaches Family and coaches provide voices that student-athletes listen to carefully. This makes them socializing forces in terms of academic success, regardless of whether the student’s family (often parents) had earned a university degree or not. Parents tended to emphasize and prioritize academic success, typically with sports as an afterthought. One notable exception is Stacey, who runs track for a Division-1 school in Southern California. Her parents, both without college degrees, emphasize athletic success heavily to her, because earning an athletic scholarship is a pathway to earning a college education. Even when parents prioritize sports, they allow for a college education. Stacey’s parents assume this education will be the springboard for her future success in life, more than running track. The student-athletes interviewed in this chapter are quick to mention that their coaches emphasize academic success, beyond maintaining eligibility, with coaches reminding student-athletes that they are expected to be students before they are athletes (e.g. prioritizing classwork and grades over the games). Coaches back up this message by accommodating student-athletes who need to miss an occasional practice due to class obligations, and not punishing them with reduced or eliminated playing time when they miss practice for class-related reasons. Unlike the studentathletes interviewed in Chapter 2, the interviewees in this chapter do not mention romantic significant others, teammates, or friends as pushing them to focus on either school or on sports. This might be due to age and educational differences based on high schools and colleges, or the

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specific sports played by interviewees. Track and field is more of an individual sport than football or basketball, for example, which may mean there is less peer pressure from teammates, because while the team is big, each specific event may not have many competitors. The student-athletes interviewed in this chapter may not have been in a romantic relationship that influenced how they viewed school and sports at the time of the interview, or if they were in a relationship, had not discussed the importance of sports and school with their partner.

Differences Between Community Colleges and Four-Year Schools Seven of the student-athletes interviewed in this chapter report attending a two-year community college prior to transferring to a four-year university. These seven student-athletes had to make two transitions: one from high school to the two-year school, and one from the two-year school to the four-year university. Challenging differences centered on differences in campus sizes, physical issues with campuses in terms of classroom accessibility (both from athletic facilities and the general layout of the campus), length of academic term (10 weeks vs. 15 weeks), and differences in academic rigor or difficulty between the schools. They also highlighted the differences in taking upper-division courses for a major, as opposed to lower-division general education (“gen ed” or “GE”) courses, as making a difference in how easy or hard classes were. Most (five of the seven) interviewees who attended community college and transferred report that community college was more difficult for them than the four-year schools they currently attend. Jay, who runs track at a Division-2 public university in Southern California, explains, “As you get higher in your education, you zero in on a focus. It’s nice to focus on topics that interest you as opposed to studying a little bit of everything.” Classes in a student’s major allowed school to be easier for the student-athletes interviewed, because the classes played to their intellectual strengths, passions, and curiosity. While lower-division classes are broader, survey courses assumed to be easier, student-athletes’ interest in the course material matters more than objective rigor. An upper division course in a student’s major may be more rigorous than an introductory course, but a lower-division course that does not pique a student’s interest will feel like more work, because the student is not passionate about the material. Effectively, an introductory economics course can be tougher

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for a student than an upper-division criminology course if that studentathlete wants to be a police officer or lawyer after graduating, because their future professional interests align more closely with the upper division class than the lower-division one. Transferring to a four-year school offers student-athletes the opportunity to focus on courses related to their major. In addition to being able to focus on material they view as more interesting, as it was part of a major that they chose, some interviewees mentioned a noticeable difference in attitude from their instructors. Ryan, who ran track and field at a community college before attending a four-year Division-2 school in Southern California, says: Maybe there (the junior college) they just grade too hard, they [were] more intensive in grading, because there is a competition for people trying to get out in two years, or people who ruin the curve. Here (the four-year school), the academics aren’t easy, they require a lot of work, but I don’t feel the same amount of pressure here that I did there. It might be class because I was taking my GE classes there, and my major courses here.

Ryan and others mention the junior college as preparing them to succeed academically after transferring. However, students like Ryan report feeling more pressure academically at the two-year community college than the four-year school, and attribute it to differences in instructor grading, but also the nature of the courses taken: general education courses, meaning a broader variety of courses, versus courses for their major, which would have a narrower focus. Ryan was not the only student-athlete who mentioned junior college as preparing them to succeed after transferring. Alicia, a soccer player at a Division-2 public school in Southern California, explains: The easiest part [of transitioning from a junior college to a four-year school] was playing soccer, even though it was for a new team. It’s one of the things I know I have mastered so it comes quite easy to me. I feel that my junior college prepared me well enough for the course material and work here…I feel as though the material might be harder, but the amount is still quite similar to the workload I had at [the junior college].

Alicia’s comment suggests that, like their non-athletic peers, studentathletes learn to navigate a college workload in terms of amount of work and type of work expected beginning at the junior college level, and face the challenge of taking courses outside their areas of expertise, rather than

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in their major. At the junior college level, all students are expected to expand their breadth of knowledge, while in the major, students expand the depth of their knowledge in a specific field. At the junior college level, attitudes from instructors go a long way in shaping how student-athletes perform in their classes, as Ryan alludes to. Given this is students’ first experiences in college in terms of how courses are structured and the work necessary to succeed, all students— not just athletes—are navigating new demands: depth of content and academic skill development, managing time and energy, and understanding different course structures each semester (e.g. what classes are graded more on tests, which are graded more on papers or projects, or which demand frequent assignments). Messages from people who are in positions of power and authority, such as professors and coaches, are taken seriously and internalized. Due to the newness of the college experience, first-year students may be somewhat susceptible to feeling pressured to succeed, both in the classroom and at their sport, in addition to the desire to transfer to a four-year school. This novelty is the same for both community college and four-year students (and student-athletes), and many students struggle in their first years as they adjust from high school to college-level work and thinking. This experience makes student-athletes feel vulnerable, as they try to adjust to new pressures, and means that messages professors and coaches send this early in their academic and athletic careers resonate loudly. Any negative remarks sting and persist for a long time. The concern is negative judgments may become how the student-athlete sees themselves, and if that negativity is reinforced, they may lose incentive to try in the classroom, due to the self-fulfilling prophecy. For some student-athletes, the reasoning is: if they are always going to be seen as “less than” because of early academic struggles, then why try to follow the rules? Making an effort in the classroom won’t change people’s minds about their abilities. This is a fixed mindset—a known problem in education. For these students, the fixed mindset needs to be replaced with more of a growth mindset that emphasizes progress, because education is built on growth and progress, not perfection. Early struggles are to be expected because college is expected to challenge more than high school, both in terms of in-class curriculum and the hidden curriculum of managing obligations, time, and learning to communicate effectively with professors. This communication is, perhaps ironically, not effectively communicated to these students, so their assumptions about work quality expectations and

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self-image are not corrected, and this needs to happen in the first few weeks of their first year and reinforced consistently throughout their academic careers. The insistence on having to appear all-knowing and confident in class (or, at least, not lost and confused), relates to what psychologist Carol Dweck calls “the fixed mindset” (Dweck 2007). This mindset assumes that a person will always be who they are at any given moment. For example, a student struggling writing a term paper may be inclined to see themselves as a bad writer, or a student struggling with math may assume they will never understand how exponents work. Dweck (2007) contrasts the fixed mindset with a growth mindset, which emphasizes gradual and consistent progress. Rather than a student seeing themselves as less than their more-confident peers, the growth mindset encourages focusing on consistent, incremental improvement. For this mindset, the student struggling with writing might say “I’m getting better at writing a clearer thesis statement” or “I am better at organizing my thoughts now than on papers in the past.” It is an introspective approach, rather than a comparative or competitive approach. Student-athletes also explain there is a world of difference between having a 10-week term and a 15-week term. Ian, a baseball player at a Division-2 school in Southern California who transferred from a junior college, explains that: In a 10-week class, you are maybe three weeks into the term and you get a test worth 1/3 of your grade. That’s really intense pressure to perform from the get-go, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed and lose something. Here [Division-2 school that uses 15-week semesters] you have a little time to get your feet wet, you don’t usually see a test before week five or six.

This suggests that even though both semesters (15 weeks) and quarters (10 weeks) have the same number of class sessions per term (30), how these classes are structured makes a difference in how student-athletes can schedule classes and how overwhelmed they feel. Typically, classes in quarter-system schools are offered either as three days a week for one hour each meeting, or twice a week for one-and-a-half hours, and at semester schools, more classes are offered twice a week than at quarter schools. Semester schools also offer some classes three days a week, or one evening per week for three hours. This offers students more flexibility in the semester school in choosing classes based around their time

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constraints. Because semester schools have 50% more weeks per term than quarter schools, this timing allows for semester schools’ tests to be spaced out more than in quarter schools, as well as more time to work on projects. In both cases, time management is essential to success, because having the longer period between tests can lull students into a false sense of security that they can slack off in class. If that happens, their grade suffers, similar to students who are overwhelmed by the early and frantic pace of the quarter system.

Pressures Student-Athletes Face The school a student-athlete competes at shapes their athletic and academic goals. At the community college level, athletes’ primary focus is transferring to a four-year university, based on location, scholarship availability, and/or athletic reputation. A school’s location may allow student-athletes to remain close to family or significant others, thus allowing them a chance to maintain and rely on an established in-person support network. Attending a school near home also offers the practical advantage of living at home while attending school, rather than having to pay room and board at a university or renting an apartment, thus lowering the cost of attendance. The trade-off made is having to consider commute time to and from school, both in-season and out of it. This commute time is another obstacle student-athletes have to navigate when choosing their course schedules. Allen, who attends and runs track and field at a Division-2 school in Southern California, explains: “in [junior college], you’re focused on the next step of transferring out, but you’re trying to shine so you can get recruited, get a scholarship. Here [At a four-year school], you’re just trying to hold your spot, stay competitive. I feel like the junior college was really good with their levels of education.” This is a difference in goals as well as academic rigor, and the lack of a viable professional track career means students like Allen want to compete at a higher level than the junior college level, but also have to focus on their classes in order to succeed after they finish school. Once a student-athlete transfers to a four-year university, their academic focus shifts from worrying about qualifying for a transfer to a four-year school. Instead, they now focus on their major and graduation, and athletically their focus shifts from transferring to either competing for fun or competing for a professional career. In all cases,

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student-athletes worried about maintaining NCAA eligibility with their grade point averages, while some had to worry about maintaining team eligibility if the coach demanded a higher GPA. Some student-athletes interviewed compete with few, if any, professional aspirations, both in terms of succeeding athletically and academically, but do so both out of the desire to maintain a scholarship to attend a four-year university and enjoying competition and being part of a team, representing a school. Coaches and professors are authority figures to student-athletes, and messages from these bosses can affect how student-athletes view their teammates and classes. If student-athletes consistently receive and internalize negative messages from their coaches or professors, those may shape the effort and energy student-athletes place spend on their classes and/or sport. While some coaches and professors may challenge their student-athletes, they do so by turning a negative message into a proactive positive one (e.g. “Are you going to practice sloppy like that? Because that kind of practice will result in a loss, and you’re better than that!” or “You did poorly on this paper, and I know that I will see a much better paper from you next time.”), but the first part of that statement is understood as “a person with power doubts my abilities” and lingers, overshadowing the intended encouragement and refocus for the next assignment, paper, or test. Negative judgments in the classroom or at practice may be rooted more in assumptions than on actual problems the student-athlete faces. What the professor or coach interprets as a lack of effort or lack of caring may really be the result of exhaustion, embarrassment, or frustration. Student-athletes have to initiate the conversation with their professors if something is wrong in their classes, because professors have hundreds of students each term, and are not able to know if something is wrong without a student explaining their problems. Student-athletes may struggle academically, especially early in their careers, not due to a lack of competence or effort, but because they face new challenges in terms of academic rigor and learning to schedule and manage their time differently. Another problem is that student-athletes have to initiate contact with the professor, and some may shy away either due to status and power differences (i.e. not wanting to look confused or stupid in front of a professor for fear of embarrassment) or being used to having an authority figure (e.g. coach or advisor) talk to the professor on their behalf, which limits effective communication between a student-athlete and their professors. If a student-athlete’s grades drop, one possible instructor reaction is to assume the poor grades are reflective of a poor

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attitude toward classes. Another common instructor assumption is instead of focusing on classes, student-athletes focus exclusively on their sport. Acting on these assumptions, a professor voices their concerns. However, these concerns can be interpreted as displeasure with the student-athlete as a person, and a student-athlete may feel less motivated to work for an instructor who assumes the worst of them. They then channel their energy into other classes and their sport, because they want to emphasize their areas of strength and confidence. These assumptions do nothing to help the student-athlete better understand the demands of college in terms of material and time management, and instead promotes the idea that a lack of academic success is solely due to laziness and/or incompetence. In reality, a more patient approach from instructors, as well as having support from others, may help student-athletes find success in the classroom earlier in their careers. For some student-athletes, athletic scholarships are the only way they can attend a four-year university, regardless of whether they transfer in or enroll in university straight out of high school. These scholarships are typically one year in length, and are renewed at coaches’ discretion. While many coaches rubber-stamp scholarship renewals, student-athletes face the risk of having their scholarships revoked due to poor grades, poor athletic performance, or injury. For student-athletes, these risks are worth the reward of the opportunity to earn a four-year degree while competing in the sports of their choice. These scholarships offer studentathletes an opportunity to attend school without taking out an exorbitant amount of loans, and are needed when a student and their family cannot afford college. For some high school students, no scholarship means no college, and instead would mean entering the workforce without earning a bachelor’s degree. A school’s athletic reputation (typically based on winning tradition, conference affiliation, media attention, placing student-athletes in the majors, and athletic facilities that border on—if not surpass—professional facilities) can influence student-athletes’ decision-making on where to enroll, but these factors only count for an exceedingly small group of student-athletes who play sports offering a professional career following college. Power-five universities typically scout these student-athletes while they are in middle school or high school. For community colleges, athletic reputation is based on how many student-athletes have transferred to four-year universities and continued competing in their sport, rather than championships won. For four-year schools, reputation is based on

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recent (within the last 5 years or so) athletic history as well as athletic conference. This history includes placing student-athletes in professional sports, as well as wins over rivals, high-profile opponents, and championships. Higher-profile conferences (namely the power 5) mean more games on television. This exposure increases the chances that a studentathlete will be noticed by professional sports teams, get scouted, and be drafted to play professionally. Professional scouts attend games sporadically as well as use video, so attending a school with high visibility can increase—but does not necessarily guarantee—a student-athlete’s chances of playing professionally. The reason the visits are sporadic is scouts tend to cover multiple schools in a given geographic region, and have to rotate among schools. This means, prior to video, they are scouting based on a limited sample size. The more video that a student-athlete has, the more complete a picture scouts have, which can help improve the student-athlete’s professional sports prospects.

How Student-Athletes View the Role of Counselors and Advisors More than half (11 out of 18) of the student-athletes interviewed in this chapter explicitly mentioned academic advisors or counselors (discussed in Chapter 6) helping pick their course schedules. Ace, a baseball player at a Midwestern power-five school, explains that at his school, “every sports team has what we called our financial advisor. This person sat down with us and helped us pick out which classes were good for us to take. Classes that educated us and classes that would go towards our major as well.” Academic advisors work exclusively with student-athletes and advise them whether courses are prudent for a student-athlete’s progress toward graduation, but beyond a certain time (usually first year at the school), they do not choose the specific classes that student-athletes take, unless the student-athlete asks for their help. Their job is to ethically help student-athletes graduate, and while they will offer input about courses, they view their work as a partnership with student-athletes to graduate, not to inflate their grade-point averages. Ace emphasizes that the classes that he is advised to take are “good for them to take” in terms of counting toward fulfilling major requirements, rather than classes that are easy ways of inflating his grade point averages. Easy, “gimme,” or “paper classes,” as seen in the University of North Carolina paper course scandal, allow student-athletes to maintain

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eligibility while allowing them to focus more intensely on their sport, due to the lax academic requirements. This approach allows student-athletes to graduate in a timely manner, allowing them to earn a degree while competing for their universities, but ultimately doing these students a disservice. Their non-athletic skills, such as time management, analytical thinking, and writing have not been developed as thoroughly as possible, not to mention the lack of actual course content learned in these courses. The student-athletes interviewed in this chapter did not mention trying to take courses to inflate their grade-point averages. This could be due to a desire to present themselves as serious students, as they know a professional sports career path is unlikely, given their school or sport. It could also be because easy classes in a given semester conflict, time-wise, with their practices. Finally, it may be as simple as the student-athletes not knowing which classes are easier than others. Evelyn, a track athlete for a Division-1A school in Southern California, echoes Ace’s deference to academic advisors scheduling classes, explaining: “I just go to my academic advisor, and she tells me what classes I need, and I’m told by my coach which hours to keep free for practice, and I build my schedule around that.” Evelyn’s comment spotlights the issue of needing to keep certain hours free for practice while taking classes toward her major. While an advisor can suggest classes to take for the major, they may not be able to help with the times these courses are offered, as that is up to the university registrar and building availability. Student-athletes choose their classes based on timing of their sports schedule and major’s requirements for graduation. These are two competing priorities that sometimes conflict with one another. When this conflict happens, student-athletes have to decide whether to focus on competing for their school or prioritizing their graduation. This decision is based on the sport (and professional prospects), year in school, and the messages heard from family, coaches, teammates, friends, and advisors about school and sports. Kellie, who ran track at both a Division 1A school in Nevada, followed by a community college in southern California, then transferring to a division-2 school in Southern California, said: At [the Division 1A school], [advisors/counselors] tend to be nicer to athletes – they pick your classes, and they tend to help athletes pass classes. The classes picked are weird, really easy online classes. I think they do that to keep your focus on athletics. Here everyone is fair toward athletes,

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there’s not that other standard for athletes. They want everyone to pass, but they have that standard…the biggest difference (between schools) was levels of focus.

For a few advisors, their goals include making sure student-athletes are on pace to graduate in two to six years from time of enrollment, while maintaining a high enough grade point average in order to remain athletically eligible. Most advisors emphasize the importance of grades but do not take the step of scheduling “easy” courses, opting instead to work around student-athletes’ time constraints and the goal of a degree, rather than grade-point average. Ryan has a similar experience to Kellie, despite competing for different schools. He explains: Counselors at both schools – they gave me a paper on how, once to figure out what major I was going to specify in, they gave me a paper on what courses to take. At the junior college, I took courses to transfer out, and those are different than if you are going for an AA. I stayed more into getting my (general education courses) done, so when I transferred I could focus on my major.

Ryan’s counselors use a hands-off approach to advising, giving general guidelines on which courses he and his teammates should take, but ultimately leaving the class scheduling decisions up to the student-athletes themselves. This hands-off approach gives the student-athletes more control over their own course schedules, by highlighting courses to take to advance beyond their current educational level. Ryan, like the other student-athletes interviewed in this chapter, suggests that classes are based on academic goals—transfer, graduation, and/or professional/graduate school. Academic goals are front and center, rather than NCAA eligibility. Similarly, Karen, who cheers at a Division-2 school in Southern California, explains: I let my classes determine my cheer schedule. Going into cheer, I want to graduate within two years [of transferring], and everyone had a crazy schedule, but we meet up three times a week. Sometimes we have two practices a day, so if you make one, you don’t go to the other, which I think is fair. For me, classes come first, then cheer.

Karen emphasizes her academic goals when choosing her schedules, and works her sport around her academics, rather than the other way around.

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Monica, who runs track at a Division-2 school in Southern California, tries to schedule breaks throughout the day to allow her to rest and recharge between classes and practice. She explains, “I try to get a gap in between classes. We have practice in the morning, afternoon, then weight room, and we have to build in time to train or see the trainers. I try to have evening classes but it doesn’t always work. It’s an individual sport so you can run on your own, which is my plan B if classes conflict with practice.” Monica is the first student-athlete interviewed to mention practicing her sport on her own time, in a more flexible manner. This may be because track offers more individual competition, so team coordination is not as key as it would be for sports like football, basketball, soccer, or baseball. In other team sports, while there are individual components (such as stretching, weight lifting, or individual drills such as shooting baskets), there is much more coordination needed among team members. A student-athlete in these sports needs to work with their teammates, while for track and field, or swimming, a runner can run on their own time away from coaches and teammates, and a swimmer can swim laps as long as a pool is open and available. Ryan similarly tries to schedule breaks in his day between classes and practicing: My first year at [junior college], I tried to do morning classes because high school, wake up early, but then I realized “no”. It [early starts] got me really tired, and professors don’t care if you show up, so I switched to night classes after practice. I was definitely tired in those classes – I fell asleep in one of my classes. Practice ended at 2:30, class was at 3, and I had to change and find something to eat in that window, but it was something I had to get used to, and after 2 weeks, I got used to it. I found out that taking classes later in the day or evening worked way better for me, and it was better for me than taking classes in the morning and hating life.

Even if fatigue is an unavoidable part of student-athletes’ lives due to having at least two time- and energy-demanding activities, scheduling that fatigue can influence performance in the classroom and on the field. Ryan explains that being asleep or quiet in class is unrelated to course material, workload, or instructor’s attitude. Instead this fatigue has an overlooked part: does a student-athlete have enough time to rest between practice and classes, and can they get enough rest each evening? An instructor sees a student-athlete asleep in class and may assume it is due to boredom

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or apathy, when the reason for the sleep has nothing to do with course material, and everything to do with demands on a student-athletes’ time. I suggest this is a misunderstanding, a misread of behaviors. The idea of a student-athlete sleeping in class because they do not care about their grades is a stereotype that is available to professors, student-athletes, and others. However, that availability does not guarantee accuracy. Advisors at power-five schools also want their student-athletes to succeed in the classroom, but are more hands-on than their counterparts at smaller schools. Darnell, a baseball player at a Midwestern powerfive school, says for him and his teammates, class schedules are “pretty structured by the college, as for specific professors for required classes, primarily through older teammates, asking who they recommend.” He was the only interviewee to explicitly mention asking teammates for advice on which professors they recommend, with the school providing structure for the courses that he needs to take to graduate. While Darnell asks his teammates for advice with classes, he does not ask people outside of the athletic department or the baseball team. The team’s schedule in terms of practices and games takes precedence, and teammates who have taken classes previously can advise Darnell on difficulty of classes while playing baseball. These teammates understand the time and energy demands from a sport that non-athletes do not have to be concerned with. Darnell can lift weights or go to batting cages individually, but he also needs to work with his teammates in order for the team to succeed, due to the nature of the sport. For that to happen, student-athletes’ class schedules have to allow for some set hours of practice. This includes time physically present at the field or weight room, as well as time to mentally prepare and adjust to the upcoming tasks. Student-athletes choose their courses differently based on when their sport is in season, prioritizing athletic eligibility over time period while competing. Generally, student-athletes prefer to take tougher (more rigorous) academic courses and major-specific classes during their offseason, when they can more fully concentrate on their academics because there are no upcoming games or competitions. The flip side of this is that student-athletes take easier classes so they can remain eligible to play and compete while focusing on their sport. Stacey explains that she: [U]sually do[es] my easiest classes when we’re in season, or my elective classes. For the other quarter, I’ll do my major classes or the harder classes. The only time I struggle with managing in-season classes is when it came

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to Spanish – it’s so time-consuming, and it’s a foreign language so it was hard to understand.

