Sports: The All-American Addiction

10. Mind over Body in the Information Age

MIND OVER BODY IN THE INFORMATION AGE American education has tacitly endorsed, and our society celebrates , a culture that accepts the notion that it is an educational institution’s responsibility to provide the very best in facilities, coaching, and support so that elite athletes have every opportunity to develop their athletic abilities to the fullest. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to provide the resources and support to help an individual develop fully as an athlete. The problem, however, is that while this goal has become the primary purpose of the athlete’s educational experience, the academic and personal development of the individual has become an afterthought . It is as if we have come to believe that if during a star athlete’s years in school, he or she happens to get an education, it is a bonus. This, as opposed to a system that has as its fundamental expectation that a young person develop fully academically , intellectually, socially, and personally while he or she happens to play athletics. It is the athletic development that must be a pleasant byproduct of the educational process, not the other way – 208 – Instead of pouring new knowledge into people’s heads, we need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so we can see the world in a new way. —J. S. Brown 209 Mind over Body in the Information Age around. We simply can no longer tolerate a system that demands athletic excellence but accepts educational mediocrity, for no matter how small a group of students. For example, if we believe in the health and character-building benefits of exercise and athletic participation, why is it that schools and universities are spending an increasing amount of money and resources on interscholastic and intercollegiate athletic programs, while the development of physical education, intramural, and wellness programs remains a low priority? If the benefits of athletic participation are so great, shouldn’t the opportunity to take advantage of them be available to all? Shouldn’t participation in comprehensive physical education, intramural, and wellness programs, designed to develop an appreciation for the benefits of lifelong exercise and athletic participation, be required? Our schools and universities invest a tremendous amount of tax and education dollars on activities designed for a select few. Meanwhile, the lifelong health and fitness needs of the vast majority of students go largely unmet. In terms of public health and education, such an approach amounts to a very poor return on investment in organized athletics. Given the critical role that education must play in meeting the many challenges facing our society, it is unconscionable that we continue to expend valuable resources, effort, and emotion on activities that do not supplement the goals and missions of our schools and universities in direct and meaningful ways. That being the case, serious consideration must be given to radically altering how athletics is utilized as a tool to advance America’s health and education interests. Take, for example, the sports our school systems teach and emphasize. Schools should emphasize sports that can be enjoyed for a lifetime, such as swimming, tennis, recreational basketball and soccer, aerobics, and jogging. It is ironic that our schools spend the most money on football, a sport that the vast majority of participants will never play again after they leave school. From a public health standpoint, how can we continue to spend such a disproportionate amount of money and emotion on sports for an elite few, sports that have as their primary purpose, to provide entertainment, while the health and physical fitness needs of the majority of our students go unmet? If community and education leaders were committed to using athletic participation as a tool to improve public health, school systems would be strengthening, rather than weakening, physical education requirements and would be appropriating increasingly scarce public education dollars to programs that emphasize broad-based, lifelong participation rather than elite football or basketball teams. At the college level, athletic programs with budgets in excess of $50 million that provide athletic opportunities for less than 5 percent of the student body would simply not exist. The health benefits associated with participation in a competitive athletic program can be achieved by participating in recreational activities, ranging from intramural teams, physical education classes, and individual sport activities such as jogging or swimming, and at a far lesser expense. How about Music? There is also the larger question of athletics...