"There is another way to rank colleges already, it's called the Bowl Championship Series"

---Colbert interviewed (I guess last night) some guy from some magazines that was ranking colleges in some different way like their positive effect on the community or some good shit I wasn't really paying attention. Nor is that the point. It reminded me of a topic that is quite fitting for my cute little blog here. College.

The topic I am concerned with is college sports. You know I love them, where would I be without march madness? But college sports present two large problems to the human community:

The first of these problems is the general auora around education. There's a certain time in many American childrens lives - and indeed many never get out of this - where a dedication to education is somwhat socially frowned upon. 'nerd', 'geek', they don't have positive conotations when kids use them. So, at some point this became a trend, and trends get commercialized and fed back to us. It has become integrated into the machismo driven sports culture to a certain degree, but not so blatantly that the casual sports fan disapproves of intellectual efforts, but more that they are not a legitimate lifestyle, that the real life is bussiness, beer and football. Yes, I was exagerating. The idea is that sports culture is - and mind you sports culture is HUGE, it is probably the thing that can bring the most people with differing interests together, it's less specialized than movies and music - predisposed towards manliness, which has taken on a tone of physical strength over intellectual integrity, and that this only exacerbates the problem when we arrive at college sports. I love college football, i love college basketball, but if i transfer to a college with a great athletic department, sure ill watch the games, but thats nothing to be proud of; people have more pride in their football team than their degrees. When I went to the cal game last weekend there weren't 60000 students and alumni there to cheer for their university, or rather, for the countless professors who are doing an incredible ammount of inovative research there (or so says the sf chronicle, and i believe them), they're cheering for de-shaun jack-son (!) who will likely get a degree in the most generalized and useless field cal has to offer (indeed, berkely might be a bad example because it's supposedly a good academic school) and then move on to make a fortune in the NFL. It's understandable, I suppose, to root for your team whole-heartedly, but it's a UNIVERSITY, you're in essence meant to be rooting for an educational institution, and really these people could be spending their time much more wisely than throwing an oval around and beating each other up, not to mention, our second issue. but not yet. this needs to be said point blank. education is embarrasingly devalued by commercialized college athletics. so, you say, the colleges can use this money they make by not paying the athletes who are responsible for bringing in the millions of dollars for educational purposes.

I find this hard to wrap my mind around. First they spend the money on athletic scholarships, which ill get to in a second. I bet that colleges certainly have quite a stash of money, and they all build new buildings sports facitilites etc. So, my biggest problem with college sports, the scholarships to athletes. Certainly, i suppose, if colleges were silly and just wanted athletes there refardless of commercial prospect it would be an honorable thing to use to get into a highly acclaimed academic institution, but beyond that it should be education. and even so, it isnt going to change, to many selfish people with too much interest in money. the only thing that could cure my aversion to college sports would be for the athletic scholarships to be taken from athletes and given to those people with academic promise and the need for helpwith paying. So, those who try hard enough get the money. No. The ones who try from long island get the damn money because they have the time and the schools have the money and recourses to provide kids with the academic help they need in the right areas such that their sats will get them into a good school, this is not the same in poorer areas, they dont have the resources so they CANNOT do as well as wealthier people, if you put john stuart mill in visitacion valley he won't know anything. Actually, mill was a good example, he's agree with me 100% here. His father and Jeremy Bentham actually told him that he wasnt that smart and that it was just his advantages (bentham was ludicrously rich, he had some title in the english royal family, he actually got mill a job out of college out of his status. the job was ceo of the east india trading company.). Anyway, the point is that for the most part, no matter how exceptionally smart (mill had a projected iq of over 200. yes, 200) people form poor backgrounds dont have nearly the opportunites that they need for their educational good, and scholarships should not go to bodies in a place for minds, if these football players want to playe football then drop out after their last game (this does happen quite a bit) fine, make a team that is part of the college, but that is markedly dissasociated enough that the idea does not get muddles with the importacne of education over commercial sports; this way they can reek the benefits of the money the teams bring in and give it to the people who need the scholarships for educational purposes not to play sports.

i left a lot out. im tired. it would take dyas to write and organize the relevance of this to everything.