This sort of scheduling allows Stacey, and other student-athletes who create their schedules in the same way, to maintain academic eligibility while focusing energy on the sport, and when the sport is not in its competitive season, taking courses that are related to the major, which may be more work-intensive. This approach allows Stacey and others like her to devote more energy to classes when competitions are not happening, while allowing greater focus on the sport when it is time to compete. Dakota, one of Alicia’s soccer teammates, says when creating her course schedule, she also focuses on when her sport is in-season. Dakota explains, “I go based off my soccer season, so since it’s in fall, I tend to take my easier or less difficult courses in the fall and my harder courses in the spring to have more time to study and focus.” This scheduling approach was echoed by Tiffany, a 1-AA track and field athlete, asserting, “I choose my classes according to my practice and work schedule.” In Tiffany’s case, because she is not receiving an athletic scholarship, she may work off campus without that violating NCAA eligibility rules. The lack of scholarship was echoed by other Division-2 student-athletes, adding yet another constraint on their time and energy. Not only do these studentathletes practice and compete in their sports while juggling coursework, some also work outside the university. While this opportunity exists for them as a chance to earn money while competing for their schools, it costs them time and energy. This legitimated permission to work is contrasted with Division 1-A student-athletes, who are prohibited from working off campus, due to fears of undue influence on their athletic careers (e.g. the fear of players being influenced to perform a certain way in games due to gambling considerations, or players being paid for their celebrity status rather than for actual work performed). The thinking in these limitations is only a university and conference should financially benefit from a student-athlete’s status. This restriction obscures the money surrounding college sports and excludes the people most responsible for generating it from being compensated for their efforts.

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Teammates Who Struggle Academically Like other student-athletes on teams that demand a higher-thanNCAA-eligibility grade-point average, Ace emphasizes the positive image projected by student-athletes on the same team earning high grades: Not only did good grades ensure that we were gonna be able to play baseball, but it also made our coaches look good if their players had good grades. We had mandatory study-hall hours every week, along with tutors for certain classes we struggled with. Big universities made it hard for a student to fail at school due to all the help they give you to make you successful. The attitudes of my teammates toward their grades are pretty mutual for the most part. When you are at a big university, you take pride in representing your school and team with good grades. So having good grades and being eligible is something me and my teammates all strive for.

Student-athlete pride is repeatedly earned through competing and winning games, as well as succeeding in the classroom. Ace’s comment mentioned some universities make it hard to fail, because they offer structured support in terms of tutor availability, as well as mandatory study hall hours. Having extra study-hall hours is a common theme that interviewees mention for teammates who are struggling in the classroom. Carly, a track and field athlete at a Division 1-AA school in Southern California, explains what happens when some of her teammates struggled academically: We did a study session if they were doing really bad. It was mandatory. We had to complete 3 study hours a week, but it wasn’t like they necessarily studied. If their grades dropped, they were put on probation – our female coach put them on probation. We had academic cards that the professor filled out showing if you were coming to class and how you were doing…I think everyone struggles academically – my grades aren’t where I want them to be, even though I am eligible. Those who struggle academically take an academic redshirt and take a year off from track. I know some basketball girls who could practice but couldn’t compete in the games. For us, you’re allowed to practice but not compete, which is your punishment.

Alicia explains her school’s soccer team also has different study hall time requirements, depending on grades: “we have study hall hours that need to be completed for those who need the extra study time. I feel that these hours force us to take a step back and really dive into our work. It forces us to set aside time for our homework.”

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While these extra study hall hours are viewed as a punishment, because more hours of the week now have to be accounted for, study hall allows student-athletes a chance to raise their grades while still competing for their school. If student-athletes do not fulfill their requirements, they risk placement on academic probation from the university, or are given an “athletic redshirt” designation by the team. A “redshirt” designation allows student-athletes to practice, but not compete in games. It preserves some athletic eligibility in the future for the student-athlete. Both academic probation and redshirting can act as punishments, because games are where student-athletes compete and potentially get noticed by professional scouts. By limiting playing time and relating it to grades, coaches use the study halls as a carrot to raise grades, and redshirting or probation as the stick if grades are not sufficiently high. However, as discussed in the next chapter, coaches tend to shy away from decisions that limit their student-athletes’ availability, and instead opt for solutions that raise the student’s grades. Some mention that some teammates emphasize academics over athletics, and transfer to new schools or leave the team, in order to focus on their studies. Monica summarizes this, stating, “I think maybe three or four on the team are really driven to do well, and those who did well left the team. They left the team because they didn’t like the environment, they wanted to be good in academia, and track was a distraction.” This highlights that academics, rather than playing time and professional sports visibility, enter the decision-making process for student-athletes who are not in high-profile sports at high-profile schools. The student-athletes interviewed mentioned their teammates’ efforts in the classroom addition to grades earned. Daniel explains this as: I see that most of the athletes that care only about their grades (for eligibility) are not as good at their sport, but those who perform super low, they don’t get to travel as much because they’re not eligible. It depends on how bad your grades are – I’ve never been in that position before, I know a lot of people got kicked off the team for having 1.0 or lower. If you are consistently getting below a 2.0, there are problems.

This suggests that even the 2.0 (C) threshold that the NCAA mandates for eligibility is hard for some student-athletes to reach. This struggle was not an isolated student or one specific course affecting grade-point average, but instead hints at a systematic pattern. In addition to study

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hours, restricting travel was an option some coaches used to help studentathletes raise their grades. The logic behind this restriction is that without the travel or game requirements, a student-athlete can focus on their schoolwork and raise their grades until they become academically eligible. The risk of this restriction is the student-athlete is less supervised during that time period, because they are away from their coaches and teammates, and may feel isolated or shamed. The isolation and shame may or may not serve as motivation to raise grades, depending on if it is interpreted as a punishment or as a way to succeed. Travel restrictions ease some of the student-athlete’s time demands with respect to their sport. However, in some cases, the student-athlete is still allowed to practice with their teammates, which means there is an unspoken expectation to practice and lift weights at a certain time, even if they are not travelling with the team to games. Travel restrictions reduce, but do not eliminate, some of the time and energy demands from the sport on students, with the risk of stigmatizing a student-athlete who is struggling academically. Student-athletes view their teammates who struggle in the classroom as doing badly in sports too. This suggests that student-athletes are not necessarily trading grades for athletic success or vice versa. Instead, those who struggle in one aspect are struggling in the other, and those who are doing well academically also tended to do well athletically. Effort was emphasized by most (13) of the student-athletes interviewed. Monica explains the differences in attitude and effort she sees from her track and field teammates: The team is split with those who take their grades very seriously and those who are smart, but very lazy with their study time and attending classes. Mostly I think it’s more of an effort issue. Reaching out to professors for extra help generally seems to get the job done. Professors are almost ALWAYS eager and willing to help out whenever possible. Being a small school also, we generally have teammates who have gone through the same class even with the same professor, so we have a good network there as well to reach out to.

Professors are not viewed as the enemy, trying to keep student-athletes from being able to succeed on the field. Instead, the idea of initiative is introduced, with professors responding favorably to student-athletes who take time to ask for help. In order to be viewed positively, studentathletes have to adopt a new role—a student asking for help—rather than

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appearing disinterested about their grades. The “too cool for school” image of student-athletes nonchalantly leaving class early or coming in late (if attending at all), or consistently not submitting assignments, can be understood as either performing their role as an athlete to an extreme, not feeling comfortable with the role of a student who needs help, or some combination of the two. The confusion a student-athlete faces in this situation conflicts with the image of being confident and in control. Ryan, who runs track and field, says some of his teammates feel like: C’s get the degrees – they would aim for a C average to remain eligible, even if that meant study hall. Some tried hard but struggled, because college isn’t easy. I didn’t get housing here, so I commute every day. But some of my teammates do live here, so that’s why grades are so important to me – I put the effort into come here. But my teammates who live here and figure that they have the library here, so they don’t have to worry about driving. But some of my other teammates only have track and school, so they study hard. It goes both ways.

For Ryan, the fact that he commutes to school, rather than lives on campus, helps him focus on both athletics and academics, because he cannot take it for granted that he will have all of the resources he needs at home. Instead, as he puts it, he has to make an effort to come to campus, and while he is on campus, he makes an effort to succeed in the classroom and on the track. What stands out in the academic literature is: student-athletes who do not succeed academically are perceived as incompetent, with respect to academics. However, the interviews in this chapter suggest academic struggles are more a matter of time constraints, energy demands, and in some cases, effort, rather than issues of competence. The first parts of this chapter looked at academic goals and struggles, how student-athletes view the people who are responsible for helping them succeed in classes. The next part examines how student-athletes define success in the classroom, on the field, and after they graduate.

Defining Academic Success 14 of the interviewees define their academic success by the grades earned in a class, often aiming for a B or higher, and some aim for external awards such as Dean’s List honors or honors society membership. Studentathletes are explicitly concerned about the usefulness of their knowledge

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and skills earned. Daniel, a basketball player at a Division-2 school in California, defines academic success as “having a deep understanding of the subject as well as being able to apply what one has learned.” Jay echoes Daniel’s ideas about academic success: Obviously a nice letter grade at the end of the day is nice, and the GPA that accommodates good letter grades is helpful in turning a degree into actual value, but I have many times valued a certain course over another that I got a better grade in because I felt more accomplished after. So, j guess success academically to me is a sense of accomplishment, having actually grown and learned something through the course, rather than push through just for a letter grade.

Kellie emphasizes growth and engagement in her definition of academic success as she progresses through different schools, explaining that: Success academically would be really participating in the class – I found something that I loved studying, and since I’m passionate about this, I am really into the subject so I don’t worry about the grades as much. When you’re at junior college, you’re focused on general education classes and trying to transfer out. That changed at [four-year school] because I finally studied things related to my degree programs. I think professors like passionate people. I’d go to office hours, that reflected in [my] grades. I have a 3.49 GPA, though I wish it was higher.

While grades earned offer a tangible marker of academic success, often this is not the only measure that student-athletes use in order to gauge their own success. For most student-athletes, similar to Daniel, Jay, and Kellie, the definition of success shifts from being able to transfer to focusing on material they care about due to their major. This interest allows studentathletes to focus on the material they are learning and not just focus on grades exclusively. If most student-athletes define success in the classroom as their grades earned, how is athletic success defined by student-athletes?

Defining Athletic Success The student-athletes interviewed in this chapter define their athletic success around their effort, similar to how they define their academic success. In doing so, they focus on doing their best and putting effort

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into their sports, rather than only using outside benchmarks of wins or championships. This is especially true for track and field athletes, who mention improving their personal bests (personal records) or qualifying for new levels of competitions (all conference, all state, national) as ways of defining their athletic success. None of the current student-athletes mention having a professional athletic career as their definition of success, while some of the student-athletes who graduated pointed to a professional sports career, even if they had since changed professions. Stan, a baseball player at a Division-3 school in Ohio, explains that much like track and field athletes looking at their personal records when they practice and compete, he looks at his personal performances when he defines success: I am obviously interested in my batting average, on base percentage, fielding percentage etc. but more importantly I’m interested in how I grow as a leader and teammate. Furthermore, how my individual efforts (both on the field and in other ways) help accomplish team goals such as conference championships, regional appearances and championships etc.

Lori, one of Carly’s track and field teammates, echoes Stan’s thoughts, explaining that athletic success is “enjoying the sport you play, not because of winning, but because you genuinely enjoy playing. Also winning major tournaments or receiving individual awards are another factor.” There is a mix between looking for external rewards (team wins, or improved statistics and recognition from teammates, coaches, and competitors), and intrinsic rewards, such as developing leadership skills or enjoying the sport for its own sake, rather than as a future career. Other student-athletes emphasized continued progress and improvement as their benchmark of success, with Andy, a track and field athlete at a Division-2 school in Arizona, explaining: “athletic success would be constantly surpassing one’s last performance and doing better each time,” and Jay, who says consistent efforts “transfer into what your times are – it’s like your LSAT scores. Success is how much heart you put into it – I would say your time or what level you compete at (nationals, conference) [are measures for success and improvement]. For me, it’s my time.” While it is rare to hear the comparison of a sport statistic to doing well on the LSAT (or on any test for professional school), the idea of effort being rewarded and trying to improve in competitions was

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a common refrain, regardless of the result. And unsurprisingly, studentathletes point to numbers, because those are viewed as neutral arbiters of success that can be understood by everyone. Everyone can see a longer jump or a higher batting average or a faster time, but not everyone sees the satisfaction (or frustration) with how a student-athlete feels about their performance, unless they visibly demonstrate their emotions. Competing against increasingly tougher opponents and at higher levels of competition are also markers of athletic success. For student-athletes, the more they play, the tougher the competition they face. This is true going from travel ball in their youth, to high schools, to their college careers. For college student-athletes, levels of competition include being good enough to represent the school (beating out teammates for roster sports) and representing their conference against top student-athletes from other conferences, up to competing for spots on national teams, if there are limited well-paying professional competing opportunities. Andy defines his athletic success this way: When you make nationals, when you make the national meet. I’ve gotten to regionals, but never to nationals. After your conference championships, if you’re top 48 in your event in your region, then you compete against the other…if you’re top 9 or top 16 there, then you go to nationals, which is both the West and the East. Nationals is all the D-1 teams.

Lori echoes this, explaining success in different stages of the athletic career. For her, success is “enjoying the sport you play, not because of winning, but because you genuinely enjoy playing. Also winning major tournaments or receiving individual awards are another factor.” Carly defines her athletic success as “short-term [success] is like to PR (personal record), placing in our conference championship and eventually winning CC, and by senior year, getting to nationals and placing (top 3) or winning in nationals.” Most of the interviewees discuss some balance of looking at individual statistics, team success in terms of winning, and personal satisfaction involved in their definitions of athletic success. If success in the classroom is based on intrinsic rewards rather than the grades earned, and if athletic success is a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, how do student-athletes define success after they finish school?

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Defining Professional Success Student-athletes define their professional success in terms of personal satisfaction and growth. Given these student-athletes are at different stages in their academic careers, their aspirations following school differ. For Carly, “success professionally would have to be having plenty of connections, being a role model, and being seen as a professional and credible in the field that one had studied in.” She equates relating studies to her job as a marker of success, but also having a support network and using student-athlete status to influence others. Stan defines success more intrinsically, as “doing something that you are passionate about every single day. Don’t work for the paycheck, rather have the paycheck be an added bonus to fulfilling work you are already passionate about,” and Jay echoes this sentiment, explaining, “success professionally is not only monetary success, however, being satisfied with what you do in your life. Just like winning a competition you put in time and work into something you’re passionate about and you want to see a positive outcome.” In doing so, student-athletes highlight intrinsic rewards as a signal of success, rather than looking for rewards from other people. All but one of the student-athletes interviewed say money does not matter in their definition of success, so long as they enjoy the work they perform. Further, most do not mention aspirations of competing professionally. They are intrinsically motivated, but also look for various forms of external rewards. The fact that few student-athletes mention a professional athletic career as a goal may be a motivation to succeed academically, as these student-athletes are not expecting a professional athletic salary, and thus are compelled to focus on developing their academic skills and knowledge. In the next chapter, I examine the similarities and differences between the student-athletes in this chapter and the previous one, and I also ask these student-athletes what they want people to know about being a student-athlete that may not be known by outsiders.

Reference Dweck, Carol. 2007. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books.

CHAPTER 4

“Going into Classes Blind”: Comparing Student-Athletes’ Challenges and Experiences

This chapter summarizes some of the patterns seen from student-athletes interviewed in the previous two chapters. It focuses on how important grades and schooling are to the interviewed student-athletes themselves, their teammates, and their coaches. It concludes by summarizing findings from the last two chapters and making recommendations centered around student-athletes’ experiences and needs.

Obstacles Faced and Pragmatic Responses: Scheduling Classes Both current and former student-athletes emphasize the hidden challenges of being a student-athlete. These challenges include fitting their course schedules around their practice schedules, in terms of figuring out when during the day to take courses so classes do not overlap with practices, figuring out when during the academic year to take more rigorous courses, and balancing academics and athletics. Some student-athletes at Division 1-AA or Division 2 schools also work part time, in addition to these school-related time demands. Classes, sports and work are all time- and energy-consuming activities. At some point, it becomes difficult for student-athletes to successfully juggle classes, practices, games, travel, and possibly work or family obligations. Eventually, performance in at least one of these areas slips (shots © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Blum, Sports, Study, or Sleep, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6_4

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stop falling, or test scores start dropping from earlier in the term). For some student-athletes, morning practices (before classes) involve weightlifting, along with possibly a video session to prepare for an upcoming opponent. Both of these activities demand some level of energy, whether physical (to lift weights) or mental (to concentrate and analyze tape). Typically, weightlifting is done early in the morning (for some, as early as 5 or 6 a.m.) and video work might be until mid-morning (9 or 10 a.m.). By the time a student-athlete starts their first class for the day, they have already been up for hours and working at their sport, likely up and busier before most of their peers in classes. Student-athletes typically schedule their classes between late morning and early afternoon, allowing for late afternoon or evening practices. This scheduling is done out of pragmatic concerns. For some student-athletes, practice has to happen during daytime if the school does not have outdoor lighting over practice fields. After morning practices end, student-athletes have to go back after a full day of practices and courses, and still have to work on their coursework and review for tests, the same as any other student, but with another early day awaiting them the next morning. Student-athletes explained they would go home after a full day of practices and classes, wanting to make sure their coursework was done well, but would be exhausted from their day, so instead, they would sleep. While sleeping has been interpreted as laziness or a lack of caring about academics, I argue sleeping in lieu of homework is more indicative of an exhausting schedule that eventually demands too much energy and spreads student-athletes’ time too thinly. For some team sports such as football, basketball, and baseball, practice time is heavily regimented, allowing student-athletes little flexibility as far as time is concerned. Practices are scheduled for both early mornings and for mid- or late afternoons, allowing a small window of time for classes to be taken. By the time student-athletes reach their first class of the day, they have already had a taxing practice session, with possibly a second one looming later that day. After their second practice session for the day has concluded, student-athletes either have to go home and work on things for school, or work at a job part time. This does not include any time needed for meals, or for rest and recuperation. Team sports with individual components, such as track and field, offer their student-athletes more flexibility in scheduling classes. Student-athletes in track and field have set practice times as teams, but running events allow student-athletes

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the option of practicing separately from their teammates as their schedules allow. One hidden challenge that student-athletes mention comes from registering for courses ahead of other students. Universities allow studentathletes to enroll in classes ahead of their peers to make sure the student-athletes can enroll in classes toward their degree. This ensures a physical spot in various classes, typically scheduled around the practice schedule while in season and around making progress toward earning the degree. However, student-athletes explain this advantage comes with a hidden risk: not knowing who their professors are, and not being able to do a scouting report on the classes and professors, to have an idea of the workload to expect. Jay explains: When we sign up early for classes, it just says “staff” for the professor. We can’t check Rate My Professor or ask teammates what a class or a professor is like, because we don’t know who to look up. You hope you get lucky with the classes because you’re going in blind.

Students who register at the usual time have a better idea of who is teaching their classes, as there are fewer “staff” appointments and more assignments by name. This allows students to do their research and figure out which professors and classes they can work with better than others. While early registration guarantees a physical spot in the classroom, the professor teaching the class comes down to luck for student-athletes. They can control when they will be in class, but don’t have any control over, or idea who, will teach them in any given semester. Mike, a track and field student-athlete at a Division-2 school in Southern California, adds another hidden challenge to registering early for classes. By not knowing who teaches the class, student-athletes also don’t know whether they will have to do group work. 13 of the studentathletes interviewed in the previous chapter expressed a distaste for group work, given scheduling difficulties. As Mike explains: [W]e have a letter from our coaches [the Athletic Department, formally] to let our professors know when we’re going out of town for meets so they know. But if there’s groupwork we also have to worry about being able to meet with everyone in the group, and find time to do everything for each meeting. And that’s tough when you’re all day at a meet and travelling to and from a school.

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Mike’s comment suggests that the time constraints student-athletes face makes some assignments significantly more difficult to complete. On top of having to manage their energy from practices and competitions, having to work around a competition schedule that is out of their hands in order to work with their peers on class projects means time has to be budgeted very carefully. Student-athletes are aware of stigmas associated with being a studentathlete, and didn’t want to be singled out for assumed stupidity or laziness. Contrary to the stereotypes, student-athletes take pride in their academic progress, and are not constantly looking for shortcuts in the classroom. The time and energy constraints they face from their sport may simply hamper their ability to fully shine in academic work. However, this can be mitigated or exacerbated depending on the amount of, timing of, and nature of how they are graded in each class. Many student-athletes prefer to have individual assignments rather than group projects, because they are more in control of their grade when an assignment is in their hands. Pragmatic thinking extends to scheduling classes both in terms of day-to-day class times planned around practices, and longer-term course scheduling focused around maintaining academic eligibility. However, this pragmatism is hindered, due to not knowing who teaches specific classes, and not knowing what the expected workload intensity for each class is when they register. Given that remaining eligible is a priority, many student-athletes take easier courses when their sport is in-season, and more rigorous, challenging courses when they are in their off-season. This allows student-athletes to focus on their majors when remaining eligible wasn’t a concern, and allows them to have some leeway with their grade-point average without suffering an athletic penalty, such as reduced playing time.

Time and Energy Management In addition to scheduling classes, student-athletes have to learn to manage their time and energy with more constraints than some of their peers. Like many undergraduates, student-athletes struggle initially with managing their time in terms of completing classwork and studying for tests. In high school, classes are consistently scheduled, and practices and games are always done after classes are done for the day, but in college, schedules vary term to term and even during the week (some classes meet twice a

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week, others three times). On top of learning to manage their schedule for the term, student-athletes have to manage their energy (both physical and mental) to a greater degree than their classmates who don’t play. It’s difficult to transition from an intense practice to a more-relaxed classroom (assuming the professor isn’t screaming at students!), where the demands of the role are very different. It is one thing for a student-athlete to say “I will work on math homework and write a paper from 7:30-9:30 pm”, but this decision often can be difficult to follow up. This is not due to apathy, but exhaustion. The problem is, habits can form quickly and grades can plummet if this problem persists. In order to set themselves up for success, some student-athletes, such as Al and Andy, work with their academic advisors early in the semester and write down all major papers, tests, and quizzes on a calendar for the term that is printed on one big sheet of paper. They then write in their game and travel dates. This makes their obligations visible, so they do not have to try to juggle their dates, assignments, tests, and games in their heads, which hopefully means less stress during the semester.

Being a Student-Athlete: A Challenging Balancing Act Student-athletes are unquestionably proud of managing both their roles as students and as athletes, and are proud to represent their universities. However, they also mention this is a more difficult life than what they feel outsiders think. This toughness fuels their pride in navigating these roles. Student-athletes focus on the sacrifices they make to succeed as both students and athletes. For example, Stacey mentions sacrificing having a social life in order to compete in track and field: A lot of people think being a student-athlete is super-easy, I’m not saying it isn’t, it’s easy for me because I’m good at time management. But when it came to doing things outside of school or athletics, I literally had no life. I have my boyfriend, I had no friends, I did no fun things. If I could go back to my previous years here I would have tried to make more friends outside of athletics – all the people I know are athletes, and it sucks because I don’t have friends outside of athletics.

