College athletics

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College athletics refers primarily to sports and games organized and sanctioned by institutions of tertiary education (colleges or universities in American English). In the United States, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics regulate most college sports.

Competition between student clubs from different colleges, not organized by and therefore not representing the institutions or their faculties, may also be called "intercollegiate" athletics or simply college sports. College sports originated as student activities.

In the United States today, many college sports are extremely popular on both regional and national scales, in many cases competing with professional championships for prime broadcast and print coverage. So-called Interuniversity Sport has a lower profile in Canada, and in most of the rest of the world the equivalent level of competition is not followed so closely. Still, the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race is an immensely popular spectator sport.

[edit] Early Clubs

The first intercollegiate sporting event in the U.S. took place in 1852, twenty-three years after the first Oxford-Cambridge boat race, when several rowing clubs from Yale and Harvard matched up at Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. Baseball teams from Amherst College and Williams College in Western Massachusetts played the earliest known intercollegiate game in 1859. The Fordham Rose Hill Baseball Club of St. John's College in New York (now Fordham University) played the first ever nine-man team college baseball game (known as "New York Rules" and more closely resembling the modern game) on November 3, 1859 against (the now defunct) St. Francis Xavier College. The first intercollegiate soccer match in the U.S. took place on November 6, 1869, in New Brunswick, N.J., when clubs from Princeton and Rutgers played under the rules of Association Football (devised by the Football Association in London, still the governing body of soccer in England). The first intercollegiate football game took place on May 15, 1874, at Cambridge, Massachusetts when Harvard played McGill University of Montreal, Canada. The first such game between two U.S. teams took place on November 13, 1875 in New Haven, Connecticut between Harvard and Yale.

[edit] Modern Controversy

Modern College athletes have a number of controversies which surround them.

1. Some college athletes are admitted despite having lower grades and admissions scores than the average student or than the ostensible minimum permitted for admission. This is more likely the case with Division I men's basketball and football players.

2. College athletes are said to take courses lacking in academic rigor more often than the average student, and some schools offer courses that are de facto athletics courses; similarly, schools may devise particular substandard majors and degrees for athletes.

3. College athletes often take light schedules, stretching their fulfillment of academic requirements over more than four years. In some cases this may require waivers of time limits on graduation.

4. Some athletes receive gifts or payment from booster clubs, or have relatives given salaried positions. Most schools also permit players to be compensated with waived or discounted tuition or by the payment of non-need-based scholarships.

5. Many scandals have arisen through point shaving and having non-athletes take exams or write academic papers for athletes. A number of schools fund tutors who manage individual athletes' schedules and assist them with their academic work.

6. Some schools (e.g.,university of Miami) have been accused of giving athletes preferential treatment when punishing them for illegal behavior.

7. Some schools permit their athletes to eat in specialized dining halls and live in specialized dormitories dedicated exclusively to athletes, or even to particular teams. This treatment tends to characterize the athletes as professional entertainers hired to represent the university rather than as students who participate in an extracurricular activity.