DIII Article...

Interesting article.

quote:

"It is definitely true that intercollegiate athletes tend to have lower grades than non-athletes at college institutions," he said. "The million-dollar question is, 'What's the reason for that kind of underperformance?'"

That's a good question. Is it simply that athletics takes away too much classroom and study time? Or are D3 athletes not as academically inclined/motivated as their non-athletic peers? Are other factors to blame? It's hard to say.

I recently had an illuminating discussion with a doctor who explained how many medical studies are skewed according to the researchers' biases. Depending on who is conducting the study, data can be manipulated to achieve a desired result. Makes me wonder if that's at work here too.

One other thing to consider: assuming that the athletes' grades are truly lower, do they out-perform their peers in other ways like time management, self-discipline, promptness, perseverance, etc.?

I was a little surprised to hear what the average GPA was for 4thGen's DIII teammates. However after a semester it appears that the workload is so great that giving up the time to practice and play games is a big academic disadvantage. He would not want it any other way and accepting the challenge will serve him well in the long run, but he has to split his focus and compete on two stages.

Of course, students who devotes 100% of their time and energy to academics SHOULD have higher GPAs than if they spent 3 of their waking hours per day working out and competing with a team. Time and energy are finite.

One of my sons just graduated from a D3 school that ranks near the top in sports and academics. He worked his tail off in both. He graduated with a high GPA, but it would have been higher if he had devoted himself exclusively to academics. It goes without saying, we're both glad he didn't.

Academically, the top-ranked liberal arts colleges (not univ.) in US News & World Report are Amherst and Williams, which are D3.

I guarantee you, the collective IQ scores of the Amherst and Williams football teams would be lower than the collective scores of a random sampling of students there. A fact of life.

But post-college isn't intellectual trivia like Jeopardy. I'd give ex-Amherst football players the edge when I was selecting an attorney or surgeon. Plenty smart, and they'd come through in the clutch.