For Stacey, having a significant other is one of her only ties outside of school or sports, and she credits her boyfriend for helping her

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focus on grades. Other student-athletes, such as Lori and Andy (quoted respectively), mention the difficulties in their daily schedules: It’s hard. I don’t think people understand how much work it takes, balancing school and sports – it’s like having a job we don’t get paid for. It’s not easy, we don’t get paid, and we’re practicing 30 hours a week and going to class full time, taking 5 classes, it’s hard to balance sometimes. Toughest parts are when you’re tired but you have to handle your school, so you wake up early. Me personally, it was hardest when I had to go to practice early in the morning, go to class, figure out a time to eat, finish classes, practice in the afternoon, then go home and study or do my homework. (Lori) It is harder than outsiders want to admit. It isn’t all the glamour all the time like some may think. We are a just a small, division II baseball team yet a normal schedule for me still looks like this: class till 1 or 2. Arrive at the complex around 2:15 for pre-practice treatment, practice from 3:005:45 lift from 5:45-7:00 then dinner and any time left is devoted to studies. It’s easy to fall behind and tough to catch up. (Andy)

The most difficult challenge student-athletes mention is managing the time demands of being both a student and an athlete without fatigue catching up to them. They realize that both endeavors require a lot of time and physical energy, and they realize they are not paid for work they put into their sport. This is a somewhat separate, but related challenge to examining student-athlete academic performance. It is not necessarily the material that is daunting, but rather finding enough time and energy to complete assignments well while still making practices and competitions, with, at best, the hint of a professional sports payday looming for a select few. Given that this payday does not exist, and that most student-athletes are not paid as they are undergraduates, they are not compensated for the work they do as athletes, and some must work in order to help pay their bills. However, instructors may not know this. Daniel mentions the difficulty he faces when it comes to navigating course and schoolwork schedules when encountering hostile professors: Some professors are ok with you being a student-athlete, and try to work out an accommodating schedule, and we work ahead of time. Some professors, however, are really mean about it, and when I say mean, they put a lot of attention on you because you’re an athlete and grade you harsher.

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I didn’t get that here [4-year school], but I got that at the JC. In one instance, I had to miss due to a meet, and he straight up told me “I don’t like student-athletes” – what sort of message does that send to the studentathletes? There is a stereotype about student-athletes getting passed due to them being athletes, but I like to think of that as false, because I’ve never had that. However, they do help student-athletes – if you need tutors, they put tutors in the study hours. They put the resources to help you pass, and that’s something that people don’t understand.

Daniel felt hostility from his instructors primarily at the community college level, rather than at the four-year university. This could be due to professors at the four-year school having more experience with studentathletes, or perceived reputations of student-athletes at both schools. Daniel mentions one resource four-year schools, regardless of NCAA division and athletics budgets, employ—tutors, whose job it is to work with student-athletes. These are often undergraduate students who have passed a class with a certain grade, or they are graduate students who specialize in an area the student-athlete needs help with. They are discussed in a little more detail in the academic personnel chapter. Student-athletes explain that despite the stress and frustration that is experienced, some student-athletes enjoy their experiences as collegiate student-athletes. For example, Jay explains: “All the stress, frustration, excitement, disappointments, everything that being a student athlete entails, it’s all worth it.” Kellie concurs: “There’s times when it gets difficult and you feel like quitting both school and the sport, but after that time passes, it is really fun and one of the best experiences I could have.” Thoughts of quitting the sport or school are somewhat common, but student-athletes find satisfaction in powering through their frustrating times and persevering. Kellie expands on her earlier thoughts: It’s one of the best experiences you could have in college. It’s cool to be able to compete and be a student – you feel close to your community and your university, and it helps you hyper-focus on your academics. A lot of what you learn athletically you can apply to the classroom I feel honored to represent the school…I’m very competitive in races and classes, I want to have the high scores, I want the professors to know my name, but I want people to know my name from track too. I try to be patient when I’m reading 60 pages on the Salvadoran civil war…you transfer skills you learn in track into the classroom.

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Daniel similarly explains: Being a student athlete is such a rewarding position. One learns to push the limits other people set and realize that there are no limits whether it be in sports in academics. There is always something to learn or to better improve performance wise. Being a student athlete encourages health, strength and perseverance in the classroom, the track and the real world. Overcoming obstacles and learning how to manage time and energy to succeed both in sports and in classes leaves many student-athletes with a sense of accomplishment and pride, and in addition to these, the camaraderie they experience as part of a team representing their schools translates into overall positive memories and images (both for themselves and others) as student-athletes. However, the overall message studentathletes emphasize is it is more difficult to successfully navigate both roles as students and as athletes than people assume, and while this difficulty may lead to intrinsic rewards such as pride and satisfaction, it does not offer a tangible reward in terms of pay.

The Importance of Grades and Education The student-athletes interviewed in these chapters repeatedly stress (pun intended) earning high grades as a form of academic achievement that matters a great deal to them. These student-athletes emphasize their individual academic success over the possibility of a professional sports career following their college years. Lori explains: “[Grades] are very important now. Once I hit my second year, grades became really important. The idea of grad[uate] school and feeling good about having good grades, feeling accomplished.” She draws a sense of satisfaction from doing well academically, and set a goal for herself of attending graduate school. Lori’s comment suggests student-athletes are not just focused on success in the interim, but some look longer-term, and do not only focus on future athletic success. Ryan explains why school matters to him, explaining: “my parents never went to college, I don’t think they even graduated high school. My sister went to a trade school, then went to JC, but didn’t finish. At least I got my Associates Degree, now I’m working on my Bachelors, and am thinking about my Masters, but don’t know what I want to get in. Ultimately I want to teach.” Mike, a former football player at power-five school in Northern California, explained as a student-athlete, his focus is on football constantly, but he is currently in the process of

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earning a Master’s Degree in education while competing, and Ryan has his goals focused on academics more so than track and field achievements. Where they differ is that Mike singularly focused on his sport, and it took his significant other to focus him on education, while Ryan has higher education as his goal, with sports being an afterthought, and without mentioning a significant other as a prodding or motivating figure. This may be due to the differences in NCAA athletic divisions and sport played, as Mike played football at a power-five school, while Ryan runs track for a Division 2 school. This means that due to both level of competition and sport of choice, Ryan has less of a chance of competing professionally than Mike, and the (un)likeliness of a professional career shapes how student-athletes value education. The student-athletes interviewed largely mention valuing education, even if it takes them a few years to appreciate the importance of classes. However, while grades are valued as markers of individual success, some student-athletes question the curriculum taught. Ian explains that for him: They’re (grades) important, but I don’t like school, I guess, it’s just boring to me. Get rid of GE’s and teach us things we need to use in real life like how to do taxes, like how our government is, not in terms of the history books, but the reality of our country, racial issues, discrimination and all that, and how to work with people who are different than us – we live in such a diverse country, we should be able to work with anybody. Maybe take more language classes, we’re the only country where we expect everyone to speak English, other countries learn English and speak their native language. When we do learn math and measurements and all that, using the metric system instead of inches and feet. In high school, we are all used to feet, but in college they use meters.

Ian is interested in earning high grades, but at the same time, he does not enjoy school because of what school emphasizes or ignores. He wants successful results (high grades), but also wants education to be structured differently, with more of an emphasis on practical life skills, as suggested with the learning multiple languages, learning to do taxes, and using the metric system. In addition to this practical knowledge, Andy wishes education would emphasize a critical perspective toward how the government operates, and feels like there is a disjunction between what is taught in school and what is useful in life after school. While he is critical of the content of his education, he still wants to earn good grades to remain academically eligible to compete as well as to graduate.

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Just as student-athletes may hide being exhausted or overwhelmed due to time and energy demands, the feeling that course material is irrelevant outside of the classroom and is unimportant can be hidden behind a façade of apathy or ambivalence. This would give the impression that a student doesn’t care about grades, and thus, about school in general. Andy’s comment highlights a tension between not recognizing the value in classes due to a lack of connecting classes to the post-school world while wanting to earn high grades. Andy and others like him do what they can to succeed in courses they feel do not serve them well. This leads to a form of ritualistic behavior, as Andy and others like him accept earning high grades as a goal in and of itself. But given the classes are seen as not mattering beyond the term, they go through the motions as students, doing enough to earn good grades despite dissatisfaction with course material. This also suggests students like Andy may wish to have a different point of emphasis in their education than their schools offer, and this disjuncture may lead to apathy about learning the material. At that point, academic eligibility becomes the primary concern rather than earning high grades or on focusing on course material. Most student-athletes interviewed mentioned earning a 3.0 (B) gradepoint average if they set a grade-point average goal, though some mentioned a higher grade-point average or mentioned grade improvement through school. Stan explained: “I get down pretty hard on myself when I receive anything less than a B. If I get less than that, then I feel like I failed and should have tried harder”, and Alicia similarly remarked “I try to make sure that I at least get a 3.0 for the semester and am very disappointed when I’m not able to accomplish it.” These comments are indicative of what student-athletes discuss, with a B being the benchmark for “good”, but wanting higher grades if possible while competing. Evelyn explains the challenges she faces in running track competitively while trying to earn good grades, stating: Grades are super-important to me. I’ve tried to maintain a good GPA. But it’s hard, especially during indoor track because of the travel. Indoor, because we go to New York, we fly out Wednesday or Thursday, so I’d miss those classes, and also Tuesday to pack, and you’re nervous about the meet so you don’t study as much.

Evelyn’s comment highlights travel for competition as another structural challenge that student-athletes face. Lengthy road trips for meets

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or games away from the school means missing more than one day of class in a given week. In addition to physical travel time by bus or air, the time spent on packing, travelling, and competing for one meet took her away from campus for almost a full week. Due to the larger athletics budget at these schools, power-five schools have the money to charter flights for road games, and they schedule their flights in a way so that student-athletes miss as little class time as possible. Smaller schools do not have the budget for that possibility, and have to bus to their games or fly commercial. This means that they may have to leave earlier in the week to make their games, which means that there is more of a chance that they will miss classes. This travel schedule is compounded with a lack of down time to relax or study, as student-athletes are expected to focus and prepare for the meet or game at hand, rather than on their coursework. Some student-athletes mentioned either studying on the bus, when movies are turned off for a few hours, or having some study time built into their schedule at the school they travel to. While these few hours can be useful for coursework, student-athletes are expected to focus on their upcoming competition or game, and they have a very small window of time to get coursework done when they travel for road games or meets. Student-athletes like Daniel, Alicia, and Karen are determined to maintain high grade-point averages, but say it is difficult balancing the time demands and availability of school and their sports. Student-athletes work to succeed academically and athletically, but face repeated constraints on their time due to their roles as athletes. On top of these constraints, they face the expectations associated with them as athletes, and these constraints and pressures can affect how well they can perform in their role as students. If grades are important to the student-athletes themselves, the next question is how important they feel grades are to their teammates and coaches—people with whom they spend a great deal of time.

The Importance of Grades for Teammates and Coaches Student-athletes report that grades are important to their coaches, and that academic success is emphasized, sometimes at the expense of athletic success. This approach is seen at non-power five schools, where there

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is less emphasis placed on sports than at bigger-name schools. Studentathletes interviewed mention that on the rare occasions when a class obligation conflicts with practice time, their coaches tell them to attend class rather than participate in practice. Sebastian, a baseball player at a 1-AA school in California explains: To my coaches, very important, they want every student-athlete to get their degree. They are happy you can compete for the team, but they want you to take care of your business. As for my friends, it is important for them as well, but every now and then they would slack off or procrastinate, but in the end, it is important to them. We all share the goal of graduating and starting a career.

Student-athletes, particularly those at schools and in sports that don’t provide a clear path to a professional athletic career, mention the academic goal of getting good grades as going hand in hand with graduating and starting a career, but professional sports is not the career they aim for. Instead, having a non-athletic professional career is a shared goal, and being an athlete is viewed as a source of pride and enjoyment. This is likely due to both the sports they compete in (e.g. it is hard to have a professional track and field career, and few make the Olympic team) and the schools they attend, as few professional scouts watch their games. While these student-athletes are unquestionably proud of their roles as athletes, this is not their overarching master status. Instead, they take pride in academic achievement. Daniel expresses similar sentiments as Sebastian, explaining: Grades are very important to my coaches. They constantly emphasize that we are student athletes and not just athletes meaning that we need to put as much effort, if not more, in our studies. We have a midterm progress report and if we have C’s or below we are required to do study hall hours and meet with tutors. Most of my teammates also emphasize the importance the grades.

What stands out is, at non-power-five schools, coaches emphasize academic success beyond NCAA eligibility requirements, and employ various tactics to ensure that their players excel in the classroom. These tactics include individual meetings with student-athletes to track their grades throughout the term, and assigning study-hall hours for student-athletes to focus on their coursework. Student-athletes notice this

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messaging and most respond favorably by emptying the tank in both their sport and their studies. Two of the track and field student-athletes interviewed explain their coaches’ approaches to student-athletes who struggle with their grades, anonymously citing their own teammates and coaches as examples. Because it is rather sensitive to talk poorly about one’s teammates and coaches (i.e. being viewed as a “bad teammate” for making negative comments), and especially given the power differential between coach and athlete and potential consequences, I omit pseudonyms and school information from these quotes to protect the student-athletes: It’s kind of bad, I think the track and field program has one of the worst GPAs on campus. My coaches give us progress reports for professors to sign off. I don’t see a big motivation for academics for my teammates. The distance team, we have a lot of upper classmen, so they’re really close to graduating. I don’t know if they’re graduating, but they’re not that serious about classes. It might be senioritis, but when I was on the team last year, but even the girls on the team didn’t care about grades. It’s a struggle, it’s hard to balance both. (Anon. Student-Athlete 1) For my coaches, grades are important, but it depends – sometimes if you’re a good athlete and you don’t have good grades, he’ll give you more of a chance than if you’re a not so good athlete and don’t have good grades. We only need to have a 2.0 which isn’t hard, so some people shoot for that, but I have some teammates who have 4.0’s. If you’re going for grad school or law school, you’re focused. (Anon. Student-Athlete 2)

The discrepancy in how athletes are treated based on how successful they are on the field is a common refrain in big money sports (football and basketball), but is less frequent among student-athletes in baseball, soccer, and track and field. This is likely due to the difference in pay and publicity among head coaches, with football and men’s basketball coaches receiving higher pay than head coaches in other sports. However, when coaches feel the pressure to win, even in a non-revenue generating sport, some emphasize athletic success and grant some leeway to students who may be struggling academically but are good at their sport. Thus, while the spoken messages from coaches routinely emphasize academic success, through action, some coaches emphasize success in sport for their student-athletes rather than on schoolwork, due to financial incentives and different pressures to win games.

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Final Impressions and Looking Toward Solutions from the NCAA, Faculty, and Student-Athletes Themselves Student-athletes are extremely hard-working at honing their academic and athletic skills, and many student-athletes take pride in doing well both in their classes and in their sport. The overwhelming majority of student-athletes interviewed, both former and current, do not mention a professional playing career as their ultimate goal. They express a desire to do well in school and are proud of their academic accomplishments, but also highlight areas that hinder their academic progress. Their interviews show pride as they graduate and as they do well in their classes. This challenges the idea that all student-athletes are only enrolled at a school in order to play professionally. This attitude may be more prevalent in higher-profile sports at higher-profile schools, but these highprofile players do not represent most NCAA student-athletes. The pride expressed doesn’t just focus on their sports statistics, but instead centers on the progress they make and whether they reach their goals. Studentathletes are encouraged to succeed in school by people who matter to them, and these messages are taken to heart. Their justifiable pride also focuses on overcoming obstacles. These obstacles may include the communities and financial situations they grew up in but center on being able to manage their packed schedules and their energy levels, and suggests one of the tools that universities use to help their student-athletes succeed—early registration for classes— has the unintended consequence of making student-athletes sign up for classes blindly, not knowing who their instructors will be or how they will be evaluated. Student-athletes tended to prefer classes that evaluated them individually (e.g. tests or solo-authored papers or assignments) rather than group work. This was partially out of the fear of the stigma associated with being a student-athlete (e.g. classmates assuming that a student-athlete won’t help them out of laziness or apathy) and partly due to difficulties coordinating schedules with their group members. Group projects are a worthy educational tool to use, given that today’s students will have to collaboratively and cooperatively work with others professionally (I think I hear some of my own students groaning at that). However, group projects assume everyone has the days and times available to coordinate and meet to work on a project, and given students’ various responsibilities, whether those are sports, work, internships, and/or caregiving obligations, this assumption may make group projects unfeasible

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for some. I encourage faculty who use group projects as part of their courses to develop and offer individual alternatives to target the academic and professional skills that the group project focuses on, but allow for people to work on their own time if scheduling with classmates is impractical. For universities, I encourage the continued use of early registration for student-athletes, but I suggest the registration process only be opened after faculty have been assigned to classes. If possible, departments and faculty can post their syllabi in accessible locations online and offline for the upcoming term early, to give all students a chance at scouting out potential workloads in each class. If that is not feasible, faculty can be asked for expected coursework in terms of number of tests, quizzes, papers, group work, other assignments (weekly homework) and participation. While the scheduling might not be finalized, this gives students a rough idea of what they will be asked to do in their courses, and reduces the luck of the draw component to early registration. These small changes give students more control over their educational experience, and while group work is something that should be used as a pedagogical tool, it is not the only way to develop students’ academic and professional skills. In addition to time and energy concerns, student-athletes who are not in power-five schools are less likely to have a scholarship, due to their schools having a smaller athletics department budget. This means that many have to work in addition to their school and their sports. At some point, there is not enough time and energy to be able to manage between two and four time and energy-consuming activities, including caregiving for family members. The NCAA can and should devote more money to member schools’ academic progress funds. This contribution can be based both on money a school generates from its sports, as well as need-based for non-power-five schools. Offering more scholarship money and possibilities for student-athletes may reduce their need to work off-campus, and reduces a source of stress for student-athletes. It is encouraging to hear that few professors harbor animosity toward their student-athletes. I suggest that professors take time to teach their students (athletes and otherwise) more holistically, by being available to listen when a student struggles in class or seems disinterested in the material. This visual apathy may be an attempt at hiding fatigue or feeling overwhelmed, and a holistic approach asks for open and clear communication by both parties, which can help classes run more smoothly. This approach involves ignoring status barriers between professors and

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students, and encourages both parties to see each other as people working together in order to better learn, both in terms of content knowledge and skill development. By using this more inclusive approach to education, professors and students see each other less through the roles they played (to borrow an idea from sociologist Erving Goffman) and allows for a sense of camaraderie, community, or togetherness in the classroom. As faculty, we can envision ourselves as academic coaches for our studentathletes, offering them the tools to succeed, provided they put the effort in. It also means seeing student-athletes as serious partners in their education, not hostile or apathetic people who want the easy way out. There is a world of difference in understanding a student is overwhelmed or exhausted, compared to assuming they just don’t care about a class, and responding by evaluating a student especially harshly. Further, schools should inform student-athletes of counseling services on campus. These are often paid for with student fees, and licensed counselors can advise student-athletes in a way that professors cannot, but many students are unaware of these services and may fear the stigma of seeing a counselor, despite visits being confidential. This means understanding hesitations, fears, and concerns, and being at least as much a caregiver as a creator and distributor of academic content. While time management is a skill that undergraduate students (athletes and otherwise) need to develop, it may behoove the NCAA to allow student-athletes to take a reduced course-load during the terms their sport is in-season. The universities can bank these extra credit hours, and allow student-athletes to complete the credits after their NCAA athletic career concludes. This would allow student-athletes to focus on their sport when representing their schools in competitions or games, and allow them to focus more on studies when they are not competing. Given that student-athletes take pride in their graduation and their academic progress, I see these moves as increasing student-athletes’ grade-point averages, positioning them better for graduate or professional schools if they so choose, and allowing them to highlight a higher grade-point average to potential employers. Further, just as I suggest professors maintain open lines of communication with student-athletes, I recommend student-athletes do the same. While it may be embarrassing to feel overwhelmed or tired, professors understand their students are people (well, most do…I hope!), and have been overwhelmed at times themselves. This means faculty can act as resources, whether that means listening, actively offering advice, or suggesting where qualified professionals can intervene.

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But no professor can read their students’ minds—and this means studentathletes have to be able to ask for help without worrying what others will think. The courage to do this takes time and practice to develop. It may help student-athletes to see their professors as partners in learning, rather than adversaries standing in the way of playing time. And a partnership needs open communication from both parties. This communication may be awkward initially, but can also lay the foundation for a smoother academic experience for all involved. The next chapter focuses on coaches and the role they play in developing student-athletes.

CHAPTER 5

“Professional Sports Are a Well-Paying Temporary Job”: Messages from Coaches

Coaches are an authority figure for student-athletes. The head coaches of a team set the tone, not only for how they expect their student-athletes to compete, but also how they expect student-athletes to behave and work in the classroom. The early part of this chapter focuses on power-five football and men’s basketball coaches; the second part focuses on smaller-revenue sports and smaller (sports-wise) schools. While I was able to interview several power-five coaches, they coached sports like volleyball, soccer, and baseball, which are less lucrative than football and basketball. Most of the coaches interviewed in this chapter work at smaller, non-power-five schools. The schools’ division affects scholarship availability for studentathletes and the available resources for success on the field and in the classroom.

