First people I want to touch on are the teachers, when I talk about teachers in this paper I do not want people to think I am talking about every teacher, I have had plenty of great teachers and this group far outweighs the number of bad teachers I have had. I am simple speaking on the few teachers I have had and experienced. I think most of these teachers have had student athletes that did not take their class seriously and felt they were only in school to pursuit their particular sport and class was only to stay eligible. This is more prominent in sports such as basketball and football in my opinion. But teachers are only human so when they are influenced by terrible students its natural for them to remember those experiences though a teacher should not treat a specific group differently from another. Teachers on the first day of class look at their class and make assumptions about theses people, they may not act on these stereotypes but the ones that do these are the teachers I’m talking about. When we take a look at our students for the first time we cannot help but come up with ideas about these people its only human. Most of the time my assumptions are correct and I don’t want to sound like this is what I am all about but athletes just generally don’t do well in my class. I usually find them to be lazy and uninterested. There are a lot of statistics that reinforce what I am saying. “From 1998-2001 men's basketball players graduated at 62 percent, while baseball produced a rate of 68 percent. Football Bowl Subdivision teams had a grad rate of 67 percent, and the Football Championship Subdivision came in at 65 percent. Women's bowling, at 68 percent, was the only other sport to finish below 70 percent.”
The next group is the student athletes; the group of student athletes is not a united one because there are so many different view points on their particular experiences with teachers. I was reading an article on student athlete life in and out the class from the Princeton news paper in which the students talk about not experiencing any unjust treatment from any teachers. You would have to take this statement in context because Princeton being one of the top academic organizations in the country so the teachers are the most qualified as well as they are not the best athletic program therefore student athletes are more interested in getting a great education than playing professional sports. On the flip side a football player going through the University of Southern California is most likely subject to plenty of stereotyping. “In the classroom, though, Shultz said he hasn't noticed any prejudice against student-athletes, either from professors or peers.” I certainly haven't been treated any differently by my professors or preceptors than any other student," he said. "They may inquire about how the game went this weekend, but I don't detect any sort of ill will toward an athlete." And then there is the group that live up to the stereotyping because they do not worry about their classes because they do not think they are going to stay in school as they anticipate themselves going to play professional sports. “Defending national football champion LSU had a grad rate of 54 percent; defending men's basketball champ Kansas came in at 64 percent”, these two teams have a group of students that dropped out to go on to play professionally.
Yet still there are plenty of athletes that break this mold and succeed in academics as well as athletics, “When Penn State field hockey star Susann Bisignaro takes the field, fans can't help but notice her athletic ability. Her long hours of practice are evidenced by how well she plays the game. But she and other Penn State athletes have another side few people notice. Because most people never get to see the academic side of Bisignaro and her fellow athletes, they tend to forget that Penn State athletes must devote just as much time to class work as they do to athletics.” A lot of people still have the misperception that we're just athletes, that we don't excel in the classroom," Bisignaro said. "There is a growing emphasis on academics. On our team, academics really come first."
Bisignaro is proof that many athletes excel in the classroom. She recently changed her major from biology to general arts and sciences with an emphasis on pre-law and claims that her 3.3 grade point average is "a little low.” So why do many people still consider athletes to be "dumb jocks?" I tried to bottle up this emotion into a first person speech; Student Athletes take academics more seriously than athletics! What, it can’t be! I don’t understand why people can’t pick this up from other students to teachers. Don’t get me wrong I love the sport I play, if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to sacrifice countless hours out of my life to compete. But I do understand that one day the ball is going to stop bouncing, even if I do go pro. Then what are you going to do? Ill tell you, you fall back on your academics and support your family or what ever obligations you have. My parents raised me well and I got a good head on my shoulders and don’t let my skill in athletics fool you.
