A student attends a college or university to get a higher education that will help him or her earn a better living when they graduate. Their athletics become second to their academics. With athletes, this seems to change. Many factors play into it but sometimes it doesn't go this way. Athletes, coaches, and the universities themselves can all be credited for this sometime or another. No matter what level of competition in the NCAA the school is competing in, every once and a while you will hear of a situation where athletics is emphasized more than academics. A prime example of this is when a school accep

ty lost early in the NCAA tournament, Pat Richter, WU's athletic director, decided to go elsewhere with a coach with a "national reputation". With incidences like this all over the country, it is hard for a coach not to push his athletes harder just to keep his job.

Ever since sports have been getting more popular in our society, they have been getting more competitive. Sometimes, this competitiveness is too much, especially when so much is relying on the record. With the pressure athletes put on themselves, with the pressure coaches and other outside influences do too, its easy to see how they can view athletics more important than academics. Last year, the NCAA basketball tournament was one of the most publicized and watched athletic events in the country. With all the publicity the athletes, coaches, and universities got, there is not a better opportunity to show how good you are. I just don't see how sometimes people lose perspective of what should be done, and nobody else steps in to tell them.

The second reason is not pressure coming from the coach, but pressure being put on him by the institution. Sports are a big deal for some of the major schools across the nation. Things like television deals, recruitment, and enrollment are all affected by sports at the school. The institution also fills out a coach's paycheck and when a university thinks that you are doing a good job with the team, that paycheck seems to grow. That is why some schools demand "successful" athletic teams, in terms of their achievements and records. For this reason many coaching jobs open up from year to year around the country. When a coach cannot get the record the school wants, he or she is fired. For instance, "There were 26 coaching vacancies among 318 d

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Approximate Word count = 1188
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)