Power-Five Football and Men’s Basketball The NCAA’s rules for academic eligibility largely focused on individual athletes. The rules focus on student-athletes being accepted to a fouryear university, as well as requirements once enrolled and competing for their respective school. Eligibility was and remains based on a sliding scale of standardized test scores and high school grade-point average. What made eligibility easier was whether the grade-point average was based on all classes taken or, more recently but prior to the standing scale, based © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Blum, Sports, Study, or Sleep, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6_5

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on grades in only a few core courses. Once a student-athlete has been accepted to a university, regardless of scholarship status and admissions standard (regular student vs. athlete exemption, which allows for a slightly lower grade-point average and standardized test score than their incoming peers), a student-athlete has to maintain a 2.0 grade-point average to remain eligible to compete. In 2004, the NCAA supplemented their individual requirements with team-wide academic goals, namely the Academic Progress Rate (APR). This rate was designed to track the progress of student-athletes toward their graduation from the school they compete for. From the NCAA’s own site (ncaa.org), APR is calculated as follows: • Each student-athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one point for staying in school and one point for being academically eligible. • A team’s total points are divided by points possible and then multiplied by 1000, to equal the team’s Academic Progress Rate. • In addition to a team’s current-year APR, its rolling four-year APR is also used to determine accountability. Teams must earn a four-year average APR of 930 to compete in NCAA championships. The score of 930 translates to half of a team’s studentathletes graduating, and schools which do not meet this benchmark are subjected to a variety of increasingly serious penalties. When the NCAA says “a team,” it means for a specific sport, rather than the entire athletics department. Thus, men’s and women’s basketball teams at the same school count as two teams, not as one, and they are separate from other sports at their school. If a team’s four-year average falls below 930, they may be publicly shamed via warning letters, with subsequent insufficient APR scores penalized by restrictions on scholarships and reduced practice time, going from 20 hours per week of practice over six days to 16 hours over five days. The NCAA mandates those four penalized hours per week must be spent on academics, assuming under-achieving student-athletes are devoting insufficient times to their studies. It does not consider alternate explanations for student-athletes’ struggles in the classroom when it assumes that time spent on studies and resulting grades are synonymous with one another. While time spent studying is a crucial variable, a more important part to note is the energy student-athletes have while

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focusing on their studies. Reducing practice time may help somewhat in terms of less physical exhaustion for student-athletes, but it does not automatically guarantee higher grades, and may leave them underprepared to succeed in their sport. Thus, the parts of their identities as students and as athletes are simultaneously questioned, which may lead to worse academic performance. If the team’s APR score remains low, it may face a loss of postseason competition (bowl games for football, March Madness for basketball), which has financial ramifications for both the school and the conference, and can hurt recruiting—who wants to play for a school that has no chance at winning a championship while you’re there? If low scores persist for a fourth consecutive year, then the entire athletic department is penalized by not being considered part of Division I for one year, which means they can no longer compete regularly against top schools unless they are reinstated to Division I. The NCAA recognizes high-achieving teams and universities, but does not reward these teams with additional scholarships or allow for additional practice time. This means there are financial penalties for missing the graduation mark, but no financial reward for academically-excellent teams. Another problem with the NCAA’s approach is for smaller teams, one or two struggling student-athletes can undo their teammates’ academic efforts because there just aren’t enough players to “buffer” from a low score or two. Further, it penalizes schools if players transfer to other institutions, regardless of grades earned, because the player has not graduated from the original school. A larger team (e.g. football) can withstand more student-athletes transferring or leaving school prior to graduating, because they consistently have 70 or more players, but a smaller team (e.g. golf) may have ten players to start a season. Two students transferring from that team means 20% of the team will not graduate, which hurts their APR score. This means a football head coach has both more opportunities to raise their APR and to lower the APR, depending on how strongly they and their coaching staffs emphasize education. The NCAA uses the APR in order to oversee student-athlete graduation rates, because the financial incentives for academic success are rare, and pale in comparison to the amount a coach can earn for on-field success. In order to boost APR and overall team grade-point averages, coaches in big-money sports award walk-on positions for players who have high grade-point averages. This gives the coach more players physically available in case of an injury, the walk-ons cost nothing (because a

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walk-on player does not have an athletic scholarship and is not guaranteed to receive one), and they help boost the team grade-point average, while the scholarship athletes receive more playing time because they are viewed as an investment. Coaches’ base salaries are paid by universities, but the bonuses they earn tend to come from external boosters. These boosters pool their money to help coaches recruit top athletic talent, and reward on-field and on-court success, whether formally to coaches (with contract incentives) or informally to student-athletes (“hundred-dollar handshakes”). A March 2016 Blitz Weekly article by Darius Williams explains the hundred-dollar handshakes: Big rival game. Down by five points. Receiver catches a touchdown to win the game. Later that night the receiver is invited by a pretty co-ed in most cases to a classy establishment to mingle amongst many former ABC University (fictional college) alums. The athlete then makes his way through a sea of tailored suits, most who introduce themselves and then extend a hand in the gesture to give the standard handshake that we all have come to do on a daily basis. The difference in me shaking my neighbor’s hand and then pulling back an empty palm, the receiver pulls his back with one or more crispy “C-Notes” in hand is obvious. If he shakes enough hands of the rich alumni, he will be able to walk away with enough money to pay for the gas to go into the Ford Mustang he got when he signed with the school for the remainder of the school year. (Williams 2016)

Because coaches are formal employees of the university, boosters do not need to hide their rewards for on-field success to them the same way they have to for players, who are not classified as employees. These bonuses are useful for the universities themselves, as athletic departments prefer to keep base salaries as low as possible—not only to ensure their ongoing fiscal viability, but as protection against huge payments of guaranteed money should the administration decide to terminate a coach before his or her contract expires. Paid only if some established measure of success is realized, bonuses are typically covered in-house by self-sufficient athletic departments or by outside booster funds. Part of what fuels the perception that athletics are promoted at the direct expense of academics is that some incentives are easily attainable and are practical guarantees, if not contractual. These incentives focus on wins per season, wins over

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rival schools, and postseason success. We should note: academic success is widely overlooked in how these bonuses are awarded. In 2009, Bloomberg News looked at 81 college coaching contracts, and found that 29 (over one-third!) offered no academic bonuses. Of those that did, classroom performance incentives averaged no more than 6% of the coaches’ total compensation, while on-field performance incentives constituted 35% (Steinbach 2009). A January 2008 Higher Ed Watch blog used the contract signed by Arizona State football coach Dennis Erickson to highlight this disparity. In that deal, Erickson’s $625,000 base salary could potentially be augmented by a maximum $1.105 million in on-field performance incentives, compared to $45,000 maximum in academic bonuses (Luebchow 2008). This means there are more carrots—and more lucrative carrots—for wins, while grades are treated as something to be punished for being too low. Importantly, while student-athletes do not share in the formal payments, and only a select few of them actually benefit from the boosters’ informal payments, an entire team can be punished for consistently low graduation rates. This puts coaches in a position where they can benefit more from on-field production than their players, and players assume the entire risk of punishment if their grades and graduation rates are insufficient. This suggests that as much as student-athletes work at the sport and school and play their sport competitively, they are getting worked and getting played by people who financially benefit much more in the interim than they do. While student-athletes are chasing their dreams, their sports bosses are making six or seven figures based off their efforts on the field (or on the court) and in the classroom. Bonus or incentive-laden coaching contracts allow schools with comparatively small budgets to compete in the hiring game with powerfive schools, but big schools that continue to dangle carrots in front of coaches may find themselves losing on the public relations front, because more of the salary is not guaranteed if it is incentive-based. Some have already chosen to guarantee multimillion-dollar base salaries for their marquee, high-profile coaches (known for consistently winning and sending their players to play professionally) while dialing back bonuses. However, there remains a very strong financial incentive for Division 1 coaches in football and basketball to keep their players academically eligible and successful in their sport, but less of an incentive for them to care about their players’ academic success. This is a remnant of the

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“school or sports” mentality that has been part of the college sport culture, although it is changing somewhat. One method that coaches in high-profile sports boost their team’s APR and GPA is by bringing walk-on players to their team who excel in the classroom. These are players who get sparse playing time, but help keep the team’s grade-point average high and help with graduation rates. Coaches do not feel the need to play their walk-ons as frequently, because there is more of an incentive to put scholarship athletes on the court or field—after all, the school offered a scholarship at least in part due to their athletic skills, while walk-on players are not guaranteed a scholarship (it does not mean they are not offered one, just that they are not promised one). This lets the coach save face in terms of grades and graduation rates, while allowing them the team they feel best gives them a chance to win, which further helps their income from both the school and the boosters. Even if a coach in these sports wants their players to graduate with a degree, there is no financial incentive for them to make sure that their student-athletes are excelling in the classroom, and large financial incentives to make sure their players perform well on the field or court. I argue that there are a few ways to encourage academic excellence for these players by focusing on how coaches are compensated, how the NCAA treats teams for successfully graduating their players, and how players themselves can be compensated for academic success. The first aspect looks at coaching compensation. Boosters pay the coaches’ bonuses, rather than the institution, and understandably, these boosters pay for athletic excellence. This is the highest-profile and most visible way student-athletes promote their university (competing in televised games), and success on the field or court can lead to things like increased applications to the university, thus raising the name recognition of previously somewhat unknown schools (e.g. George Mason’s 2006 Final Four run in men’s basketball). The universities pay the base salary. This offers the opportunity for schools to work in incentives for high grade-point averages and high graduation rates. This would offer more of an incentive for coaches to encourage academic success in their players. There could be levels of incentives offered, both for collective team grade-point averages and team graduation rates, and one for student-athletes who get the bulk of the playing time. This would not eliminate the practice of coaches bringing in walk-on players to boost the overall team’s academic performance, but a complementary bonus for the

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starters/regular players to achieve in the classroom could push coaches to emphasize academics more than they do right now. The NCAA introduced the APR in order to promote student graduation rates. It has adjusted its criteria several times to account for student-athletes who enter their sport professionally prior to graduation, and now looks at whether a student-athlete was in good academic standing prior to transferring schools. A new adjustment the NCAA should consider is complementing their punitive approach for underperformance with rewards for overachievement. Presently, the only reward the NCAA offers teams for finishing in the upper echelon of their sport in terms of graduation rates is formal recognition. This is the only reward (fame or shame by being publicly identified and labeled) that the collegiate sports’ governing body has for schools, and the first punishment for schools who underperform. If teams can have scholarships revoked for consistently underperforming academically, then a fitting reward should be awarding additional scholarships to teams that consistently excel in the classroom. This reinforces the idea of team success mattering in both the academic and athletic arenas. If the first two approaches focus on the student-athletes’ coaches, an additional approach to encouraging success in the classroom has to focus on the student-athletes themselves. Out of these three ideas, this is likely the most controversial idea, because it requires acknowledging a hidden part of college sports: boosters’ money. Boosters are not formal employees of the university, but they are designated as “representatives of the institution’s athletic interests”, according to the NCAA. From NCAA.org, boosters include anyone who has: • Provided a donation in order to obtain season tickets for any sport at the university. • Participated in or been a member of an organization promoting the university’s athletics programs. • Made financial contributions to the athletic department or to a university booster organization. • Arranged for or provided employment for enrolled student-athletes. • Assisted, or been requested by university staff to assist, in the recruitment of prospective student-athletes. • Assisted in providing benefits to enrolled student athletes or their families. • Been involved otherwise in promoting university athletics.

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Once a person is a booster and identified as such a representative, it is a permanent label. Formally, boosters may not offer the following incentives to enrolled student-athletes: • Tickets to college or professional sporting events. • A special discount, payment arrangement or credit on a purchase or service. • Cash or loan or signing or co-signing of a loan. • Transportation, payment of expense or loan of any automobile. • Benefits or gifts based upon the student-athlete’s athletic performance. • Free or reduced rent or housing. • An honorarium to a student-athlete for a speaking engagement. Historically, boosters surreptitiously offering student-athletes money against the rules has been an open secret that is often discussed, sporadically punished, and become more secretive in recent years. The NCAA should reverse its current course and fully legitimize boosters’ contributions—including financial rewards to student-athletes—while adding benefits or gifts for student-athletes who excel in the classroom. This would make college sports far more transparent in terms of seeing the role money plays into schools’ athletic success, but also rewards the part of the student-identity that so often goes unnoticed unless there are problems— the student identity. Just as athletic rewards or incentives can be given for various reasons (performing well in a recent game, performing well against a rival, or reaching certain season or career milestones), academic rewards can vary, from making Dean’s List, to showing certain improvement in grade-point average, to rewarding improvement or performance on a specific test, paper, or project. The current system limits opportunities for student-athletes to excel in both sports and school, and I argue a better way to encourage academic achievement is by opening up new acceptable rewards. Instead of only punishing academic underperformance, these are three ways that academic achievement can be rewarded, and the third approach gets the players in on the benefits that reward various forms of effort. These approaches seek to maximize the opportunities for legitimate rewards for student-athletes, rather than only punishing underperformance. The consistent messaging in these rewards for coaches, teams and players is

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that college sports offer multiple ways to succeed. This messaging drives home the importance of succeeding academically in the interim, rather than having classroom success tied to a vague idea in the seemingly distant future. Most college student-athletes do not make the highest levels of their sport, and those who do make it are not guaranteed any length of career—injuries happen, and most professional athletes are not competing professionally past the age of 40. The approaches discussed above offer positive tangible rewards that student-athletes can actually use, rather than only relying on the good feelings that recognition offers, and it keeps the message consistent for the teams, the coaches, and the players themselves. These rewards would make high-profile college sports more equitable for the student-athletes, and gives potential student-athletes more agency and choice in where they spend their undergraduate career. Instead of sports being the only avenue available for rewards, the student-athletes can choose to compete for schools that will reward their classroom efforts as well as their athletic endeavors. These approaches, especially allowing boosters to offer legitimated rewards for student-athletes, means that fewer student-athletes will be worked by people who benefit off their academic and athletic efforts (after all, a player cannot play if their grades are too low), and gives student-athletes a piece of the pie they have spent their lives baking. But what about the coaches who work for smaller schools, or coach sports outside of the big moneymakers (football and men’s basketball) at non power-five schools? The last part of this chapter examines their perspectives on student-athletes’ successes and challenges faced. This part of the chapter features interviews with eleven coaches in different sports, universities, and NCAA divisions. I wanted to learn how coaches view student-athletes’ academic challenges and successes, and what I found suggests a very different attitude than is described in earlier academic literature. Most of the coaches interviewed are head coaches, as they set the tone for their team—both their players and their coaching staff, and they serve as a face of the team more than assistant coaches do. Earlier studies suggest that coaches view their players as paraprofessional athletes who should emphasize success in their sport more than their academics. The two are seen as competing for athletes’ time, attention, and energy. The assumption was because coaches are paid to win games, especially at power-five schools, that anything taking players’ time and energy away from practice or upcoming games was viewed as bad and to be minimized or avoided. I was hoping to interview more than eleven

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coaches, but campuses shut down in March 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic. This pandemic limited coaches’ availability as well as my ability to meet in person with them. It also affected how they viewed their roles and posed new sports-related challenges. While I hoped to interview power-five football and men’s basketball coaches in this chapter, the ones I reached out to did not respond to requests for interviews. This is unsurprising, as their goals prior to the pandemic were finishing out the season (men’s basketball) and getting ready for conference tournaments as well as March Madness, or preparing for the upcoming football season. My interviews were designed to highlight their players as students rather than as athletes, and look at obstacles that they face to doing well in the classroom. Since I was not looking to publicize their players’ on-field or on-court success, these coaches may have felt being interviewed would not be particularly helpful in terms of preparing for their upcoming opponents, or selling potential recruits (or current players) on playing for the schools they coach at. Some power-five football and basketball coaches listed their email for potential communication, but higher-profile programs either offered a generic email for the entire coaching staff (e.g. [email protected]) while others either posted an office phone number, a staffer’s (e.g. a compliance officer) contact, or offered no contact information. This filtering system means that some requests for interviews may have gone unheard, leading to a lack of response. The coaches interviewed in the second half of this chapter mostly coach at smaller schools (most are 1-AA or Division-2) and all of the coaches work in non-revenue sports such as track and field, soccer, baseball, and volleyball. This means that the themes from these interviews may reflect what some (perhaps many) coaches value and emphasize to their players, but given that these are schools and sports that are not big money, the pressures faced and resources available likely differ from big-name football or basketball programs (e.g. USC, Alabama, LSU, UNC, or Duke). Bigname athletic departments bring in so much money from their television contracts as well as attendance (60,000 or more attending home football games or 10–20,000 attending home basketball games) that money may influence the decision-making process more than at smaller schools or in smaller sports. It affects the resources available to student-athletes for both their sports and education. Bigger programs have bigger facilities (e.g. weight rooms, locker rooms), but they also offer more expansive academic centers and more personnel to help student-athletes in their

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classes. What happens when we look at smaller schools and at smaller sports in bigger schools? What do coaches emphasize to their players? The coaches interviewed in this chapter all played intercollegiate sports when they were student-athletes themselves. These coaches understand the time and energy demands school and sports have on student-athletes, because they faced these pressures as young adults themselves, helping coaches relate to their players. Coaches also received similar messages from their parents, coaches, and other role models as the student-athletes interviewed, namely strong encouragement for both academic and athletic success. Like many of their student-athletes, coaches also looked up to coaches and professional athletes when they were kids themselves. Coaches are aware of the influence they have and the role they play in some of their student-athletes’ lives, and because of this they are keenly attuned to the messages they send to their student-athletes about succeeding in sports and in school, because as athletes, they looked up to their coaches and recognized the power these coaches have. Similar to their players (and really, all students), coaches majored in different fields and found some classes easier than others. The variation in class toughness revolved around whether a class played to their strength in terms of how they were evaluated as students, their interest in the subject matter, and the professor’s personality. The idea of a class playing to a student’s strength is the idea that some students prefer to write papers rather than taking tests with one discrete correct answer. This wiggle room was viewed as easier because it was viewed as not having one specific right answer. This variation in class difficulty also means that there was no single “easy” major for these coaches when they were student-athletes, similar to today’s students.1 For some students, classes that are more writing-intensive, offer a chance to develop a portfolio, or an opportunity to do class projects give them a chance to express themselves and explore ideas. For others, a course based around a few tests helped them, by allowing them to focus on a few tests in a given term. What really propelled these coaches’ academic progress, similar to today’s student-athletes, was their interest in subject matter. The combination of their interests, combined with the professor’s personality and

1 This is a great thing, for the record. Different people should have different intellectual curiosities, skills, and passions, and that means the same class will be viewed as easy for some, tough for others.

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the way they were graded, determined the ease of the course. This attitude may be related to choosing a major that interests a student, and that interest can propel a student to dive deeply into material that they care about, either for intellectual curiosity, professional development, or both. When the interesting classes were only in the major rather than across the full spectrum of courses taken, it meant lower-division generaleducation courses were somewhat more challenging for these coaches and student-athletes than upper division courses within their major. Once they chose their major, it meant they had heightened interest and curiosity in the subject matter, while the general education courses were taken for graduation purposes but these courses did not necessarily inspire these coaches and players to do well. In courses that did not pique interest or intellectual curiosity, the professor’s approach and ways of evaluation (tests, papers, projects) made the difference between an easier and a tougher class, and that approach varied among these coaches.

School vs. Sports: What Gets Emphasized? Coaches in these smaller sports and/or schools emphasize the importance of academics, learning, and growth far more than they emphasize specific grades. This approach extends into some coaches at junior colleges. Trevor, a junior college football coach in Southern California, explains: “Athletics mimics life and is a vehicle for student athletes to a better life. It opens doors, provides incredible experiences and lifetime relationships.” Academics are framed in a positive light, rather than as a necessary evil or as something to be ignored. Some coaches, like Ty, a Division-1 volleyball coach, take it a step further, saying “there is no sport without school”, and placing academics at the forefront of his student-athletes’ concerns. Allen, who coaches track and field at a 1-A school in California, adds that “The important aspect is, very few kids go pro and we have to get ready for the rest of your life by making sure you graduate and open more doors than less. A degree offers you more options. The most important part of their body is from the neck up for the rest of their lives.” The idea of classes mattering is something that these coaches emphasize to their student-athletes, and it is often coupled with the acknowledgement that very few student-athletes in sports like volleyball and track and field will be able to compete professionally—even fewer than in football and basketball, because there are fewer professional opportunities to compete in track and volleyball than there are in other sports.

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Differences Among Different Schools Coaches who have worked in different NCAA divisions and conferences highlighted various challenges and opportunities based on the school’s academic culture and the athletics budget afforded them. These levels included coaching in junior colleges prior to moving to a four-year university, or coaching at different four-year universities in different NCAA conferences (for competitions) and divisions. Vik, who has coached track and field both at Division 1-A and 1AA schools, explained that he switched to coaching at the 1-AA level: Because of the academic standards. [The first D-1A school I coached at] has the least standards of any program I’ve ever been affiliated with. If you have a pulse, you can get in. There’s no ACT [standardized entry exam score] standards. Here we’re a top 100 educational school, so that’s one of the reasons I moved here. The D1 programs I coached at don’t hold a candle in academics, but at one school in the southeast, we had more numbers – more staff, the attention is that much more finite when you have 3 advisors vs 15 advisors there. That’s something as a coach I’ve learned to shoulder that load a bit myself – every one of my freshmen, transfers, and academic risk students meet with me for 15 minutes on Wednesdays and it’s purely academics for that meeting. I think it raises their accountability level, and I can give them cues that some take to heart. But you always have the one or two kids who nothing other than serious intervention will help, but for most, pointing out resources helps. We’ve removed studentathletes for academic lack of performance, but that’s a last resort. Missing practice opportunities, competition opportunities, come to practice and study at practice instead of train are all philosophies that we’ve used in different roles.

Ty explains the differences in coaching at different NCAA divisions as: The power 5 conferences control D1 athletics, and there’s a real difference between those schools vs. mid-majors, which are more subsidized by the president or student body. We get very little subsidy from the student body our budget is from tv, gate receipts, signage, things like that. This money goes into resources for the student-athletes, like tutoring, counseling, academic centers – the opportunities for them to succeed are there for them. But when I was a student, we had to find resources on our own. The issue with a power 5 school and money is that it entitles kids – they’re getting everything handed to them. When you’re at a D2 school,

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you create independence, and those kids have to have that drive and motivation to do well and that works better in the future than us handing them opportunities. They’re used to having something provided to them by somebody else. It’s a little bit different, I think both are good, but there’s a difference in independence and discipline between the different schools. I like that we can provide these resources.

Similarly, Christina, who coaches track and field at a 1-AA school in Southern California explains, that even with fewer resources than a power-5 school: I have a 3.0 requirement for my student-athletes. Anything above that is on you, but I don’t want them to be in 2.0 land. I didn’t have that at the other schools I coached. At those schools, a 2.5 and I was happy – stay eligible and I’m happy. I don’t want to chase you worrying if you’re flunking out of school). At the 5 power conferences (Pac, SEC, ACC, Big 12/Big 10, Big East) – football and men’s basketball bring in money, those departments have huge budgets, fully funded scholarships, brand new everything. When they win, they get more money, and the money goes to the conference (divided among the schools) and the schools themselves get money. They have entire academic buildings for athletes, 10-15 advisers on staff, psychologists on staff, you won’t find that on a mid-major. We have 1 or 2 advisors for 300 athletes, we have tutoring (done by students).

Coaches at all levels consistently and regularly emphasize the importance of school, and explain that Division-1 schools, especially those in power-five conferences, have both the money to pay for additional educational specialized personnel (e.g. more academic advisors, learning specialists), and for more elaborate facilities for student-athletes to use for academic help. These facilities include a tutoring center and dedicated computer labs that are only for student-athletes to use, in addition to the computer labs that are on campus for all students. At smaller schools, there are fewer available resources and no separate learning facilities; student-athletes have access to the same resources that their non-athlete peers have. This lack of resources doesn’t make academic success impossible, but it does make these student-athletes have to be more self-reliant than their power-5 peers, because they have fewer resources to help. Gabe, a volleyball coach at a power-five school in Colorado, explains his school:

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[D]oes a good job in making sure our players have a well-rounded experience, and that includes support in the classroom. We have a robust mental health program and academic support. I am happy we have the resources to do that because that’s really important, I want our players to have a great experience while they’re here, and everything they do is about managing time. They have things they have to keep up with, volleyball and academics are the two largest facets of that, but we don’t want to compromise one for the other.

In doing so, Gabe emphasizes not only the opportunities student-athletes have in terms of succeeding in their sport and classes, but also in the available resources to deal with mental health, which in turn further helps propel student-athletes to success in the classroom and in the game. For coaches like Gabe, high academic standards can be a selling point for an institution. Rather than assuming that lower academic standards allow for more athletes to come in (because they do not need as high a grade-point average or standardized test score), a school with higher academic standards and a stronger academic reputation allows coaches to be a bit more selective with the student-athletes they recruit. Some of these coaches, like Vik and Christina, emphasize academic achievement for their student players above the NCAA minimum. What these coaches also hint at is the differences that large athletics budgets make, even for non-big money sports. The money that football and basketball generate for power-5 schools through their television contract and ticket sales helps fund more elaborate support for student-athletes, ranging from nicer locker rooms and weight-training facilities to having the ability to hire more tutors and learning specialists, and have dedicated spaces for student-athletes to work on their studies. In that sense, a rising tide lifts all boats—more money translates to more opportunities for help at the larger sport schools, while smaller schools have fewer dedicated resources for their student-athletes. Christina explains another way money plays itself into college sports— how athletic scholarships are allocated. She explains: Scholarships are handled in two ways. Some scholarships are considered headcount. This means the scholarship is all or nothing – a player gets a full ride or they get no ride, and the scholarship cannot be divided among a few athletes. Other scholarship structures allow for the monetary value of the scholarship to be divided among student-athletes on the same team. Track is an individual sport, so we can take a full scholarship and split

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it 2 or 3 ways if needed. We don’t have to give one student the full ride, and on our team, we have 40 women and 40 men. If there’s 12.6 scholarships for power 5 conference schools, we might have 6 scholarships to use. We have to recruit with a tiny bit of money vs schools that have 12.6 or 18 scholarships. [At the 1-AA level], you’re lucky if you can go out of state ever for recruiting; power 5’s can go international to bring in student-athletes. We don’t have good facilities, training tables, weight rooms. We’re middle of the road – the pay is better than D2; and assistant coaches work full time for crappy pay.