Another aspect of a student athlete that most people don’t know about is how many things you have to do on a daily basis, its not just showing up for the games and playing. “He is awake by 6 a.m. to attend his conditioning program from 6:30 to 8 a.m. After conditioning, he has an hour before class starts at 9 a.m., then his classes last until 12 a.m. From 1 to 2 p.m. he reports to study hall before he does weight lifting and that goes from 2 to 3 p.m. The team then scrimmages from 3 to 5 p.m. There is one last trip to study hall from 5 to 6 p.m. and he finally has the chance to catch his breath. That's his schedule before the season starts.” Pressures on a student athlete are crazy, from pressures to do well in the class room, do well on the court and keep up with my social life. It is really hard for me to balance but I’m beginning to learn how to manage it, in high school we would always have practice after school and varsity games were at 7 so way past the closing of school. Now I have practice before or after class depending on the day and there will be a couple of classes I will miss because basketball which will set me behind. I have to catch up on all four of my classes while still having class, practice and meetings. For basketball we are required to make a time management sheet every week and it is packed and usually don’t have a break off from anything until around 8 every night, then you have to do homework and studying, it could get pretty stressful. On top of this I’m a really social person so I make sure to attempt to have a social life and it is near impossible to keep up on having one, but I guess this is what I signed up for when I accepted a scholarship.
In addition to all these pressures on and off the court, student athletes have social lives and must interact with other student not playing sports, most of it is fine but every now and then athletes have conflict with other students. Athletes probably feel like this, Stereotyping of student athletes is not subject to just in the classroom. Athletes are always busy with something from class to practice to extra things you do with your team, as an athlete you have very little free time and I see eye to eye with this. But being a student you find a way to have a social life with the little time that you do have. But at school people know who you are and already have an assumption about you. "I think some students don't believe that we really should be here," said Ricky Shultz '04, a lacrosse player. "There were kids at my high school who applied to Princeton who may have had better grades, better SAT scores but who didn't get in, and some people may think that they have more of a right to be here than I do." On the other hand students may feel like this about student athletes, sure he’s awesome on the field but off he’s a jerk. Basically a bully, he thinks he could do anything and get away with anything and it makes my blood boil when people act like this is ok it just boosts his ego even more. People give athletes special treatment in school, they get off so easy. I can’t be the only one who is angered by this plus off campus they feel like their better than everyone and segregate themselves from regular students like they’re better than everyone else. Saying all this people still love them and strive to be like them and get on their good side, well not me.
Lastly a big stakeholder in the image of a student athlete is the media, The media to me has the biggest role on making the appearance of student athletes smudged because whenever someone turns on the TV they see a student getting in trouble or a star athlete getting caught cheating on their SAT’s and what not. Understanding that the news needs to report on what’s going on but the thing that does not ever get noticed or acknowledged is when a student athlete is doing well in the classroom as well as their sport. Another thing is the role athletes are portrayed in movies and TV shows is one that is dumb, slow or a jock that bullies around their peers. So in reality people subconsciously render these thoughts and prejudge people. In a first person account of a person working for the media might be something like, our job is to collect information and deliver it to the public, good or bad. I don’t care whose feelings get hurt or who gets upset about this, it’s my job. I can’t help it whenever I cover a sports story an athlete is getting into some kind of trouble, if they want to get out of the news, tell them to conduct themselves with some class. I understand we could make or break a person’s image but we are never going to censor ourselves because your hometown hero got himself in trouble, I don’t care how old he is.
Throughout this paper I tried to show the reasons why stereotyping of student athletes go on because of people like teachers and student that have something against athletes. The similarities between all these stakeholders excluding the media are that they do not want to be taken advantage of. Teachers want to see their students to work hard in their class and learn something; they do not want to see students to think they are better than the class and not take it seriously because teachers take this as disrespect. Also ordinary students do not want other student athletes to take advantage of the fact a lot of people probably know who they are and let it feed their egos therefore athletes thing regular students are below them. They only group that has nothing in common with any of these experiences is the media, this is because the media doesn’t go to school they don’t know how the life is they just report when something happens, this is why they cannot report on what exactly is going on thus giving student athletes a bad look.
Work Cited
Gulland, Molly, Joe Falencki, and Ross Mazo. "A league of their own: Athletic teams shape some social lives." Web.
MUTZABAUGH, Ben. "Advisory board tries to fight athletes' negative stereotypes." Web.
CBS sports wire. "NCAA: Graduation rates of student-athletes at all-time high." Web.
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