Collegiate Athletes Competitiveness

This study was designed to explore the academic experience of the African American male scholar- athletes, their academic motivation to succeed, the role peers contributed to their academic achievement, and to explore the characteristics of motivation on African American Male Scholar-Athletes according to Self-Determination Theory (SDT). SDT is defined as “a macro-theory of human motivation that posits humans have an inherent motivational drive to master their social environment through self-determined

For many students, the college experience is measured by the success of their NCAA-sanctioned athletic programs. Without the experience and athletic performance the student athlete brings, most colleges would not reap the benefit of these significant revenue-generating activities. At best, current NCAA regulations need to be revisited to ensure all avenues are addressed to enable the success of athletic students both in the classroom and on the field or court of play. As stated previously, even though students receive full and partial scholarships determined by their athletic performance, in both instances

Over the years, we have seen colleges and universities benefit extremely from their sports programs. Every year a great team brings tremendous amounts of revenue for their university. However, as these universities increase their finances, their athletes are falling behind financially, academically, socially and personally creating a huge burden upon them. College/university athletes practically work overtime for their academic institutions. While many perceive student athletes as living ‘the life’ because of sports, the reality remains that they suffer from social, personal, academic and psychological stress. They constantly live their lives by strict schedules to avoid falling behind in their multiple responsibilities .Student athletes face various pressures, yet they are not frequently rewarded; therefore their academic institutions should reward them financially, beyond scholarships for their participation in collegiate sports.

The NCAA believes “that a student-athlete is a student first and athlete second.” Student-athletes benefit more than from playing a sport that they love. The graduation rate is higher among the student athletes than the general student body. “NCAA studies show that student-athletes enjoy high levels of engagement in academics, athletics and community: have positive feeling about their overall athletics and academic experiences: attribute invaluable life skills to being a student-athlete: and are more likely to earn similar or higher wages after college than non-student athletes.”

College athletic programs should be kept as an important part of the athlete’s academic schedule, and student athletes are considered an important part the student body. Every university or community college’s admissions and scholastic excellence for student-athletes should be planned to encourage educational success and

Summary: Catherine Rampell, in her article “Grading College Athletes”, claims in her visual that college recruited athletes tend to have a lower GPA than non-athlete students. The authors reinforce their claim by conducting a study on the effect of participating in college athletics on the GPA’s of college students. The authors’ purpose is to analyze the relationship between college academics and athletics in order to explain the impact of athletics on academic focus and performance in school for athletes. The authors’ audience is the college students who are incorporated into the

Athletics are a big attraction to many students when looking at colleges. When college sports programs have success, research done by Pope and Pope show that there is a boost in applications that the colleges receive from students. “Applications [after] a Championship add 7-8 percent, with a big effect in the immediate year and little effect after one year.” It was found that when colleges have winning athletic teams get more applications sent in from all levels of student and not just athletes. This is found true for basketball and football. Not only increase in applications is found but also found after success in football there is a growth in enrollment, this is not found true for basketball (Getz and Siegfried “What Does Intercollegiate Athletics Do…”). “David Schmidly the president of the University of New Mexico said “One of the most effective ways to market your university nationally is to have a really quality athletic program. It helps recruit faculty, students, and donors. It helps with the image of the whole university.” (qtd. in Getz and Siegfried “College Sports: The Mystery of the Zero-Sum Game.”)

Jolley, D. (2009). Academic Achievement Is Improving for College Athletes. In C. Watkins, Sports and Athletes (pp. 71-78). Detroit: Greenhaven Press.

When looking at the topic of academic success of African American student athletes you need to look at all the factors involved. The problems that African American student athletes face are much the same that all African American students at higher education institutions face but the student athletes have other stressors that the normal students do not have. Such as In addition to the daily student routine (attending classes, going to the cafeteria, and participating in social events), student athletes also have their sport-related activities (practicing every day, visiting the athletic trainer for injury treatment, traveling for away games, studying team plays) (Watt, Moore 2001).

Instead of feeling pressure to conform as a student at the University of Georgia, I have found that being in college has made me value the importance of a higher education more so than I ever had before. During high school, my primary goal was to play well enough to receive a football scholarship. At that time, my focus was not on academics. However, since I've arrived at the University of Georgia, my entire concept of the value of a college degree has slowly changed. Rather than seeing just football in my future, I can now picture myself as a football player with a college degree. Consequently, instead of having a negative impact on my personal growth, college has helped me broaden as a person.

The current study was conducted to show that college athletes would have higher motivation, thus doing better in school compared to students who were not athletes. We theorized that athletes would have had higher levels of motivation, due to being part of a sports team creating more responsibilities than non-athletes. The data we collected shows that athletes do in fact have higher external motivating variables than non-athletes, which could vary from; their teammates motivating them or from their coaches. However non-athletes showed to have higher internal motivating variables, which could be described as students wanting to get a good career, or to wanting to graduate to make their families proud. We hypothesized that athletes would have

Chapter 1 describes current condition and general challenges among student athletes’ community as well as specific challenges in the college athletes’ community intervening in this program research. In addition, the purpose of this research is presented referring to relationships between general challenges student athletes tend to face with and the specific challenge addressing in this research. At the end of this chapter, organization of chapters is showed as well.

Although ones GPA and focus are important to maintain a scholarship, the most important aspect is to excel in one’s sport. To excel at one’s sport requires practice and drive to address one’s weaknesses and strengthen the strengths. Colleges look at athletes that excel in the sport and have the grades. A college athlete must be dedicated to the team and the sport. Most student athlete’s day is centered on class, practice and meetings. A love of the sport is crucial to help the athlete excel on and off the

Also, it was found in this study that the type of sport the student-athletes participated in had a significant impact on the difference in GPA scores. In fact, depending on the type of sport the individual participated in there would be a significant change in GPAs. In addition, the findings for this research question were positive. Specifically, there were 11 significant differences found between academic performances of athletes in some sports when compared with others. Student athletes participating in boys’ basketball had lower improvements in GPA than did student athletes participating in boy’s outdoor track and football. Finally, the comparisons only represented comparisons between boys. According to the findings of question four, the boys that participated basketball, football, and outdoor track experienced significant academic differences while girls did not, when individual male sports were compared with individual female sports and there was significant difference, the academic gains of male student-athletes were greater than that of the female

Sports is a phenomena in the US that brings people together, but it is always being put on a pedestal and being glorified and because of that we have an academic decline in the US. A student who moved