Having flexible scholarship options allows a team to retain more studentathletes, because the same amount of money can fund parts of tuition or books for several athletes, rather than one athlete having a full ride. It is important to note that scholarships are offered on a year to year basis to student-athletes, and that having a scholarship one year does not guarantee that the scholarship will be renewed in subsequent years. It may help us to think of student-athletes as being on a series of contingent one-year contracts, rather than on a set four-year contract. Scholarships can be revoked for low performance in the sport or in the classroom, as well as due to injury. This means that even with a full scholarship for an athlete, a university is committed to them for that specific year, with no guarantee of renewal. When there are fewer scholarships to award, having flexibility to reward more students and help them achieve academically can go a long way, because the same limited pool of money can help more student-athletes reach their graduation goals.

“What Patterns Have You Noticed in Patterns in Terms of Who Succeeds the Most in Classes and Who Struggles the Most?” James, who coaches men’s basketball at a Division-2 school, explains: students who struggle often “experience disruption in the family structure and have a lack of educational foundation and support from home. Students struggle both with the hard academic skills (writing, reading comprehension, math) but they also struggle with time management, and may be coming from a high school situation where time management was not strongly emphasized, so it’s a new skill they have to develop.” The idea of home life affecting academics was echoed by other coaches as well, who pointed at educational disparities in terms of skill development.

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Christina echoed this by focusing on the high schools her student-athletes attended prior to enrolling in college. She explains: Kids come in with decent gpa’s and test scores struggle – there’s a huge disparity in their high school prep. A kid with a 3.5 at an easy school gets wasted at a [school like this] because they’re not used to the workload. If they’re full-boat AP (advanced placement courses), it translates and they do fine. But some AP kids get wasted. Junior [community] colleges transfers are the same as high school students – we know which jc’s don’t have a good academic rep because their students don’t do well. You’d better be a 3.0 and killing it at a JC if you want to come here. If you’re at a 2.0 or 2.5, look elsewhere. They don’t cover their bases in GE’s (general education courses) so they have to take it at this level and get killed.

Des, who coaches volleyball at a Division-1 school in Arizona, echoes Christina’s sentiment: In general, I would say our student-athletes that come in…I don’t think that high school grades correlate very well with how you’re going to do in college. The ones who do the best for me are the ones who figure out how to organize and manage time the fastest and figure out what they’re interested in the fastest. The ones who invest in doing well and do something they enjoy find success. The ones who view school as taking away from their college experience or don’t want to go to class, end up struggling. I’ve had players who are extremely smart who succeed, I’ve had players who have to work really hard and succeed because they really enjoy working hard, and I’ve had some smart players who struggled because they didn’t want to put the time into class. I want to make sure we provide the resources needed to do really well. I might ride a freshman more about why you want to work hard, but 3 years is a bit much to figure it out.

Every coach interviewed in this chapter discussed time management as something their student-athletes struggle with. Time management is a skill that is often underdeveloped in high school, and students are assumed to have this skill when they enter college, despite high schools not teaching this skill consistently. In high school, students take either all 6 or 7 classes every day Monday-Friday, or have half of their classes three days a week, and the other half of their classes twice a week (block schedules). While there is variation in how block scheduling is done, it reinforces a sense of consistency for students because they have to be at

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school five days a week for a set period of time. The question is, which classes do they take on any given day? In college, courses might meet three times a week for lecture and once a week for lab and discussion. Students are given the approximate course schedule during the first week, but few realize the best course of action is to take the due dates on their syllabus and put them both on a calendar and in their planners, and to actively and regularly use these tools to help plan their days. This means that students have to adjust to new schedules, a new level of academic skill development, and the hidden curriculum of developing skills such as advanced planning. Student-athletes not only have to contend with this academic adjustment; they also have to worry about their practice/competition schedule, travel schedule, and above all, managing their energy consistently. They are effectively juggling two or more jobs, while experiencing a higher level of competition, higher levels of learning that demand analysis and synthesis of information far more than memorization, and earning a new way to schedule their time and the various demands of their schedules. This is an intense transition to make, and while “redshirt years” are often granted to first-year student-athletes, limiting their competition, they still have to deal with daily practice routines and learn to manage their energy and their time from the day they set foot on campus. Coaches also pointed to their student-athletes undergoing a maturation process while in college, helping struggling students achieve once something clicks for them. This was often couched in terms of personality or work ethic. For example, Liz, a Division-2 women’s basketball coach, explains that: Top academic schools are able to recruit the top 5% of students, and these students have elite work ethic. Many of these student-athletes are studyfirst, and we didn’t need to have class checks because our players were so motivated to do well in their classes. In addition to their classes, the players looked for internships and volunteer opportunities on their own, so they were working and managing their time at an elite level early on. These kids came from wealthy families, and as coaches we might not have made a huge difference in their lives because of the support they had from family. Here we have more value day to day because our students may not have the same resources and need that support.

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Vik views his student-athletes’ maturation process in terms of personality, saying “I think the ones that struggle most are the ones that think they’ve figured it out and don’t want to let you know that they’re struggling. The ones that do better are the ones are more open. There are school districts where the level of academics isn’t high because they weren’t pressed to do well.” Des concurs with Vik’s ideas when she explains: “there is a maturation process and getting used to being a college athlete. A few players barely squeak by in terms of eligibility. Some aren’t good at school or at doing work.” Robert, who coaches men’s soccer at a Division-1 school, explains that: I’m a big believer that people don’t maximize their ability in one segment of their life—people who maximize do so across the board. People’s innate talents or starting spots might be different in starting areas. It comes down to the same attributes – work ethic and discipline are key, if our kids, we talk about motivational endurance, rather than intensity. The final piece for me is honesty – those who can look at themselves and tell you that they’re struggling always have a chance of rebounding. I think they also get bad advice about “easy classes””. The bad advice comes from “easy” classes being different for each student. Ease can range from the professor’s personality, the ways students are evaluated, the workload, and/or student interest in the material. However, “easy” can often be misunderstood to mean “free A’s” with little effort on the student’s part. If students come into a class with low expectations, they can be overwhelmed by the quality of work expected from them, if not the amount of work expected as well.

One assumption some coaches have in their student-athletes’ maturation process is that student-athletes are trying to do the bare minimum in their classes. This assumption ignores the possibility that initially, studentathletes may be overwhelmed by their classes, their new time and energy demands, or both. Further, they may not know how to articulate these challenges (they can tell something is wrong, but cannot put it into words), and their grades suffer, because they are scrambling to develop new skills while feeling that they are behind their peers. There is also an assumption of dishonesty in this lack of communication—that studentathletes are hiding something by not discussing their struggles with their coaches. While there may be some truth to the idea that student-athletes want to project an image of confidence and strength, and these struggles challenge that image, another possibility may be these student-athletes

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simply lack the appropriate script to explain their struggles, because of these struggles’ novelty. This new experience means student-athletes have to identify their struggles and put them into words, which they may not have had to do before entering college. Student-athletes, regardless of what school they attend, have access to the same on-campus resources that their non-athletic peers have. These include major advisors who track progress to graduation, some form of academic help, be it a writing center, math center, and/or student-tutors, and summer classes where they can take classes to help raise their gradepoint average. Some student-athletes take summer college courses prior to their first official fall semester, as a way to get acclimated to college life, their campus, and college-level coursework. Another resource is studyhall, which offers student-athletes dedicated time and access to tutors or learning specialists (discussed in Chapter 6). Student-athletes are expected to use study-hall time to work on coursework and prepare for upcoming exams, or receive help when needed. Coaches encourage their student-athletes to make good use of studyhall time and of the resources made available, and may monitor study-hall to make sure their players are regularly attending. While some study halls are personally monitored by coaches or other team personnel; others are run based on a student-athlete signing in or logging in each time they attend study hall, and some are run on the honor system. Study hall is one of the more proactive ways coaches help emphasize academic progress to their players because it is a message that is consistently reinforced. Failure to attend study hall can result in a player being punished. Punishment can be a loss of game time, but as one coach put it, “coaches really don’t want to pull playing time” because that means they have to adjust their strategy with an obstacle they had not previously considered. What some coaches do instead is make players who skip study hall bring their coursework to practice and force them to do homework instead of practicing their sport. Other coaches go with a more corporal approach to this, and force their absentee players to do extra running or physical conditioning early in the morning, well before classes. This approach assumes studentathletes are missing study hall in order to slack off—after all, “if they were serious about their academics, wouldn’t they make their appointment?” It does not consider the aspect that student-athletes may miss these appointments because they’re tired and may need the rest, and ignores the possibility that student-athletes are getting help informally (e.g. meeting with a professor during office hours rather than going to

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study hall, or meeting with a group of classmates to prepare for an exam or work on a project). While bringing homework to practice help the student-athlete better caught up on their schoolwork when needed, physical punishment may only make the student-athlete both tired and resentful of academics, thus exacerbating the problem of low grades. Now, school is associated with the assumption of laziness and punishment, when sleep or rest may be the better solution. That’s not to say that low grades should be consequencefree. Instead, understanding why student-athletes may be struggling and why they are short on study-hall hours may be the best way to help them succeed in classes and their sport. If fatigue and low energy are issues, then learning how to structure time differently may be the best course of action.

How Do Coaches Define Success for Their Student-Athletes? I wanted to understand how coaches define success for their student athletes in terms of sports, school, and professionally. A few coaches pointed to milestone events such as graduation or benchmark gradepoint averages (e.g. “we want our players to have a 3.0 (B) or higher”), but most eschewed a universal approach in favor of a more personallytailored approach to success. For Russ, academic success revolves around completing courses, giving efforts, and completing all assignments. This approach was echoed by most coaches, who focused on the growth student-athletes made throughout each year and through their collegiate career. This growth could be in the classroom or on the field. The track and field coaches offered more ways of seeing athletic improvement than coaches in ball-oriented sports, because track and field allows both for various levels of competition (e.g. making the team, being top in the conference, making a national team) but also allows its athletes to improve their personal records. Having a range of ways to measure their studentathletes’ athletic progress also informed coaches’ approaches to viewing academic progress. Coaches recognize that their student-athletes don’t start from the same point in terms of skill development (either in the classroom or in their sport), and this holistic approach allows for progress to be noted and be more personalized for each student-athlete rather than focusing on a specific grade-point average.

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More than sporadic achievement, coaches emphasized consistent progress and consistent performance. Vik explains this as: There’s a lot of times where a kid has a great performance but can’t replicate it – success is consistent, not a flash in the pan. It’s more broad – some are national level, some are conference level, some are PR (personal record), but the discipline of the sport makes difference because they belong to a team.” Coaches emphasized consistency as a benchmark for success and progress more than any one specific performance, lest it be a fluke.

Allen echoes Vik, saying that: Success is different for everyone – for some it’s national championships, for some it’s making a travel trip, winning multiple races, competing for conference championship. Grades for some is raising the cumulative (gpa) from 2.5 to 2.7, or getting above a 3.0 consistently; for some it’s a 4.0. There’s different levels of communication (from student-athletes to coaches) – some graduate and you never hear from, but there’s a few that we talk on a regular basis, some look for letters of rec, some ask for advice.

These holistic approaches coaches like Vik and Allen use allow for more progress to be recognized, and ultimately, coaches want their players to leave college as more ready to handle the world after their graduation.

What Do You Want People to Know About Coaching in College? Coaches by and large emphasize the time commitment it takes to being a coach, and that successful coaching extends beyond practice or game time. Liz phrases it as “the easy parts are practices and the games, the hard parts are being a mentor/parent to 21 players, trying to help them be the best players and the best people they can be”, and James echoed this with: It is hard work and more than just strategy and practice. The best coaches care about their players on a human level. We are on the front lines of social work and become fathers and mothers to these kids. We are usually the people kids come to first when there is a need or an issue.

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Coaches value their personal relationships with their players far more than winning specific games or titles. While cynically this can be attributed to the lack of publicity or fame in these sports, I think the relationship takes priority because coaches are instrumental in developing their student-athletes in their sports but also as people, and they spend a lot of time working together. Coaches also emphasized a sense of selflessness and giving back to a school or a community, especially those working at smaller schools. Liz explains that: Unless you’re at a power five school, you’re doing this because you want to serve. You don’t do this for the money or the lifestyle. You could do a million other things and have a nicer lifestyle and more money. Coaches coach because they have a passion for it and want to serve other people. It’s a calling. It’s a lot of long hours, a lot of travel, a lot of sacrifice that goes into other people’s success and well-being.

Coaches want to support their student-athletes in the classroom, but run into a few obstacles. One hurdle is that coaches are not allowed to interact directly with faculty, for fear of undue influence that would affect the student-athlete. This separation, designed to allow academics and athletics to be separate spheres of influence for student-athletes, leads to a sense of isolation and a lack of familiarity. Vik explains that coaches being able to work directly with faculty “would allow for a more productive partnership/working relationship between coaches, players, and faculty. There is hesitation on having players meet professors during recruiting because what if there is a professor who looks down on student-athletes? That makes selling the school much tougher”. The separation between academics and athletics is well-intentioned, but one of the unintended consequences is limiting prospective student-athletes’ ability to foster a relationship with faculty and gauge their interest in various classes prior to enrolling. Gabe and other coaches highlight the challenging time commitment that student-athletes face, saying: The time commitment for a student-athlete is more than for your average student. I think the pressure for them to be successful is more than for your average student – not only do they want to play, they have to represent their family and their university, and they’ve grown up being really good, sports is part of their identity and they have to be successful to continue that. But what if you’re not doing well or you’re on a losing team? That can be tough from a social standpoint.

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In addition to the social and emotional toll if student-athletes struggle, the physical toll on student-athletes’ bodies and their lack of sleep is really important. Waking up before 6 in the morning and trying to finish their workday by 8 or 9 p.m. is exhausting for student-athletes as well. Team size was the last hidden obstacle coaches discussed. Other than football, track and field is the largest or second-largest team a university has, often fielding 70–90 competitors. That means coaches are responsible for tracking the academic progress of 70–90 students, divided by however many coaches the team has. While sports like basketball may have three coaches who work with 15 players (so up to five players per coach), a track coach may have to keep track of 30 student-athletes’ grades any given semester. This also means coaches in track and field have to deal with a lot more personalities on and off the track than coaches in other sports. This workload is exacerbated when coaches work at smaller schools, because there is less institutional support to help coaches and student-athletes. As Callan explains, “At (SEC school), you sit in the big chair, and the emails and documents come across your desk and there’s an accountability factor. But here (1-AA) I have my hands full and it’s a big task” because there are fewer contacts who can work with the coach and the student-athletes.

How Has Your Role Changed Since Campuses Closed? Since college campuses shut down in March 2020 due to the COVID19 pandemic, I asked coaches how they viewed their role as changing due to the circumstances. All of the coaches interviewed mentioned keeping in close contact with their players remotely (Zoom meetings), and emphasized more of a caregiving role now than before the pandemic. Callan explains that while he was glad to keep in touch with his track and field athletes, “a lot of kids rely on feeling, and they can’t experience nearly as much because they’re behind a screen more since campus closed, they don’t feel or experience things.” James, Liz, and Vik mention managing their players’ moods and keeping them optimistic and focused on academics while dealing with a sudden change. James explained that since campus closed: I’m more of a mood manager – we set up academic follow-up meetings on Zoom and I find myself asking them how they’re doing. We’re seeing (academic) progress reports (from campus), but that they’re not getting

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that personable interaction takes a toll, so I’ll ask them how their families are doing, what they’re watching – keep them positive and keep them looking for that light at the end of the tunnel.

Coaches like Des, Christina, and Gabe mention balancing the mood management aspect of coaching with unsure anticipation of how to prepare for an upcoming season in the middle of the pandemic. The pandemic revamped coaches’ roles from being able to care for and work with their athletes in person for a certain number of hours and days per week, to having to work remotely and try to plan for a season that may get delayed or cancelled, depending on relative health risks posed by the pandemic. The pandemic removed the structure of a known season and off-season in terms of game and practice dates, and university adjustments assume players are able to exercise and stay in game shape on their own, without campus facilities such as weight rooms available to them. One unexpected bright side from online meetings was being able to see their student-athletes in a different light and being seen differently by their student-athletes. Zoom meetings, especially if the webcams were on, meant coaches and student-athletes got to look into one another’s homes (or at least a room in the home), making it a big intimate virtual get-together, rather than meeting in the neutral ground of school. Vik explains while he cannot spend time with his student-athletes in the gym, “now players see me in a different light due to Zoom calls because we see each other as people – we’re looking into each other’s homes on Zoom, rather than being seen as players and coaches on campus.” Online meetings showcase the personal approach to coaching these coaches (and I imagine many others) share—they don’t view their student-athletes just as athletes; they want to encourage personal and academic growth while coaching them in sports. Far from being adversarial to school, these coaches want to encourage individual growth and development while working with these young adults, and now are doing so while trying to maintain a sense of calm, focus, and preparation during a global pandemic. This emphasis in growth and development is shared by many faculty members who work with students. While there are negative unintended consequences from the separation of school and sports on campus, there are also positive unintended consequences in players and coaches meeting remotely, and virtually entering one another’s homes. This helps foster a sense of family among teammates and coaches, because, while

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they don’t share the same physical space, the online meetings offer them a way to share their homes. While coaches are primarily rewarded for winning games, they work around this incentive structure and institutional obstacles to emphasize the importance of academics to their student-athletes. These obstacles include the formal separation of academics and athletics, which is mediated by academic personnel such as academic counselors. While the separation is in place to limit undue influence by university personnel on student-athletes, it limits communications between parties that work closely with student-athletes. Despite these obstacles, coaches care about their players and see them as more than tools for raises; they genuinely care for their players and want them to succeed both in sports and in school. In order to get this, coaches preach academic success and enforce weekly study-hall hours based on a student-athlete’s grade-point average, increasing the hours if a player is struggling in classes, or having them focus on coursework in lieu of practice until their grades are raised. This caregiving aspect has been highlighted since campuses closed due to COVID-19, with coaches feeling like they are welcoming players into their homes and vice versa, and having regular meetings to not only discuss school or the team, but also to keep their players’ spirits up.

How Can Coaches Help Student-Athletes? Coaches, especially those not in big-money sports at power-five schools, consistently emphasize and reward academic progress from their studentathletes. Higher-profile coaches are paid to win games by their universities and by boosters, with academics a scant afterthought. In order to help promote academics, coaches’ contracts should be structured by their universities and/or boosters to include incentives for academic achievement, such as team grade-point average and/or high graduation rates. Boosters can also do this—if they informally reward outstanding athletic performances, then they can informally reward outstanding performances in the classroom as well. But for most coaches, the payday is smaller. In order to help their student-athletes, I would encourage faculty members who regularly teach student-athletes to develop a professionally-friendly and collegial relationship with coaches, rather than a forced, distant neutrality. The idea is to show sports and academics can work together to help student-athletes develop their skills in both arenas, and to offer

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consistent support from people the student-athlete will work with. This approach can also teach student-athletes to view their success not just by comparing themselves against other students and other competitors, but to focus on the growth they make throughout their collegiate careers. The next chapter focuses on the specialized academic personnel who work with student-athletes, namely academic advisors and learning specialists.

References Luebchow, Lindsey. 2008. Luebchow’s Journey: From College Sports Fan to Critic. New America [blog] July 14, 2008. NCAA.org. Steinbach, Paul. 2009. Contract Bonuses Award College Coaches for All Sorts of Achievements. Athletic Business. https://www.athleticbusiness.com/Staffing/ contract-bonuses-award-college-coaches-for-all-sorts-of-achievements.html. Williams, Darius. 2016. The Hundred Dollar Handshake. http://blitzweekly. com/the-hundred-dollar-handshake/.

CHAPTER 6

“The Importance of Having a Plan B”: Academic Personnel Who Work with Student-Athletes

This chapter focuses on the professional academic personnel who work with student-athletes, and how money affects the way they are able to work with student-athletes. It also looks at the messages they offer their student-athletes and how they help student-athletes succeed in the classroom, both in terms of skill development and in running study halls. Academic personnel include academic advisors, learning specialists, and tutors. A university’s academic personnel typically include tutors, academic advisors, and, with a large-enough budget, learning specialists. The advisors and learning specialists interviewed in this chapter all work in professions centered around helping student-athletes succeed academically, and many advisors interviewed in this chapter grew up playing sports and continued to compete or play sports as undergraduates themselves. Having the experience of being a student-athlete means these advisors remember some of their own experiences of juggling the responsibilities of a full course-load at a university while competing at a high level. They had to manage their time, responsibilities, and energy, much the way their current advisees need to, and many advisors view their work as a way of paying a favor forward. They had help succeeding in school while playing competitively, and are now doing the same thing for new generations of college student-athletes. Learning specialists are not necessarily former student-athletes, but they offer help in terms of broad academic skills © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Blum, Sports, Study, or Sleep, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6_6

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(they may help with writing papers across several disciplines, rather than focusing on history or English or sociology). Tutors tend to be either graduate students or undergraduate students who recently completed certain courses with a benchmark grade (“finished Chem 100 with a grade of B or better”), and may change depending on semester or year, based on their availability and comfort with the material. Like the students they advise, advisors and learning specialists were influenced by their families and coaches in terms of devoting energy to school and sports. Much like the student-athletes interviewed, advisors’ families and coaches emphasized doing well in both school and in sports, and those are messages advisors consistently reinforce to their student-athletes. Advisors and learning specialists had a range of experiences with their classes, not universally negative or positive. Similar to their advisees’ experiences, easier classes allowed for more robust discussions in class and allowed for arguments in papers, rather than classes that demanded one correct answer. The papers’ emphasis on flexibility and ability to reason an argument allowed for their intellectual growth in terms of writing skills and content, and made classes seem easier. For other advisors and learning specialists, similar to student-athletes, classes in their major were easier because they were more interested in the subject matter being taught. This means upper division classes, which may have heavier workloads and more prerequisite knowledge than lower division courses, were easier than introductory classes. General education courses and electives outside the major were viewed as tougher. Although these classes were required courses for the major of choice (and graduation in general), they were not centered around material that advisors cared as much about when they were students. Like student-athletes, advisors preferred classes (or easier classes) that either offered material they were personally interested in, or were taught in ways offering students more control over their performance in the class (allowing for presentations, projects, and papers) rather than being test-heavy or searching for one correct answer.

