Student-athletes: the respect that they deserve

The NCAA basketball tournament is my favorite sporting event in the world. Actually, I lie, but it is a close second behind the World Cup. I have missed nearly all of this college basketball season because I have been studying abroad. While Internet access grants me the ability to access box scores and recaps, there is no substitute to sitting on the couch and watching a live game. Even worse, I missed the opportunity to watch a young Columbia men’s basketball team find its way during an Ivy League season of ups and downs. My frustrations aside, as I checked the scores and watched for upsets during the first few rounds of March Madness, I found myself thinking about the role of the student-athlete and how they are viewed by society.

With the NFL Draft approaching, I’ve begun to hear analysts evaluate prospects and discuss their respective intangibles. When the Mel Kiper, Jrs. of the world discuss players, words like “intelligence”, “awareness”, and “smarts” are often mentioned. However, these “intellect markers” are always discussed after a player’s physical attributes. Studies have proven that there is indeed a correlation between a player’s Wonderlic Test scores and their on-field success. I am willing to bet that former Florida State safety Myron Rolle is going to be a perennial all-pro for the next decade. If you haven’t heard about Rolle, he received a Rhodes scholarship (shout out to Jisung Park) this year and will study medical anthropology at Oxford. When asked about his future goals, Rolle answered that he wants to work as a neurosurgeon and open up a free clinic, failing to mention anything football related despite the fact that he is one of the top football prospects in the world. I respect a man like that much more than I respect the type of varsity athlete that cheats on tests and has other people do their homework for them.

I think people fail to realize just how difficult it is to balance academics with athletic obligations. Although a lot of people on Columbia’s campus snicker at the perpetual mediocrity of many of our varsity athletic programs, regardless of their win-loss records, our classmates and Columbia athletes should be commended for their efforts.

I remember living in Carman Hall freshman year. My floor was the archetypical Carman experience: people playing soccer in the hallway at odd hours of the night, loud music, floor incest, a lounge with steady video game battles (Mario Kart, GoldenEye, etc.), and general debauchery. Most of the floors in Carman that year were like that, and I remember having a friend on another floor that was a rower. This guy used to go to bed absurdly early every night and wake up when it was still dark outside to go practice. This kid had the sleep schedule of an 80-year-old retiree. I also knew football players and other athletes who had similar schedules. The everyday grind of practice coupled with the academic rigors of an Ivy League institution and the desire to explore campus socially is obscenely arduous.

In past columns, I have often taken good-natured jabs at former Columbia basketball player Ben Nwachukwu. In one column, I even wrote a whole paragraph detailing the parallels between Nwachukwu and Dallas Mavericks center Erick Dampier (or Ericka Dampier as Shaquille O’Neal once called him). Despite my criticism of his inconsistent play on the court, I actually had nothing but respect for the man off the court. Nwachukwu was pre-med while at Columbia and I used to see him studying on the fourth floor of Butler about four times per week. I am sure he was there even more frequently, but more than four visits to Butler in one week would have drive ME crazy, so I try to minimize my visits to that wretched place. Non-coincidently, Nwachukwu is now at Harvard Medical School and well on his way to living a rewarding life as a doctor.

In fact, there are plenty of Columbia varsity athletes, and even regular students who don’t play sports, who had a chance to play Division 1 sports at other universities. Instead, these people opted to invest in their minds and receive world-class educations. You really can’t knock that hustle...

On the other side of things, some athletes are so talented that college is a formality, merely an obligation rather than something truly beneficial. Although it is nice to think that LeBron James could have benefited from college, that is a pretty idealistic view, because the fact of the matter is that some athletes are truly phenomena who face a different reality than 99.9 percent of the U.S. population. If I was blessed with the talent to make millions directly out of high school, I probably wouldn’t go to college either. If obtaining knowledge and receiving an education is really that important, there is nothing stopping professional athletes from going back to school once they retire and have money in the bank. Of course, most student-athletes aren’t blessed with the option to sign big contracts directly out of high school or college. Most student-athletes probably won’t even play organized sports after graduating. For this majority, hitting the books is really something, and I just want to show some recognition of their efforts in the classroom.