To my surprise I go and look in my school paper and I see a fellow student at Iowa State decided that he wanted to go in on student athletes here (click here to read article). I am writting this to stick up for student-athletes everywhere because I know there are plenty of people who think the way he does. It just happend to be that he was brave enough to say it.
Quick Summary of What “The Athlete Hater” Said:
- Athletes do not do a good job of representing their school
- They dress sloppy to class
- We get everything handed to us
- We get arrested and make the community look bad
The Response…
First off there are way too many people in school that are not athletes and have this Aladdin “magical carpet ride” BS of an idea of what it means to be a student-athlete. The first thing any athlete will let you know is that it is not easy in anyway. We are required to do the exact same school work that everyone else does plus more.
When it comes to actually training it is clear that when people begin to bash us they have no idea what we actually do everyday. We are like puppets on a string at times. If coach says practice is at 6 in the morning you better get your ass up. Then add in another practice later in the day, lifting heavy ass weights, travelling, getting in ice tubs and walking home frozen in the winter, studying film, team meetings the list goes on and on.
He seemed really quick to want to go in on football players and how they live their life. My advice to him would be to strap on some shoulder pads and live a week in their shoes. (He’d come out like this!) It is as simple as that. If you are brave enough to shoot others down, understand what it is like to be them. After he is done practice with them let me see if he can even pick his arm up to grab a pencil and do his homework.
When it comes to dressing sloppy I know he is truly out of his mind. I personally rarely ever wear sweat pants to class I like to feel nice when I go to class everyday. He clearly has not had class with Benjamin Dinkins. If anyone does not know this guy he has more clothes and more swag then anyone I have ever met in my life.
Some athletes do wear sweat pants, SO WHAT? Is he going to try and tell me that other students on campus do not wear sweat pants? That is far from true so why do we get attacked?
He had the nerve to complain that student-athletes get a lot of clothes for free. The same clothes we get they have to go to the book store and buy with their own money…CRY ME A RIVER BRO. I train 6 days a week and bust my ass in sweat every day for this school and you are mad that they give me clothes so that I can represent the school to the fullest. THIS IS MADNESS.
He stated that we have a closet full of clothes. Well someone tell this guy to come out to west ames and check my apartment because this is not the case. Every year on the track team we gets 5 tops, 2 hats, and the rest of the gear we receive we check out and have to hand back at the end of the year. He clearly has no understanding of how anything works.
Lastly when it comes to the arrests he went in on the football team once again. I do not know what it is like to be a football player. All I know is everyone wants to love them when they are beating up Oklahoma State and manage to steal every trending topic on twitter. One man gets in trouble and thirsty reporters can not wait to put it in the paper.
I am not saying that getting in trouble is ok, but they are human beings like the rest of us. How many normal students get arrested every weekend? I have no idea because no one puts it on the front page of the paper. I have been here for 4 years and I have not been arrested, and I know a lot of other athletes that have not.
So What…
My point is that this athlete stereotype BS needs to come to a halt real quick. Stop acting like we are lazy and we dont care about anything but winning. This is not the case I have met some very bright individuals who do it big in their sport and outside of their sport. I know kids who are deep in church every sunday thanking God they even got an opportunity to be here. Those athletes make the most out of it everyday. The reality is people think the way they do about athletes because of how the media portrays us. There are countless positive things that could be said about what athletes do. Stop that hate play boy.
(original image by patrick coons)
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Maannn, I’ve had this debate in soo many of my class’s(soc of sport, philosophy of sport ect..)with ignorant people who think that athletes have a “magic carpet ride”.
1. We student athletes are working a full-time job essentially all year.
2. What about the huge profit that student athletes generate for the school…..Millions…
3. A huge number of student athletes aren’t on scholarship. Track is i believe 12.5 scholarships for a roster of close to 50 men….. if they are most likely its not a full scholarship.
4. We really don’t get the amount of clothing needed for a yearly macro-cycle of training.
5. Student-Athletes are constantly giving back to the community and volunteering to impact kids who look up to them.
This guy needs to redirect his “haterism” to the structure of corporate sports.
I could go on &….on but students don’t understand a 1/4 of the work student athletes put in to be successful in the classroom, in their sport and as a person.
Shawn, all your points are valid. I could have went all day on this article but I tried to keep it short. I know you fully understand what it means to be an athlete and maybe people looking from the outside in will never understand man…I am not sure. All I know is that the guy who wrote this article made himself look really stupid. You keep grinding and striving to be the best you can man. Haters will always be around.