Power-Five Schools vs. Everyone Else Power-five schools have elaborate student-athlete support services. This support includes dedicated buildings with computer labs separate from other computer labs on campus, as well as more dedicated academic personnel, which allows more individualized hands-on support for

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student-athletes from advisors, tutors, and learning specialists. Academic advisors are responsible for the big-picture goal of advancing studentathletes toward graduation, and some aid by scheduling student-athletes’ courses, especially in their first year or two of school. Student-athletes choose their majors and courses they will take in their majors (or their general education courses, if they are early in their academic careers and have yet to choose a major), and advisors help by scheduling classes around their team’s practice schedules. Academic advisors also help student-athletes develop their life and academic skills, such as time management, and often ask student-athletes to see if their major suits their interests, or if they should change. These interests can be based on personal interest or curiosity, potential future career, or both. As student-athletes’ advance in their academic careers, advisors are typically less hands-on in terms of scheduling classes, unless the student-athlete requests their help in doing so. Some schools also have mentors who meet with student-athletes and guide them through college life, adding another layer of support other schools do not have the budget for. Learning specialists are professional educators who help studentathletes with broad academic skills or groups of courses (someone who teaches or has taught English will help with English courses and with writing advice for other courses, while someone with a background in math may help with math-heavy courses). Learning specialists are not assigned to any specific course or student-athlete. They are not necessarily faculty at the university they teach at, but may teach at a high school or at a different nearby school (community college) while working as a learning specialist at a four-year university. This maintains separation between faculty directly responsible for grading student-athletes and student-athletes, and offers a sense of neutrality and fairness for studentathletes, so student-athletes do not have to ask for help from a professor whose class is tough or with whom they do not get along. This offers student-athletes a chance to save face by asking for help in subjects from people who are not grading them. Learning specialists are not assigned to specific student athletes; they offer their services to whichever studentathletes need help in their subject matter while they are on campus. They tend to work on an appointment basis or first-come, first-serve for whoever needs help in their area(s) of expertise. Learning specialists help student-athletes develop academic skills (for example, improving their writing), and demonstrated learning growth is their area of focus.

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Tutors are either undergraduate students who have recently passed a particular class with a sufficiently high grade, or graduate students who are working toward their advanced degrees. This means the tutoring student-athletes receives comes from their peers, though not their current classmates. Working with other undergraduates reduces status differences, as the tutors and tutees are both students, and sharing that role as students helps the athletes connect with their tutors and vice versa. It also means student tutors are familiar with the subject matter and possibly the professor, which allows them to offer insight as to what professors are looking for. While advisors are full-time employees of the university, and learning specialists are on at least annual contracts, tutors can change each term, depending on their own course schedules and availability. This allows for more people to work as tutors throughout the year, but also means continuity may be a bit more limited. The more money a school’s sports teams bring in, the more advantages it can offer its student-athletes both for their sport and for their academic experiences. For example, when the University of Texas spent $10 million on their football facilities, changes included putting a large television screen over each player’s locker. Each individual locker is valued at slightly under $9000, and all 126 football lockers cost over $1 million to renovate by themselves. However, nothing was mentioned about paying for more learning specialists or tutors in this money. The schools’ larger athletics budgets allow power-five schools to hire and pay for more comfortable—even luxurious—working facilities for sports, but this budget could also hire more tutors, learning specialists and advisors. If more funds were allocated toward emphasizing the academic lives of student-athletes, student-athletes could have more dedicated attention to their academic progress. Instead of only emphasizing the degree, having specialists who can develop rapport with their student-athletes would help student-athletes to raise their grades. In addition to having more specialized academic personnel than their smaller counterparts, power-five schools have buildings on campus dedicated to helping student-athletes do well in the classroom, allowing a central place for athletes to talk about—and ostensibly work on—coursework with their teammates and peers while getting help from either their peers (tutors) or from experts (learning specialists and academic advisors). In addition to this, student-athletes at these schools have sports-related amenities that smaller schools do not have access to, including professional nutritionists who help make food for the school’s teams, and

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paraprofessional weight rooms and training facilities for their sport. The cumulative effect of all of this is a high-pressure environment for studentathletes in for high-profile sports in power-five schools, but also allows student-athletes to use more extensive resources to do well in their classes. Given their lack of revenue-generating teams, schools in smaller conferences have to deal with the same NCAA demands of student-athlete eligibility, and do so with far fewer specialized academic personnel. The lack of specialized personnel means a heavier workload for each member and less specialization of tasks. This means advisors at smaller school have to be Jacks- and Jills-of-all-trades—advising about classes and developing academic skills and connecting student-athletes to resources on or off campus. A non-power five school may have up to three academic advisors to advise all of their student-athletes, while advisors at power-five schools can work with smaller teams and/or split a bigger team into groups, and focus on their groups. Most Division-2 and -3 schools have one academic advisor, who is responsible for working with all of the student-athletes on campus, and do not have the money to hire learning specialists, and hire fewer tutors to work with student-athletes. One such advisor at a Division-2 school in Southern California, Todd, noted: “student-athletes have to first talk about their degree progress with their major advisor, who may or may not be aware that these are student-athletes with different demands than other students they advise.” The school Todd advises at does not have a football team, but he is responsible for tracking the progress toward graduation for hundreds of athletes, as the school boasts men’s and women’s basketball, soccer, track and field, baseball for men, and softball and volleyball for women. Edgar, who currently advises at a power-five school in Florida, and has previously worked for a Historically Black College or University (HBCU), explains the differences in working at the two schools: The hardest challenge was, being at an HBCU, was the lack of resources. We had to think on our feet and give our athletes the best resources we could think of. We had over 300 student-athletes and no tutors, so we used the tutoring center on campus. We hired tutors, but had three tutors for 300 or so athletes. In my mind, I see sports across the same playing field, but there is a hierarchy people see, and that was difficult to deal with. I had a few teams that couldn’t utilize the tutors because of this hierarchy. Lack of resources and having to wear multiple hats, having institutional rejection – we couldn’t get the school to understand our purpose as far as

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an athletic department and how the school and us can work well together. When they NCAA comes by, they ask if the institution is aware of bylaws – I was in uncomfortable situations because of the lack of awareness of these bylaws and not following them consistently. When the NCAA comes to your campus to do an audit or data review, they’re not just looking at the athletic department, they’re also looking at academic departments (colleges) making sure that progress toward degree and that courses that count toward are degrees are being offered. It was difficult because we didn’t have all of the documentation needed. I was doing my due diligence to try and computerized files, but we were dealing with handwritten documents.

Not only is it easier for schools with large athletic departments to offer robust support to their student-athletes, the smaller schools struggle in terms of meeting student-athletes’ basic needs in the classroom, and can ultimately lead to the school violating NCAA policy. These violations are not necessarily malicious or intentional, but less money available to a school’s athletic department means fewer people can be hired to address the various facets of supporting college athletes, and this means problems arise, because there are not enough people to prevent or address them in a timely fashion. It is the college sports equivalent of a poor person making minimum payments on a credit card, forgetting to pay one month, then a second month, then suddenly being informed there is a problem. At non-power-five schools, there are no dedicated buildings for student-athletes, and often there are no learning specialists, individual advisors, or mentors. Instead, the school’s lone academic advisor is expected to keep track of every student-athlete’s progress toward earning a degree, and student-athletes are expected to seek help independently. While the ultimate goal of asking for help independently is a good goal (practical, if nothing else), it forces student-athletes into the uncomfortable position of recognizing where they are weaker academically, and not everyone is willing to admit that verbally, or able to assess that reality alone. By having both tutors who are current students and professional learning specialists available, student-athletes at power-five schools are able to hide the stigma of struggling in classes, because their struggle remains somewhat confined to an area where their peers (teammates and athletes in other sports) are receiving the same sort of help. Specialization among academic personnel allows for advisors to divide the number of players they work with more effectively, and focus on their progress more intently, than advisors at smaller schools. A college

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football team by itself has up to 125 players (up to 85 scholarship studentathletes for football teams). Rather than one advisor working with the entire football team, advisors divide a football team into smaller units within the team. For example, at one school, one advisor works with the offense and another works with the defense. At a different school, advisors can specialize even more, focusing on player position groups (one advisor working with offensive linemen and wide receivers or linebackers, another working with running backs and defensive backs, or the offensive and defensive linemen). Working with position groups allows advisors to work with the same students over a period of time, and allows them to communicate with the specific coaches who work closest with these players. Splitting players by positions, rather than by year in school, allows for more efficient communication between advisors, coaches, and student-athletes, because the player position groups are smaller than a group based on year in school would be. Working in position groups also allows teammates to hold one another accountable for performing well in the classroom, and makes for relatively smooth communication with the student-athletes and their coaches. Advisors work with position groups in football and take on one or two other school teams because the teams have fewer players on them. An advisor may work with 10–30 football players and also work with another smaller team, such as tennis or golf. In general, larger teams are broken up into smaller divisions, meaning several advisors work with them, while smaller teams work together with the same advisor. Interestingly, advisors do not divide student-athletes based on year in school, which means incoming student-athletes (freshmen and transfers) do not have dedicated advisors to help them transition to life at a four-year school.

Advisors’ Goals for Student-Athletes The advisors interviewed in this chapter care deeply about their studentathletes, wanting them to succeed both on the field and in the classroom, and they emphasize the importance of earning a degree to their studentathletes. Randy, an advisor at a power-five school in Florida, advises his student-athletes: “professional sports are not a career. At best, they are a very well-paying temporary job. A career is something that can be done for 20, 30, 40 years, and there isn’t a viable athletic career that will last that long.” The distinction between a career and a job centers on longevity—no one is able to play competitively at a professional level for

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decades. The idea is once the career is over, regardless of why it ended, the student-athlete must have skills developed to transition into a postcompetition profession. In order to develop these skills, student-athletes must invest time and energy into their academics. Other advisors, such as Zeinab, who advises at a different powerfive school in the south, support Randy’s assertion, explaining to their student-athletes that, as an athlete, regardless of competition level, “you’re always one play away from never playing again.” This could be due to injury, retirement, or being beat for a playing spot on a team (after all, sports are a competitive endeavor). This message carries more weight coming from an advisor who played college sports than it comes from a peer tutor or from a learning specialist, because the advisor has had similar playing and studying experiences. They understand the challenges their student-athletes face, because they faced these challenges themselves. These advisors proudly explain that the vast majority of their student athletes (80–95%, depending on the school and advisor) at some point buy into the importance of earning a degree, but that still leaves 5–20% of student-athletes who are convinced sport is their career and should be prioritized over school. A few advisors, like Genevieve and Julisa, both working at the same division-1 school in Southern California, point out this small group of student-athletes who need to be more convinced of school’s importance helps keep their office open and thus, keep advisors like them employed. If student-athletes didn’t need help managing their time, energy, and focus, these advisors would not be working in the job they currently have. The differences in student-athletes’ attitudes toward school and their efforts in the classroom may make advising frustrating, but also necessary. Advisors describe coaches’ mentalities today as encouraging their athletes to do well in the classroom—with eligibility as a bare minimum (floor) grade-point average rather than a ceiling, and like coaches, many advisors hammer home the message of professional sports not being a guaranteed job. This allows for messages to be consistent from studentathletes’ families, coaches, and advisors—three groups of adults who mentor and are close to the student-athletes themselves. It also reduces the instances of adversarial relationships between the academic side of campus and the athletic side, because the message is support for studentathletes to excel all around, rather than only focusing on one facet of their identity. Genevieve explains: “these students are told from a young age that they’re really good at sports – that’s why they’re competing here,

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especially if they are on scholarship. But they’re also told from [advisors, mentors, and learning specialists] and from their coaches that they are here for school.” This consistent support for academics goes against the image of student-athletes attending a school only for sports, with coaches working against professors. The messengers of the pro-academic message also matter, as they are professionals representing the university, rather than undergraduate or graduate students who are less visible in terms of their work. Further, the advisors, mentors, and learning specialists are professionals, which gives them added credibility (higher status) and assumed impartiality in that they do not benefit directly, nor are they disadvantaged directly, from a student-athlete’s eligibility status.

How Do Schools Help Student-Athletes Reach Higher Grades? Every school requires its student-athletes to attend study hall sessions throughout the week as part of their eligibility. At non-power-5 schools, student-athletes meet together in a conference room in the athletic department. This room, in some cases, is used to analyze game film from previous or to scout upcoming opponents. Student-athletes are required to meet for a certain number of hours, either per week or per day, to satisfy this requirement. Typically, incoming student-athletes are expected to attend eight to ten hours of study hall per week, and this requirement can be eased if grades are sufficiently high. Some schools, regardless of budget, allow their student-athletes to check into study hall via a computer, and as long as they sign in for the requisite number of hours, there is some supervision, but no one is necessarily making sure classwork is being completed at a high quality. Time in study hall is assumed to automatically translate to time being used efficiently and classwork being done well. Some universities have a time requirement (a student-athlete typically has to be in study hall for 8 or 10 hours per week in their first year), but they offer studentathletes an incentive: complete all of your work for the week at good (meaning passing or better) quality before those hours are done, and you can have a few hours to yourself to relax or otherwise not worry about work. This way, student-athletes are working toward completing their work with good quality, rather than just worrying about being present somewhere for a set number of hours. This approach allows the studentathletes to rest (often overlooked) and recharge either for an upcoming

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game or for the following week of classes, or to take a breath and relax a bit. Combining task completion with a number of supervised hours, along with having the needed help for student-athletes, helps student-athletes complete their degrees in a relatively smooth fashion. While this combination of flexible weekly hours contingent on finishing assignments well is growing, most schools merely enforce study hall attendance with hours, but don’t necessarily follow up by checking on student-athletes’ progress on coursework, either per session or for the week. While there are still challenges for student-athletes in terms of managing their time and energy effectively, having resources like tutors and learning specialists allows student-athletes to do well in their classes, and academic advisors help student-athletes graduate in a timely fashion (within six years of enrollment, often sooner). Without these resources, a lot more of the responsibility for academic success falls on the shoulders of student-athletes, many of whom are young, and many of whom are making a big transition—either from high school to college in general, or from a community college to a four-year university. In both transitions, moving to a four-year school may mean the academic rigor and time demands may be very different. Having academic resources allows for smoother transitions for student-athletes. While these resources may not guarantee every athlete gets straight A’s, they limit how many studentathletes struggle in classes, because there is a stronger safety net offered by the school. Regardless of sport, year in school, and NCAA division, student-athletes have to attend a form of study hall, but power-five schools offer more amenities and resources than smaller schools, and this applies to both sports and academics. Division-1 schools tend to hire former student-athletes in general to work as advisors. Their experiences as student-athletes helps advisors connect with their advisees, as they have experienced the stresses of going to class while playing a sport competitively at a high level. The advisors share insider status with student-athletes based on common experience. This also helps student-athletes see their advice as friendly, because it comes from people who have been there, done that, and faced some of the same issues they’re dealing with. If the same advice comes from a professor, it may be viewed as hostile or naïve, because the professor and the student-athlete live in different social worlds. While a professor is well-intentioned in promoting academic growth, they may not appreciate or understand the time and energy demands and stresses student-athletes

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face. This gives advisors more legitimacy and credibility when they advise their student-athletes to focus on school.

Three Challenges Student-Athletes Face Advisors focus on three main areas student-athletes struggle in, which overlap with what coaches note. One area is the lack of preparation high school offers student-athletes in terms of academic rigor and getting used to college-level work, the second is time management, and the third is mental health. Advisors describe students from certain high schools or community colleges as being recruited primarily for sports. These studentathletes struggle to make the transition from high school to college, and blamed high schools for not providing useful English, math, and/or science classes in terms of college preparation. Tanya, an advisor at a power-five school in Michigan who had previously worked for both a Division-2 and another power-five school, explains: Preparation can range depending on what school district a student is from, and our public education system is not giving effort to students equally. There’s an expectation that they have to be eligible, and you have to meet them early on. The summer bridge helps them adjust socially and to the environment and gets them used to academic rigor without the sport. I think some of the experiences I’ve seen could happen anywhere, especially when students enter with past traumas (something with family history, mental health issues, students who have had close friends die).

Summer bridge (early start) programs allow incoming student-athletes to get used to both campus life and college-level work, and Tanya’s quote suggests this start, when campus is emptier, allows academic personnel to more easily establish and cultivate a relationship with the studentathletes they work with. The inadequate preparation is, in part, based on what schools offer in terms of their teaching, but she acknowledges many student-athletes come from violent backgrounds in their homes or communities, and some begin college with mental health issues, whether related to their upbringing or otherwise. As such, mentors and advisors offer formal academic counseling, but also offer a kind ear for student-athletes, giving them a safety valve to release emotional pressures they face, and helping them succeed in academics. This student-centered approach centers the student-athlete’s individual well-being, assuming

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athletic and academic success follow better emotional and psychological health. This approach highlights the informal caregiving role academic personnel face. While they are formally tasked with helping studentathletes succeed in school, the hidden aspect to success is showing and offering consistent care. This inadequate preparation may well be a remnant of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era. Under NCLB, schools began to emphasize standardized tests in lieu of teaching transferrable academic skills beyond test-taking. As such, students grew up taking high-stakes exams throughout their high school career (if not before). Schools’ federal funding is tied student performance (scores) on the exams. As a result, teachers teach their students how to handle the sorts of questions commonly seen on standardized tests, meaning teaching focuses almost exclusively multiple-choice testing, with little writing involved. While multiple-choice tests are a fact of college life, the skills demanded by college classes often extend beyond the ability to take multiple-choice exams. These skills include the ability to work collaboratively on projects with peers, write cogent and persuasive arguments, and analyze a variety of data. These skills are not developed effectively under NCLB, leaving high school students with a skills gap between what students actually know to do and what colleges are looking for. This transition is often part of the difficulty incoming students face. Students are expected to engage with course material on a deeper level than they have practiced up until now, and are figuring out where their academic interests lay. With some student-athletes, these differences in college preparation are accentuated due to being passed through classes with minimal academic rigor, leaving a second gap—not just between expected skills and actual skills, but also between studentathletes’ academic skills and their non-athletic peers’ skills. However, even for student-athletes who learned effectively in high school, there is a steep learning curve between high school rigor and university rigor. This gap also exists for student-athletes who transfer from a community college to a four-year school. While the assumption may be “college is college”, meaning lower-level courses cover the same material regardless of school, there is still a difference in the quality of work expected, as well as the differences in level of athletic competition. Some student-athletes attend a community college out of high school as a way to compete and prepare for a four-year school while keeping tuition costs down, while others attend a community college to raise their grade-point average after

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struggling initially at a four-year school. Referring to community college as junior college (as some people do) devalues the community college experience and education. This label makes community college seem like an extension of high school, rather than the beginning of a collegiate career. When student-athletes transfer from a community college to a four-year university, they have to make a second adjustment (either high school to community college to four-year school, or four-year school to community college to new four-year school) which student-athletes who entered as freshmen made in their first year. In order to help incoming student-athletes transition, especially those in their first year, sports teams offer a “redshirt” year, where a studentathlete participates in their sport in a more limited fashion. They may practice and lift weights with their teammates, but they do not necessarily travel with the team, and they play fewer games than non-redshirt players. Redshirting allows them to acclimate to both the course rigor and their schedules as student-athletes, while experiencing less pressure in terms of games played in their first year. This also extends their athletic eligibility for a year if the redshirt is used but not burned (exhausted). This allows student-athletes to be part of a team while acclimating to a new educational environment, and puts less pressure on them to perform in games their first year, allowing student-athletes to focus on their coursework. The second main area student-athletes struggle in is managing their class and daily schedules as far as time and energy are concerned. Academic advisors elaborated on how tough it is for student-athletes to wake up earlier than most of their peers in order to lift weights or to attend a film session or practice, then go take their classes, then return for more team-related activities (a second practice), and only after all that, they go home and have to work on homework or prepare for a test, and (lest we forget) actually get some rest. This packed schedule is difficult enough at power-5 schools, where football and basketball are cash cows for the schools and student-athletes are under a media spotlight. At smaller schools, this scheduling difficulty is compounded, because some student-athletes at smaller schools not only have to juggle sports and classes, but also work part-time in order to put themselves through school. They have to work part-time because their schools have far fewer scholarship opportunities to offer student-athletes than their power-five counterparts. Mae, an advisor at a power-5 school in Southern California, explains:

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People don’t realize how much time these student-athletes invest. There’s a huge push for time constraints with the NCAA, but realistically what they’re supposed to do is 20 hours a week (practice, meetings, weight) but that doesn’t count any work they do on their own to learn the playbook or to rehab from an injury.

Mae’s comment suggests that while the formally NCAA-prescribed and regulated practice time commitment for a student-athlete is 20 hours over a six-day span, student-athletes frequently spend additional time informally progressing in their sport, and this is a hidden time commitment for them. Mental preparation such as studying playbooks is still time and energy student-athletes are devoting to their sport. If time and energy are zero-sum games, any time and energy spent preparing for their sport leaves less time and energy available for student-athletes to focus on their studies. On top of the demands of their sport, student-athletes at these smaller schools have fewer dedicated resources to help them succeed in the classroom. Time and energy management are skills many students struggle with, not just student-athletes, because these skills have not been developed effectively throughout most students’ K-12 academic careers. One way advisors try to help student-athletes is by scheduling student-athletes’ classes, removing one responsibility from a student-athlete’s shoulders while they are getting used to college. Most schools offer this service to student-athletes in at least in their initial semester enrolled, but many advisors continue to schedule classes for the student-athletes afterwards, with the student-athlete offering input on courses and major at various points throughout the semester. Over time, scheduling becomes something the advisor does for the student-athlete to something they do with the student-athlete. Their relationship develops into a partnership, as student-athletes develop their college study skills and learn to schedule and manage their time. Typically, advisors choose courses based more on when they meet than their substance. The primary concern, especially for incoming students, is to have practice times available, so classes are scheduled around when the team meets. Incoming students needing to take more introductory and fewer specialized courses as students in their first two years means course meeting times matter more than the material covered.

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One disadvantage for student-athletes in advisors selecting their classes is that while advisors can schedule courses based on graduation and majorspecific requirements and can schedule class times around a consistent practice schedule, they may not know who is teaching a specific course in a given semester. This is especially true if a school hires adjunct instructors and has them handle most of the teaching. The potential lack of continuity in terms of instructor pool means the same courses can be taught with varying degrees of difficulty and varying workloads, but the student won’t know how their specific professors teach until they are in class. There is no on-campus informal network telling advisors which faculty are more flexible in their approaches to working with student-athletes. Because student-athletes have a heavier responsibility and workload by performing at least two roles as athletes and as students, and because of their visibility as student-athletes, they have to develop time-management skills fairly quickly, or they find themselves overwhelmed. School and sports are not the only time-related obstacles student-athletes face. Mae explains: My cross-country team struggles the most – too many irons in the fire. A lot of watching siblings, working a lot of hours, practice, class. My volleyball team, most of those ladies are full ride, so they’re not worried about a job. They’re looking at med school and wondering what they need for that while staying eligible. My cross-country team comes from rougher background, less money and less support. It’s one of my favorite groups – I’m a mom and I feel mom-ish to them. I want to connect them to resources on campus to help them. Whether it’s financial aid or int’l student office or having someone to talk to when there is an issue, getting them appointments that work with their schedules, alerting them of disenrollment, getting into the system so they don’t navigate it on their own. I feel like I’m a connector so I connect them with people to help them go where they need to get to. You’re looking at how close they are to graduate and what are they accomplishing.

