College athletics

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

Yet competition between student clubs from different colleges, not organized by and therefore not representing the institutions or their faculties, may also be called "intercollegiate" or simply college sport(s). College sports originated as student activities and it is probably reasonable to periodize the history, otherwise organized by region or institution or sport, first according to whether the students or the institutions organized the clubs and the competition.

In the United States today, many college sports are popular locally, where they may provide the best quality competition people can see personally, and the same is true of school sports in smaller locales. But some college sports are immensely popular nationally, competing with professional championships for prime broadcast and print coverage, serving fans who attend few or no games but tune in or read about them much as they follow professional games. So-called Interuniversity Sport has a lower profile in Canada. In most of the rest of the world the equivalent level of competition is only followed by competitors and their close friends and families. Still, the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race may be the model and it is immensely popular spectator sport today.

[edit] Early Clubs

Yale and Harvard rowing clubs matched up for the first time in 1852, twenty-three years after the first Oxford-Cambridge contest. 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.

[edit] Modern Controversy

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

1. Many college athletes are admitted despite having lower grades and admissions scores than normal students.

2. College athletes often take bird courses (aka easy courses) where learning is minimal.

3. College athletes often take light schedules (see Matt Leinart and ballroom dancing).

4. Many athletes receive payment from booster clubs, or have relatives given moined positions, following acceptance.

5. Many scandals have arisen through point shaving and having non-athletes (aka real students) take exams or write academic papers for athletes.

6. Many schools (e.g.,university of Miami) have had accusations that athletes receive preferential treatment in law-breaking activities, and often are accused committ rape, assault, and theft without being disciplined, and with law enforcement turning a blind eye.

7. Many colleges have their degrees devalued because athletes, who often are unable to withstand the academic rigors of a normal student, are given the same degrees as students who actually earned them.