I completely agree with you…I was a student athlete at the Division 1 and the NAIA level and the guy who wrote that article does not know anything about what really goes on. I’m not sure how every team does it, but the teams I was on volunteered to read to elementary school kids and work with disabled kids in local schools along with highway clean up and did basically whatever we could to help out the community, and that is (in my guess) the LARGE majority of student athletes, but the media doesn’t like to cover the good things that athletes do. Also another thing that the author of the other article didn’t think about when talking about us being lazy in class is the graduation rates for student athletes. Has he ever looked at those statistics? We graduate at a higher level basically working a full time job. I will go out on a limb here and say we are motivated individuals in all aspects of life.
I had a similar discussion with newly acquainted friends a few weeks back and was amazed by their preconceived notions. I summarized a few things for them about my experience with college football and added that my opinion is that the following points generalize to many college athletes:
a) The level of dedication required to participate in college athletics and academia is far beyond the norm of a typical college student. A typical student goes to class and studies whereas a student athlete does that and also spends the rest of their entire day studying their sport and/or exercising in preparation to perform well in their sport. I distinctly recall not having much of a social life and spending much of my out-of-class time studying play books, putting in work in the weight room, and engaging in various support activities such as running 10 miles at 4am every morning with the defensive backs coach.
b) The gratification for engaging in the sport is not driven solely by money. I was particularly amazed by the belief that athletes are “in it for the money.” I was under the impression that we are in it for the love of the game. The professional football and other professional athletes that I trained with and/or interacted with in some way never mentioned anything about money. My hypothesis on this matter was that anybody with a primary motivation for money in sports would never be able to make it to the level where they profit from sports and only those with a love and obsession for the game could ever be in a position to profit. In the latter case, making profit from the sport is very low on the list of motivating factors during the initial phase of engaging with the game.
c) Many student athletes develop adaptive coping mechanisms for dealing with adversity. The majority of the athletes I interacted with on a regular never consumed alcohol or did drugs. In a way, we were never at risk of engaging in these endangering behaviors given that they contraindicated the lifestyle of an athlete. Since these maladaptive coping mechanisms were not on the list of things to do, we developed internal and other socially acceptable ways of coping with adversity in the form of injury or any of the other myriad of potential setbacks.
These were the main points in my position regarding student athletes. I could go on for days but these were the main three. Now, I will not deny that there are definitely areas that could easily become corrupt if leadership does not make assertive efforts to contain certain things such as dismissing those with low academic standings and steriod use. However, these issues can be contained to a significant degree with appropriate organizational policies and leadership that sticks to solid ethical principles. Like any human endeavor, the same laws of leadership, management, and supervision apply and appropriate implementation of such is necessary in order to make athletics a successful phenomenon for the participants.
I think this hate is probably stemming from his lack of talent to make it in NCAA sports. I imagine we will find his is a “has-been” Football Player and hating from the outside.
I always put it like this to my friends who would say I had it easy. Imagine a my sport (Wrestling) was a job. Brief breakdown
I wake up at 5:30 am.
Check Weight
Morning Shake (Breakfast… Uck)
Weight Training (6am)
Shower & Ready for class by 7:45
Check Weight
Classes 8am – 2pm
Conditioning Workout @ Noon (Lunch Optional)
Check Weight
Practice 3pm – 5:45pm
Trainer (Ice bath, etc) 6 – 7pm
Check Weight
Shower and Home by 7:30pm
Small Dinner
Homework 8 – Whenever I am finished (Sometimes 12am – 1am)
Check Weight
In bed and do it again.
Don’t forget when in season we are on the job 24/7 no pigging out on Buffalo Wings or going out to party. Believe me we love to relax with friends as much as the next college student. But this is how we pay for college. So as in life work comes first.
Tag on that community outreach, School functions, etc. Average student body doesn’t have to do these things. All they do is eat pizza, drink beer, piss in alleys, play video games and show up to class hung over and smelling like alcohol. How is that for a stereotype.
I don’t know exactly what athletes get a bigger schools, like ISU for example, but I go to a small NAIA school. Most of the guys on the team are walks on or get a few hundred bucks to run. We rarely get anything free besides ice and tape from the training room. We have to go to class everyday and do all the same stuff as the non athletes. We really don’t get any special treatment besides teachers letting us take tests or turn in homework later if we have a meet. But one of my pet peeves is when non athletes act like we get some special treatment. Our life is harder actually, especially as a runner in our program. I cant stay up all night doing homework or partying because I have morning runs 3 times a week. I walk on at an NAIA school, I don’t have a lot of talent, so i have to work a little to pay rent and to eat good. The school I attend doesn’t have much money in the athletic department so a lot of treatment and such we have to pay for. Our “indoor track” is three treadmill in a closet. But I enjoy every minute of it, I love representing my school and team even though I don’t get money, don’t have the best facilities, and don’t always have the best support. If your gonna make comments about how athletes get handouts then you should spend a day in one’s shoes.
Gabe, you have a true love for the sport. You do not do it for the fame or because you can get something from it. You do it for the thrill of running and I respect that. Thanks for the comment.