Like the other advisors interviewed for this chapter, Mae wants her student-athletes to succeed, and many advisors feel like they are family with their student-athletes, because of the time spent and watching student-athletes grow through their struggles. Mae’s comment hints at the importance of student-athletes having consistently-adequate financial support, because this money reduces the student-athletes’ need for outside work on top of both sports and school. Her comment suggests

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some student-athlete scholarships should be based on financial need, not just athletic performances. Offering this safety net to student-athletes can help them excel both in their classes and in their sport by removing a time demand and a source of stress. The third main obstacle advisors discuss is their student-athletes’ mental health. Min, an advisor at a Division-1 school in Southern California, explains student-athletes have to learn time management, “huge and on top of that, mental health is a huge thing coming up lately. Learning coping strategies with the things that are coming up like depression, anxiety, eating disorders. They’re dealing with things I didn’t see a lot of in college, but they’re on the rise.” Similarly, Christian, who advises at a power-5 school in Northern California, echoes this by saying: One issue we’ve seen rising is mental health (depression, anxiety, being inadequate). It can be overwhelming in the classroom – this is a D1 school so they’ve been doing the physical stuff their whole lives, there’s more of a comfort level there. The mental health compounds – the pressure of the sport, financial expenses, living away from home, balancing everything. This semester I’ve had 2 athletes who had to withdraw because they were overwhelmed. I think students used to be more resilient with handling things. When I talk to recruits, I tell them that their parents are helping them with their time and how to prioritize, but the best thing to do is to start managing your own time.

Min’s and Christian’s comments, echoed by the other academic personnel interviewed in this chapter, suggest when student-athletes struggle to manage their time, this can lead student-athletes to feeling overwhelmed, which in turn can lead to mental health problems. Their statements suggest student-athletes need help both with learning to manage their time effectively, and they also need mental health services available and accessible. This help may be tough for student-athletes to receive, depending on the availability of mental health resources on campus, and because mental illness has been stigmatized. One coping mechanism people use to avoid being stigmatized for mental illness is to avoid discussing it. For student-athletes, the stigma of mental illness may be compounded due to the image they want to present as student-athletes. Studentathletes typically want to present themselves as strong, confident, and in control of their lives—and this image overrides the stresses or problems they face in sports and school, whether playing in front of a hostile crowd

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on the road or getting a low grade on a test. The clash between their inner struggles and how they portray themselves to others can exacerbate these struggles, which can snowball into lower grades and/or worse performances in competition. If a student-athlete succeeds more in their sport while struggling in classes, they may devote more time and energy into their sport. Their identity as a successful athlete shines and overshadows their identity as a struggling student. Creating an encouraging and supportive campus-wide, athletics department, and team-specific culture offers student-athletes help when needed. This culture can help student-athletes excel further in school and sports, and can be influential in helping their personal lives. Lauren, an advisor at a power-five school in Michigan, explains why women athletes, especially in sports like gymnastics, track and field, and crew face mental health issues: I think the biggest part is the identity part. They say “I am an athlete”, and get here. Realistically, most have 4-5 years they’re going to be an athlete, and then figure out what to do. We push sports heavily, and it’s great, I want my kids to play, but they’re so focused on that, and not what’s after that. They put so much time and effort into their sport, and what if something goes wrong? They’re stripped of their sport and it’s like “who am I?” …. Women athletes get body issues because of their sport (gymnastics and track and field and rowing – constant weighing which played into some things. You would do a workout and get a score, and adjust it based on weight. You have this image in society of what it means to be feminine, but you’re an athlete so you hit the weights and bulk up, and the feminine part of your brain is like “I’m supposed to be small and look like this picture”. I think we have a better culture around mental health. For men, concussions is a hot topic that people pay attention to, and that plays into their academic role, harder to go to class.

The projected image her student-athletes have of themselves includes not only being in control of their lives, but also wanting to reconcile potentially-conflicting identities as both athletes and as feminine. Lifting weights helps the athlete side, but is not reconciled with what these athletes feel they are supposed to look like. Physical injuries, especially concussions, can also lead to mental health issues for student-athletes. While concussions are getting more attention in the media and by the medical community than they received 10 or 15 years ago (Ahmed and Hall 2017), student-athletes still risk concussions

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and their effects (especially in contact sports like football), and concussions can affect performance on the field and in the classroom, as well as a person’s life. Headaches, memory loss, potentially escalating into a loss of control over executive functioning (making poor decisions due to either getting angry very quickly, or not assessing risks and benefits), and poor emotion regulation can stem from concussions (Markowitz and Markowitz 2013). Another way money in collegiate sports plays itself out is in the scholarships offered to student-athletes. Not only do Division-1 schools offer better facilities and more dedicated personnel to helping student-athletes perform well in the classroom, but the scholarships these student-athletes earn may allow them to reduce some stresses related to being a college student. However, these scholarships are a double-edged sword, as it may be tougher for a Division 1 athlete to work while attending school (for fear of favoritism or gambling), which means whatever life expenses they face (needing money for food, car repairs, medicine, or to help their families) has to be covered by the amount they receive from their scholarship. This means they have to be able to manage their finances and their time, and both of these are under-developed skills in high school. One possible avenue to help student-athletes would be for the NCAA to set aside academic scholarships specifically for student-athletes, both based on academic achievement and based on financial needs. This could either be administered through the member schools, or through the NCAA directly, with the NCAA determining the criteria for academic excellence worthy of funding. Reducing this financial stress may reduce the number of hours student-athletes have to work outside of school, and would allow them to save more energy for school and sports.

Challenges Student-Athletes Face: School Transitions Student-athletes struggle with transitioning to life at a four-year university, in terms of academic rigor and skill demanded. For first-year students, college is a very different social world and experience compared to high school. They may take fewer classes any given day than they did in high school, especially if their high school did not use a block schedule (six or seven courses in high school, four or five courses in college). Attendance in classes is generally encouraged but not necessarily required by all professors. In some states, attendance is not considered part of the

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grade, which means attendance cannot be required. However, professors may work around this by promoting in-class participation as part of a student’s course grade in lieu of focusing on attendance.1 By focusing on participation, there is no penalty for missing an occasional lecture, just no reward (the grade does not change). Some students (athletes or otherwise!) take advantage of flexible classroom attendance policies judiciously, and only miss classes when they have to (illness including mental health days, family emergency, car troubles, or outside work obligations; for student-athletes this list also includes travel to away competitions), while other students interpret these policies as an excuse to attend class sporadically. Students who miss classes consistently miss out on a large chunk of material, because they are not involved in the professor’s explanations and/or the discussions about material the class has. Learning is an interactive process and is far more involved than passively reading through texts, and more involved than an instructor merely reading off slides or out of a book. Learning means actively engaging with the material in different ways, such as reading, making flashcards, and discussing material together. Without initial exposure to course material, students who miss class regularly will generally struggle on exams, papers, or assignments. Students who regularly miss classes are students in name, but not in practice or habits. In order to help student-athletes adjust to college life, some schools allow incoming student-athletes to take summer bridge courses, where they take introductory (general education) courses during the summer before their first fall term. These classes are designed to get studentathletes used to college-level work as well as learning their campus a bit for classroom and learning resources. During this time, there are few (if any, depending on sport) mandatory team activities such as organized practices, and no upcoming games in the summer. This allows the student-athletes to focus on their academics, to get their college gradepoint average off to a strong start, and allows them to gain familiarity with their campus before it gets crowded in fall semester. Students transferring from community college make two different transitions: from high school to the community college level, and from

1 Author’s note: this is something I do with my courses—students get credit for asking or answering questions in class, or by posting on class discussion boards after the shift to online learning.

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community college to the four-year university level. For some community college student-athletes, the community college represents a bridge between stints at four-year schools. Some enter a four-year university out of high school and struggle academically, athletically, and/or behaviorally, and leave the four-year school (voluntarily or otherwise). Their stay at a community college is a chance to rehabilitate their grade-point average, academic career, and/or behavior, and offers four-year schools a second chance to recruit these student-athletes. The challenges academic advisors face at the community college level is instilling basic study skills that will translate to the four-year university level for all of their student-athletes, and the challenges the advisors at four-year schools have is raising the student-athletes’ academic performance level to match the rigor expected at the four-year school. Advisors who work at schools without dedicated learning specialists perform a bit of double-duty, both helping studentathletes choose their course schedules, but also helping develop their study skills. The advantage advisors have in schools with more dedicated academic staff for student-athletes is they can specialize in helping student-athletes progress toward their degree, and work with them on broad academic skills. This includes taking a student-athlete’s syllabi for all of their courses early in the term, and writing out all of the tests, papers, and assignment due dates, along with game and travel dates, on a calendar, in a planner, or both, thus making time commitments, obligations, and deadlines more visible for the student-athlete. Proactive planning allows learning specialists to work with student-athletes on course-specific skill and knowledge development, but this typically only happens at power-five schools due to their larger athletics budget.

Advisors as Academic Liaisons Advisors act as academic liaisons, enabling smooth communication between the student-athletes, their coaches, and their professors. Learning specialists and tutors who work with student-athletes are not faculty at the universities they advise. Instead, tutors are students themselves. Some learning specialists are adjunct professors at nearby schools, some are retired collegiate faculty, and some are high school teachers supplementing their income. The reason faculty from a student-athlete’s school cannot work as academic advisors there is to reduce chances of conflicts of interest, so academics and sports are effectively two different social worlds on the same campus. The separation between faculty and sports

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teams is needed due to a fear of keeping student-athletes eligible, due to pressure from athletic departments to keep star players on the field or court, and a fear of professors stigmatizing student-athletes for prioritizing their sports and penalizing their student-athletes formally (with lower grades) or informally (with nasty remarks). This mentality hearkens back to an older divisive mindset, pitting school against sports, and assumed a student-athlete could and would only care about one aspect of this identity and not the other. The adversarial approach is less commonly seen today than in previous years. Instead, there is a sense of buffered cooperation between faculty and coaches, with advisors acting as intermediaries. Rather than framing success as an “either/or” endeavor (you can be good at either school or at sports, but not both), coaches and advisors view academic and athletic success as a “both/and” situation. This allows for both coaches and advisors to give student-athletes consistent messages about doing well in classes, rather than neglecting coursework for sports. Advisors effectively act as liaisons or network connections between coaches, student-athletes, and professors. Advisors periodically ask faculty for the academic progress of student-athletes (two or three times per term), and professors inform the advisors of student-athletes’ grades and impressions in the classroom. While faculty assign a grade on progress reports, they can also note how the student-athlete is performing in the class—a student who may have struggled on the first exam, but participates in class regularly, gets a bit more wiggle room than a student-athlete who does not attend or participate in class. The professor can also voice concerns about the student-athlete failing the class. At no point does the professor mention athletic eligibility in these communications; the communication is limited to strictly in-class performance. This information is relayed to coaches, who determine playing time as well as study-hall time, and adjust mandatory study hall hours based on these reports. As a hypothetical example, let’s pretend there are two studentathlete teammates struggling in the same class. One student-athlete has submitted her assignments at passable or better quality (C or better), and is consistently engaged in class when attending, but she struggled on an exam. Her teammate may be performing worse in terms of assignments, participation, and/or test scores, but ultimately, the advisor and their coach sees two teammates in danger of not passing a class, and all three have to decide on an appropriate course of action to help studentathletes raise their grades. Both of these student-athletes’ overall grades

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are reported to the school’s athletics department and their coaches, but paint an incomplete picture. The reason for student-athletes’ classroom struggles may be different, and if professors do not explain the reason for the grades, helping student-athletes improve their grades is tougher. The reason for classroom struggles varies among students, and helping them succeed requires different solutions. The remedy for a low grade based on not turning in assignments is different than if a student does poorly on one exam right before progress reports are submitted. Effectively using these approaches must be based on understanding the nature of the challenges a student-athlete faces. If advisors are academic liaisons, they should receive input from faculty as to how to help student-athletes. If professors are given the room to give their impressions of how the student-athlete is performing, they should explain how the student-athlete can improve in class. If a student-athlete appears tired in classes, maybe they can adjust their workout times or days—a way to allow the student-athlete to remain with the team, rather than outing them as struggling, while offering them a path to doing better in the class. In the case of someone doing poorly on an exam but otherwise performing well, a professor can allow for some flexibility or allow for future exams to count more heavily, allowing a poor score on an early exam to be replaced by better scores on future exams. For the student-athlete who is less engaged, the professor can make eligibility be based contingent on increased engagement with the course, in addition to performance on assignments and tests. This would allow professors to have a greater say in the progress of a student-athlete’s success, and allow an adoption of a more holistic evaluation, compared to only looking at results on tests or projects. This more comprehensive approach allows for transparent communication between academics and athletics, and allow for a plan to keep student-athletes academically eligible to compete without necessarily punishing them with reduced playing time for struggling in the classroom. This method offers student-athletes a greater voice in their athletic eligibility and allows for a more holistic and transparent process. It allows faculty to help find solutions to help student-athletes do well in classes while playing games, but not punishing them for struggling in class. This approach allows student-athletes to compete with their teams, and hopefully offers student-athletes some flexibility to meet their academic challenges. The next chapter makes the case for reimagining college sports and figuring out solutions to help student-athletes thrive in the classroom.

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References Ahmed, Osman Hassan, and Eric E. Hall. 2017. It Was Only a Mild Concussion: Exploring the Description of Sports Concussion in Online News Articles. Physical Therapy in Sport 23: 7–13. Markowitz, Jeffrey S., and Ariana Markowitz. 2013. Pigskin Crossroads: The Epidemiology of Concussions in the National Football League, 2010–2012. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

CHAPTER 7

Reimagining College Sports and Student-Athletes

Student-athletes are motivated, dedicated, intelligent, hard-working students. Their families, coaches, and advisors at all athletic levels consistently preach academic effort leading success, which is well-intentioned, but does not account for the obstacles they face and the ensuing struggles. These struggles often center on lack of available time and energy for doing classwork well, and this is compounded by student-athletes trying to project an image of being in control of their lives at all times, for fear of looking weak. This chapter examines how coaches, the NCAA, and a school’s academic personnel can help student-athletes thrive in their classes, and offers advice to student-athletes themselves. It makes the case to see student-athletes as overwhelmed by responsibilities, rather than not caring about school. The NCAA earns roughly $1 billion annually, mostly off the television contract it has for the men’s basketball tournament, with ticket sales for championship football games (bowls) raising more than $100 million. Its power-five conferences have lucrative television broadcast contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This money is generated through the efforts of student-athletes. The assumption is scholarships are sufficient rewards for athletic and academic achievement, but this assumption does not consider the time and energy concerns student-athletes have, nor are scholarship amounts commensurate with the revenue studentathletes generate for their schools. This situation presents student-athletes © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Blum, Sports, Study, or Sleep, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6_7

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in a catch-22: attend a school in a lower athletic division and thus, risk less exposure for professional scouts, but retain the opportunity to earn money through employment while studying and competing. The cost of this would be more time and energy spent, as this would be a third set of obligations, on top of coursework and athletics. Student-athletes who attend power-five schools are gambling that playing at bigger-name schools against tougher competition, and having more appearances on television (due to conferences having contracts with television stations) will get them the recognition for a chance at professional sports, but at the cost of being able to earn money while in school, and risking losing their scholarship due to poor grades, injury, or game performance. In both cases, student-athletes face demands on their time and energy their peers don’t, given their schedules, and some student-athletes have to regiment their time to allow for work, sports, and school. There is a cruel irony that student-athletes at the schools receiving the most money because of their sports programs are excluded from opportunities to earn money while in school and while having to negotiate their sport and their classes. This book highlights structural obstacles and social settings that affect student-athlete successes, and suggests ways of working around these obstacles to encourage student-athlete academic achievement. These structural obstacles include the number of courses taken, scheduling classes so that they do not conflict with practice time, the practical considerations of maintaining eligibility while in-season, and the personal challenges of managing time and energy for both classes and sports. The social settings affecting student-athlete success include the athletic division a university competes in, along with whether a professional career in the sport is feasible, and these two things are related. Power-five universities are higher profile in their athletics programs, and have more games broadcast regionally and nationally, and conferences have television contracts, which they divide among member schools. Given the financial incentive for winning in these sports for coaches, and the possibility of a professional career for student-athletes, a heavier emphasis is placed on athletic success. Conversely, because not every sport has a lucrative professional career, and because lower-division schools are not on television as frequently, there is less incentive to focus exclusively on athletics and more of an incentive to focus on academics for both coaches and student-athletes at these schools.

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Power-five football and men’s basketball coaches might check on student attendance in classes and/or rely on academic advisors for periodic updates on student-athletes’ grades. Other than that, these coaches may remain hands-off and passive on classroom issues, so long as their players stay academically eligible to play. These coaches are more reactive than proactive, waiting for problems to arise before acting. Reactive actions include not allowing a student-athlete to play or practice until grades are improved, forcing extra exercise before practice as a form of punishment, or assigning study hall hours for student-athletes. These coaches typically do not emphasize having a team grade-point average that is significantly higher than the NCAA-mandated 2.0 (C) average. Coaches do not reward school success with more playing time. Academic success must be pursued and achieved within the context of the sport (e.g. as long as you can practice and produce on the field or court, your grades are up to you as a student), as coaches are loath to allow studentathletes to miss practices for any reason, even academic ones. Any practice time missed is seen as a player less prepared for an upcoming game, and this puts the team at risk of losing. Given that coaches’ salaries are tied to wins, and they and their players are competitive and wish to win frequently, athletics are emphasized practically, while academics are paid lip service. The reason for this can be tied to revenue generated by powerfive football and men’s basketball, which means coaches in these sports at these schools feel institutional pressures to win at costs, including their student-athletes’ educations. One way to address this issue is to look at coaching compensation. Coaches are hired, paid, and retained based on their teams’ athletic success, rather than how their players perform academically, and so they prioritize athletic success while talking about academic success. They are frequently paid from two different sources (the university and its boosters), and the contracts coaches have from the university and from boosters should have different incentive structures. For example, as boosters reward athletic performances such as wins or impressive individual statistics, universities could offer their coaches a lower base salary with more money offered for players reaching various academic benchmarks. This approach would let a university reward academic excellence and maintain the boosters’ ability to reward wins. Student-athletes receive explicit and implicit messages about the importance of school from their families, friends, coaches, teammates and various academic personnel on campus. Messages from family, coaches,

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and advisors explicitly and overwhelmingly preach academic effort leading to success, while implicit messages from coaches may include implied focus on football and basketball at power-five schools, but also include the threat of sport-related punishment for under-performance in the classroom regardless of school. These punishments include early practices or extra running before practice, assigning extra study-hall hours until grades are raised, reducing playing time for missed practices, or potentially either awarding or removing a scholarship, depending on both athletic and academic achievement. These actions punish academic struggles, and do little to understand why a student-athlete is struggling, and treat sports as both a reward and an obligation. The problem in framing these actions as punishments for academic under-performance is people generally try to avoid punishment, and this extra exercise may hurt grades more than they help. If a student-athlete is missing classes, a more holistic approach would involve talking with the student-athlete to understand why they are not going to classes. The assumption is missing classes is because of laziness, but students may skip classes because of exhaustion, feeling overwhelmed in the class and embarrassed to ask for help, or having family obligations. Framing exercise as a punishment for missing classes makes school be a punishment or as a cost to pay in order to play sports, but playing sports at a highly-competitive level demands effort and work on its own. As such, it’s threatening to withhold one job (sports) if a second job (school) isn’t done well enough. While power-five football and men’s basketball coaches have strong financial incentives to prioritize athletic success, their coaching counterparts at schools in lower divisions and/or in smaller sports emphasize academic success along with winning games. This latter group of coaches practice what they preach, by having a team grade point average above the NCAA-mandated threshold for eligibility, and allowing their student-athletes to occasionally miss practices in order to work on school assignments when needed. Student-athletes are allowed to miss practices with no penalty in terms of playing time, and may continue to compete normally. Coaches in non-revenue-generating sports voiced concerns that because of the revenue they generate, power-five football and men’s basketball hold disproportionate power in setting NCAA policy for other sports and schools. Those two sports control the NCAA’s rules in terms of eligibility and practice time allotment, and what works for those sports does not necessarily work well for other sports. The current “one size

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fits all” approach from the NCAA may be counterproductive for studentathlete success. A better approach would be for the NCAA to have some flexibility in its rules about practice hours allotment to best fit the needs of the student-athletes in each sport, to allow them to compete effectively while excelling in the classroom. This proposed approach would recognize the reality that different sports have different time demands, and may allow for more flexibility for student-athletes in selecting their classes. Rather than insisting on “stubborn stability” (Sanford et al. 2020) standards, which are inflexible and rigid, having flexible time demands can allow student-athletes to tailor their course schedules both around practices (as they currently do) and around their academic interests more regularly, instead of only focusing on academic interests when their sport is out of season. Coaches, especially those in less-lucrative sports and at smaller schools, typically don’t rely solely on a punitive approach to grades. These coaches encourage academic success from their student-athletes by setting goals for overall team-wide grade-point average, as well as for their individual athletes. Allowing their players to miss practices without penalty in order to complete academic requirements reinforces academic success as a consistent message. Further, if school scholarships are tied to athletic success rather than academic success, and there is additional money available informally for playing sports well from boosters, there is no financial motivation for student-athletes to exert themselves beyond the NCAA or team threshold needed to maintain athletic eligibility. Student-athletes are competitive, hard-working, and highly motivated to succeed in their sport and in their classes. As money is informally offered to players for playing well, there should be a similarly informal pool of money for academic excellence. Rather than only punishing under-performance, this revised approach allows academic achievement to be tangibly rewarded. Student-athletes are unquestionably and justifiably proud of their successes in the classroom and in their sports. Student-athletes who graduate are immensely proud of their accomplishment, often highlighting the academic achievement of graduating over their sports success. They are proud of representing their school, and student-athletes highlight their pride in managing the stresses of being students, thus needing certain grades to be at a certain level, as well as being athletes expected to compete at a high level. They mention struggling with their managing time and energy, and some are clever by scheduling classes that allow them to earn high grades with less than maximum effort. Rather than viewing

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this behavior as stemming from laziness, I suggest student-athletes taking easier classes when in-season is pragmatic thinking to the structural obstacles of needing a certain grade-point average while having specific times and energy available for practices. These are obstacles that non-athlete students do not face, as workplaces typically do not demand a certain grade-point average to earn a salary, even if energy and time demands are similar. Further, students who work are not considered as representing their workplace when they are at school, while student-athletes represent their school during this work. What may seems to make a difference between successful and unsuccessful student-athletes is twofold: the magnitude of academic problems faced, and the availability of resources. One such resource is the support network student-athletes have, both in terms of encouragement and in terms of offering practical advice and help with classes.

Maximizing Effort in the Classroom: Fighting the Apathetic Student-Athlete Image, and a New Way of Examining Student-Athlete Attitude This book challenges previous research that blames student-athletes’ lower academic achievement on their attitudes and academic capabilities. Rather than student-athletes beginning with high aspirations that are worn down over time with skepticism from their professors and peers, or student-athletes not caring at all about school and only caring about sports, the student-athletes interviewed in this book emphasize receiving positive messages from the people closest to them as motivations to complete their degrees. However, words alone are not enough. There have to be concrete options and sufficient resources available to support student-athlete success. These resources include advisors, tutors, and learning specialists, and an opportunity to complete coursework in terms of time and physical tools—such as working computers with an internet connection. Student-athletes regularly empty the tank—expend available energy—on both school and sports, and this shows they are intrinsically motivated to compete and improve their skills, both in their sports and in the classroom. The image of the aloof student-athlete snoring in the back of the classroom seems to be mistaken, and needs to be reconsidered.

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Rather than viewing class absences as a lack of interest in course material, professors, coaches, advisors and other supporters need to realize student-athletes may be exhausted and trying to hide it, by playing “too cool for school.” Student-athletes are incredibly motivated and proud of their efforts, and want to project an air of confidence and control. Being exhausted from practices or games can challenge this image. Studentathletes show up to their classes already tired, so they may not have the energy to be able to focus well. This makes it more likely they will use class time to get some much-needed rest, because have no opportunity for it at home. The role of the aloof student-athlete is accessible to both student-athletes and their professors, an academic trope of sorts. Sleeping in class or missing class is interpreted as a student-athlete not caring about academics and instead, only focusing on their sports. In the rare instances that negative messages were conveyed from instructor or professor to student-athlete, student-athletes mentioned losing interest in their classes and doing enough to pass, but not trying to excel. This interpretation lends itself to professors and student-athletes viewing one another as adversaries, rather than two parties who want the student-athlete to succeed. The professor interprets the sleep as a student-athlete not caring, and the student-athlete thinks the professor is out to prevent them from playing the sport they love and from pursuing their lifelong dreams. I encourage professors to talk to their student-athletes who miss classes, in order to find ways for student-athletes to succeed. This kindness should not be mistaken for lowering class standards or passing student-athletes for minimal effort. Rather, it should be viewed as a way for teaching and learning as a cooperative and collaborative endeavor; a working partnership between students and professors. For those concerned about a course not being rigorous due to kindness, I would suggest that “academic rigor” means more than “punitive toughness,” and creating a class which is academically challenging does not need to be compounded with mean-spiritedness. Rigor can mean learning new content or developing new skills (ideally both!), but learning happens more when both parties are willing to work together, rather than viewing each other with hostility. None of the student-athletes interviewed in this book mention school being downplayed by their teammates, and few mentioned negative responses from instructors. However, they all mentioned contending with time constraints placed on them due to their athletics participation, such as practices and meetings. Practices are held at specific times, and with attendance mandatory, student-athletes have to schedule their

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classes around practices. The exception to this is running sports such as track and field, which allow some flexibility to student-athletes who can run on their own schedules if they can’t make a practice. When coaches allow student-athletes to miss practice time without a penalty due to an academic obligation, it underscores coaching commitment to academic achievement. Conversely, coaches who do not allow student-athletes to miss practice time for classes do not reward effort in the classroom. This is not due to coaches having something against academics. Rather, this approach is related to the pressures coaches face in having to win consistently in order to save their own jobs. They convey those pressures to their athletes by demanding they be ready for games and demanding eligibility, not excellence in the classroom. Given the various challenges in navigating course schedules and majors, and in balancing sports, school, and/or work, student-athletes are justifiably proud in their efforts in the classroom and on the field. Student-athletes are highly motivated and highly competitive, and these characteristics translated to both sports and the classroom. The idea of “emptying the tank” by giving a maximum effort was consistent for the student-athletes interviewed in this study, and applied to both schoolwork as well as sports. This suggests some student-athletes believe in maximizing their efforts, both in the classroom and in their sport. This can be related to professionalism and competitiveness. As athletes are competitive, they want to appear and perform at their best, and may not care what the setting is. What matters is succeeding as they define it—wins, setting personal records, matching their competition, or earning high grades. This also suggests, given the prevalence of maximizing effort, poor grades may not be related to apathy or a lack of effort on coursework. Despite messages about maximizing effort in both sports and school, there is an acknowledgement among student-athletes that not all of their teammates care about doing well academically. Some student-athletes suggest that their teammates who did not care about doing well in their classes also did not do well in their sport, meaning that perceived apathy crossed both areas for some student-athletes, rather than substituting competence in sports for academic competence. Student-athletes might have avoided offering explanations due to not wanting to be viewed as gossiping about their current or former teammates, thus offering their teammates a chance to save face, as they were not “outed” (individually identified by name), and no reason or judgment was offered for their struggles.

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Every school has student-athletes who prioritize academics over sports, as well as those who prioritize sports over academics and focus on the goal of remaining eligible, but do not focus beyond that. It is important to note there was no comparative group of non-athlete students in this study, so one cannot assume student-athletes are more apathetic or less apathetic than their non-athletic peers, as there is no group of non-athletic students to compare student-athlete responses to. With that in mind, given the number of students enrolled at any given point, and the number of student-athletes playing intercollegiate sports, it is not surprising there is variation in how seriously student-athletes view their academics, with some students highly motivated, some students not motivated at all, and most students falling somewhere between the two extremes.

NCAA Policy, Team, and School-Specific Suggestions In addition to changing the way college coaches are paid and legitimating boosters who can reward academic excellence, there are educational recommendations to help student-athletes succeed in their classes. One recommendation is to allow student-athletes to take a lighter course load, in terms of credit hours, when their sport is in season. This would allow student-athletes to devote more time and energy to their team, allowing them to take a heavier course load during the off-season, when eligibility is not as much of a concern. Student-athletes already schedule their classes in-season based on practice times, and taking tougher classes out of season in order to not jeopardize their eligibility; making this policy would allow student-athletes to focus on athletics during their season when playing time is a salient consideration, and allow them to focus on academics exclusively when games are not going on. One problem that could arise is multi-sport athletes who play sports during multiple academic terms in a given year, as they may not have an actual off-season. One possibility to help both multi-sport athletes and single-sport athletes is to extend the academic scholarship to a fifth or sixth year, to allow for the degree to be completed after the student-athlete is no longer playing. Student-athletes who report succeeding in their classes do so in part because their teams demanded a higher grade-point average from their players than the threshold for eligibility. While the NCAA sets the bar at a C average (2.0), there are student-athletes whose teams demand a higher academic threshold, somewhere along a C+/B− team average (2.5–2.7).

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By setting this higher threshold, teams emphasize the importance of educational achievement from student-athletes by encouraging higher grades by connecting grades to playing opportunities. However, motivation alone is not enough. Schools can teach their students, including their student-athletes, to be proactive with their studies. For studentathletes, that would mean allowing for practices to be missed due to academic reasons, with no penalty. The idea is to reward students for being proactive with their academics, and at the very least, not punishing them for doing so. This idea maintains the possibility of punishment of reduced playing time if grades are not to the team’s requirements, and rewards student-athletes who exhibit academic effort by allowing them to continue to compete without a penalty. The NCAA should also increase its funding for educational success for all member schools. Currently, the NCAA spends $49 million (out of roughly $1 billion) on an academic enhancement fund for Division-1 schools. This money does a lot of good work—it allows for spacious study halls with computers for student-athletes, and allows these schools to hire learning specialists, tutors, and academic advisors. Having more people in these roles allows for each student-athlete to have more individual attention from people who want them to do well in their classes. The NCAA should increase this amount, and also offer an academic enhancement fund for lower-division schools. If the NCAA cares about student-athletes as students, then it should put its money where its mouth is, and offer these student-athletes the best chances to succeed in the classroom. Depending on the NCAA division a student-athlete competes in, an athlete may be allowed to work for money. This is allowed at smaller schools offering fewer athletic scholarships. However, this means studentathletes have even more demands on their time—their academics, their sport, and their job. Given the rigors and demands of all three, this places heavy responsibilities on student-athletes. One way to improve studentathlete performance in the classroom would be the NCAA offering a monthly stipend to all student-athletes to cover expenses, separate from scholarships. This would remove some of the time constraints on student-athletes’ time, and having a stipend covering certain expenses means that student-athletes could focus both on academics and athletics without worrying about not having enough money for groceries or rent. This would be a uniform stipend covering all NCAA student-athletes, regardless of division, athletic conference, or sport.

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College teams should encourage peer-mentoring programs, in which older teammates help younger teammates succeed in their classes. While this may be interpreted as figuring out which instructors have the lightest workload, the idea is to not only demonstrate the skills in the classroom, as upper-level students are not in the same classes as lower-level students, but to offer advice, encouragement, and working together to succeed academically. Some schools do this by having small groups of teammates attend study hall together. However, these are often based on position on the team or arbitrarily assigned by coaches. Instead, I would recommend that juniors and seniors mentor their first-year and sophomore teammates, but also find people in the same major and classes to work together on their own work. Ideally, there would be friendly competition from players pushing one another to excel in the classes, more than the idea of teammates sabotaging one another’s efforts or not helping as a way of getting more playing time. Time management is an area many students, athletes or otherwise, struggle with, because this is a skill professors assume students have. Unfortunately, students are typically not given adequate preparation for this in their K-12 education. I co-host a podcast on effective teaching and learning called Learning Made Easier with Dr. Adam G. Sanford (hooray, shameless self-promotion!). In Learning Made Easier, Dr. Sanford and I have a detailed five-part series on time management (episodes 12–16; our podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Android, and we are hosted on Blubrry.com for anyone who would like to check us out). We emphasize making tasks and time visible by putting due dates both in a planner and on a wall calendar, and using alarms or text messaging services to send reminders of these due dates. We also teach about prioritizing tasks, emphasizing urgency (what needs to be done in the next 24–72 hours) and relative importance. These skills can be developed both in the classroom and with the team—part of meetings with coaches, advisors, and mentors can include learning how to effectively manage course demands, and realizing that these skills demand repetition and practice. Universities should offer a course for all incoming students, including student-athletes and transfer students, detailing what is needed to succeed in the classroom at this university. This course can be run as a proseminar, with faculty from different departments explaining what they teach, what they research, and what they expect from students. Students frequently begin their college careers without a clear idea of what effort is necessary in order to succeed academically, from time management, to

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note-taking in class, to bringing materials to class, to attending class regularly. If instructors do not take the time to explain early on in a student’s academic career and instead, assume that all students know what it takes to succeed, students who do not succeed are viewed as failing due to personal choice—they know what it takes to succeed, yet don’t succeed, suggesting that they must not want to succeed. However, it may be the case that students do not know what the requirements are in order to succeed, and one way of addressing that is a course all students take emphasizing study skills, time management, and general rules to succeed in school. This study suggests student-athletes are pragmatic, with their course schedules based around their athletic responsibilities, taking easier classes in-season when eligibility is a paramount concern, and taking more challenging classes out of season when they can risk lower grades because playing time is not at stake. This also suggests making academic success something practical and pragmatic would help student-athletes, as they are already making decisions based on pragmatic considerations. A last financial option to give student-athletes incentives to graduate is to have professional sports teams or leagues have clauses in the contract to reward degree completion for athletes who enter their league’s draft prior to earning their degrees. This could take the form of giving an incentive to players who complete their degree within a specified time after entering the draft. By having leagues pay these bonuses rather than individual teams, players avoid conflicts with owners who may not want to pay for degree completion, as they may argue that the players are there to play, not to finish school. Having leagues compensate gives players incentives to finish their degrees, and may act as an impetus to take academics seriously while in school. While in school, their athletic eligibility is a motivating factor, and offering financial compensation for completing the degree may act as an incentive to excel in the classroom before and after the student-athlete career is completed. This book began with Cardale Jones and student-athletes’ struggles, and it should end with him and student-athlete successes. If Cardale Jones’ tweet in 2012 shows a typical attitude of student-athletes in their early collegiate years, his aggravation becomes less surprising. This can be understood as a young adult frustrated as having to contend with new structural issues—how to manage his classes while competing for a starting job on a high-profile college football team. In May 2017, Jones graduated from Ohio State University, and made fun of his earlier tweet, pasting “Sum1 once said we ain’t here to play school” on his graduation

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cap, and tweeting his intent to attend graduate school in December 2017, writing “went from not wanting to “play school” to wanting to go to grad school” (Ward 2014; Bennett 2015; Lesmerises 2019). The contrast in his attitudes and tweets suggests a level of maturity and accepting education as worthy of his effort and time, and similar to other student-athletes, a shift in focus from sports to school. This is a change many student-athletes make, realizing at some point, they will need academic skills to help them after college when they stop competing. Cardale Jones tweeted and posted a picture of his mortarboard highlighting his pride in his academic achievement while he was on a professional football roster, getting drafted by Buffalo in 2016, then going to the Los Angeles Chargers and finishing his NFL career on the Seattle Seahawks’ practice squad. He also played for the D.C. Defenders of the XFL in 2019. Cardale Jones is a success story in multiple respects: he was a scholarship athlete at a high-profile university, graduated with a degree, and began a professional athletic career. His graduation highlights a very positive trend, in that student-athletes graduate at a much higher rate than non-student athletes (86–64% as of 2017). This higher graduation rate shows that student-athletes are driven to succeed, both in their sport and in their classes, and should be lauded and recognized for their efforts in the classroom.

References Bennett, Brian. 2015. Cardale Jones Defying All Expectations, Precedent. ESPN. com. Lesmerises, Doug. 2019. Cardale Jones—From Playing School to Graduating from Ohio State—Got It Right. https://www.cleveland.com/osu/2017/05/ cardale_jones_-_from_playing_s.html. Sanford, Adam G., Dinur Blum, and Stacy L. Smith. 2020. Seeking Stability in Unstable Times: COVID-19 and the Bureaucratic Mindset. In COVID19: Social Consequences and Cultural Adaptations, ed. J. Michael Ryan. New York: Routledge. Ward, Austin 2014. Infamous Cardale Jones Tweet a ‘Steppingstone’. ESPN.com, 12/23/2014. Accessed 1/6/15. http://espn.go.com/blog/big ten/print?id=113177.

Appendices

Appendix A: Power-Five Conferences and Member Schools Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)

Big 10

Big 12

Pac 12

Southeastern Conference (SEC)

Boston College Clemson Duke Florida State Georgia Tech Louisville Miami North Carolina

Illinois Indiana Iowa Maryland Michigan Michigan State Minnesota Nebraska

Baylor Iowa State Kansas Kansas State Oklahoma Oklahoma State TCU Texas

Arizona Arizona State California Colorado Oregon Oregon State Stanford UCLA

North Carolina State Pittsburgh Syracuse

Northwestern

Texas Tech

USC

Ohio State Penn State

West Virginia

Utah Washington

Virginia

Purdue

Alabama Arkansas Auburn Florida Georgia Kentucky LSU Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) Mississippi State Missouri South Carolina Tennessee

Virginia Tech Wake Forest

Rutgers Wisconsin

Washington State

Texas A&M Vanderbilt (continued)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Blum, Sports, Study, or Sleep, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6

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(continued) Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)

Big 10

Big 12

Pac 12

Southeastern Conference (SEC)

Notre Dame (in some sports; they are independent in football but play 4–6 ACC opponents per year, and their hockey team is in Big 10)

Appendix II: Methodology I approached this project from two different perspectives. I am an avid sports fan, I am also an instructor at the university level. I grew up watching college football and college basketball in the San Francisco Bay Area, regularly attending Cal Golden Bears, Stanford Cardinal, and San Jose State Spartans football and basketball games. To this day I remain an avid Golden Bears fan (roll on, you Bears!). When I am not teaching or working on research, I am a part-time (amateur) sports photographer. Primarily, I shoot hockey and minor league baseball, but I have also photographed college football and basketball games over the years. Sports photography has allowed me to develop friendships with current and former student-athletes, both during their time as students and after their graduation, as I would offer them photos of their athletic accomplishments. Photography and teaching have given me a deeper appreciation of student-athletes’ athletic accomplishments. In my capacity as a college lecturer and as a teaching assistant, I have the opportunity to work with student-athletes, and see the stresses they deal with in their classes and in their sport, and when struggles in one area can bleed over into the other. I have seen student-athletes in my classes who appear to be disinterested in the material, or more commonly, appear exhausted and sleep in class. The simple, most common explanation for student-athletes appearing not to care in class—disinterested in the material or lazy—is not necessarily reflective of the reality of their situations. This book suggests, rather than

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being disinterested in their classes, student-athletes are overwhelmed by the obligations of being full-time students and full-time athletes, not to mention whatever responsibilities outside of school they have. As a photographer and a fan, I can see how successful student-athletes are in the course of their games, and I can see the effort they exert into different parts of their sport, but I am not around them to see what practices are like, nor am I privy to their conversations with coaches and teammates. Typical student-athletes have a difficult daily routine. Student-athletes wake up early most mornings, especially in-season, lifting weights and attending meetings before classes start. By the time a late morning or early afternoon course begins, they have already had a full workday. After their classes are over, many of these athletes have more practices before they can head back to their dorms, often (though not always) far from many of the other dorms, which isolates these student-athletes from their peers who are not competing for the school. In addition to this routine, student-athletes have to travel to road games. This means they miss classes not only on game days at home, but also on days they travel to and from their home campus. Student-athletes effectively work two jobs simultaneously: one job as an athlete, another as an undergraduate student. Both of these jobs have various performance pressures that are placed on the student-athletes, and they are expected to excel at both. However, people have a finite amount of energy and time that they can expend on each of these jobs, and consequently, there are student-athletes who succeed more on the field than in the classroom, and those who excel more at academics than athletics. I interviewed nearly 60 people for this book—38 student-athletes (20 former, 18 current), 11 coaches, and 10 academic personnel (advisors and learning specialists)—using pseudonyms, and their schools are described but not named. This allowed interviewees to discuss potentially-sensitive information, as protective measures are offered to protect the confidentiality of interviewees and their responses, as well as give them some control over how they are portrayed in the current study. Interviews were conducted in person, either in my office or at a public location such as a coffee shop. I also interviewed them online and by phone. Interviews typically lasted one to two hours. Because of my part-time sports photography job, and the access this job gave me at various minor league baseball stadiums, I was able to informally chat with numerous professional baseball players before or after games, and these chats offered insight into what life as a student-athlete

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was like for them before getting drafted and playing affiliated baseball. I also had informal chats about student-athletes’ performances in the classroom with other teachers, both colleagues in my department and with peers in online teaching forums. The student-athletes interviewed did not all compete in the same sport. Interviewing student-athletes in the same sport would have allowed for some consistency, as the players would have similar schedules in terms of practices and games, and similar experiences, allowing for comparisons of (for example) only football or basketball players at different schools. However, while most student-athletes are not playing in revenuegenerating sports for universities, the schedules athletes face in these sports are just as grueling as those in football and basketball. I was able to interview college football and men’s basketball players only after they had graduated, rather than while they were studentathletes. My interviews with people at power-five schools were limited to former student-athletes, coaches in sports other than football and basketball, and academic personnel. I did not have an “in” with current football and basketball programs, and student-athletes and coaches are unlikely to respond to an interview request from an email address they do not recognize, regardless of the school they attend or work at. At the same time, my interviews did not spotlight the athletes themselves or highlight athletic success, so coaches had little motivation to have their players respond to my interview requests. My sports photography allowed me to develop rapport with some graduated student-athletes, and allowed me to talk with their former teammates. Methodological Considerations: Limitations and Strengths of These Interviews I am an outsider when it comes to being a student-athlete. I have not experienced the continuous grind of a sports schedule coupled with staying academically eligible, so what players, coaches, and academic specialists told me—even with the guarantee of confidentiality—might be guarded if they are concerned about (being seen as) bad-mouthing their teammates, coaches, players, or student-athletes. Further, student-athletes who already graduated may not remember the pressures they faced as vividly as student-athletes currently experiencing the same pressures. This is not likely due to intentional repression as much as it is an effect of time elapsing and moving into a new career, whether inside the sports world or not. However, even if not every detail is remembered, most

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people remember what they were told, who gave them these messages, and what pressures they faced. While my access to current power-five student-athletes and coaches was limited, one can assume that the pressures student-athletes in other schools and in other sports also apply to the higher-pressure, high-publicity environments of big-time college football and basketball. Despite these obstacles, there may be advantages associated with my outsider status. One way my outsider status may help is players might not view their class schedules or academic struggles as something worth discussing, and my sports fandom helps in that I understand some games and can talk to athletes about their sports, hopefully knowledgeably, as well as the academic side of being a student-athlete. Finally, as an instructor at a public university in the southwestern United States, I have had student-athletes in my classes as a graduate student and as a lecturer. I have taught student-athletes at a power-five school and at schools with far more modest athletics budgets. While I cannot interview student-athletes enrolled in my classes, due to possible conflicts of interest or power imbalances, I do get to know and can interview these students through my classes. This gives me rapport with them as their instructor and, given that I tell sports analogies regularly in my courses, my students know I am a self-proclaimed avid fan. Several of my former students refer to me as “the sports guy” when it came to instructors, so I have a reputation as for being interested in sports. My reputation and photography offered me some credibility with student-athletes, and made these interviews possible.

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Name Index

A Abernethy, Amy M., 7 Adler, Patricia A., 3, 15 Adler, Peter, 3, 15 Ahmed, Osman Hassan, 121 Aries, Elizabeth, 3

B Banaji, Mahzarin R., 3 Bennett, Brian, 141 Benson, Kirsten F., 3 Blum, Dinur, 133 Brooks, Scott, 5

C Clayton, Andy, 1 Comeaux, Eddie, 4, 24

D Dweck, Carol, 40

E Engstrom, Catherine, 4, 15 G Gayles, Joy Gaston, 4, 15 H Hall, Eric, 121 Harrison, Keith C., 4, 24 Hu, Shouping, 15 J Jones, Cardale, 1, 9, 140, 141 L Lesmerises, Doug, 141 M Markowitz, Ariana, 122 Markowitz, Jeffrey S., 122 May, Reuben A. Buford, 5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Blum, Sports, Study, or Sleep, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6

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NAME INDEX

McCarthy, Danielle, 3 Mondello, Michael J., 7 Moore, III., James L., 3 Myers, Randall C., 151

S Salovey, Peter, 3 Sanford, Adam G., 133, 139 Sedlacek, William E., 4, 15 Smith, Stacy L., 133 Steinbach, Paul, 81 Stripling, Jack, 151

N Nadler, Jr., Sam B., 151

R Robinson, Nick, 151

W Watt, Sherry K., 3 Whitner, Phillip A. Williams, Darius, 80 Wolverton, Brad, 2

Subject Index

A Academic advisors, 3, 44, 45, 63, 90, 103, 105, 107–110, 114, 117, 124, 131, 138

L Learning Made Easier, 139 Learning specialists, 8, 10, 90, 91, 96, 103, 105–110, 112–114, 124, 134, 138, 145

B Booster, 80–85, 102, 131, 133, 137 M MLB (Major League Baseball), 14 D Division-1, 20, 21, 31, 35, 36, 79, 81, 88, 90, 93, 95, 112, 114, 120, 122, 138 Division-2, 17, 37, 38, 40, 41, 45–47, 49, 54, 55, 59, 61, 64, 67, 86, 92, 94, 109, 115

E Energy management, 9, 10, 118

H Hundred-dollar handshakes, 80

N NBA (National Basketball Association), 3, 14 NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association), 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 14, 16, 21, 26, 42, 46, 49, 51, 65, 67, 70, 72–74, 77–79, 82–85, 89, 91, 109, 110, 114, 122, 129, 132, 133, 137, 138 NCLB (No Child Left Behind), 116 NFL (National Football League), 1, 3, 14, 30, 141

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Blum, Sports, Study, or Sleep, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61326-6

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SUBJECT INDEX

P Power-five, 2, 4, 5, 8–10, 15, 17, 20, 27, 31, 35, 43, 44, 48, 66, 67, 69, 73, 77, 81, 85, 86, 90, 91, 102, 106, 108–112, 114, 115, 117, 120, 121, 124, 129–132, 146, 147 Proposition 48, 7 S SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), 7

Scholarships, 2, 4, 7, 14, 16, 21, 23, 26, 31, 33, 35, 36, 41–43, 49, 73, 77–80, 82, 83, 91, 92, 111, 113, 117, 120, 122, 129, 130, 132, 133, 137, 138, 141 Stubborn stability, 133 T Time management, 24, 41, 43, 45, 63, 74, 92, 93, 107, 115, 120, 139, 140