Tim Brewster’s got a mighty subtle sales pitch for recruits looking at Texas A&M now.
(Jalen Ramsey strenuously objects, but I digress.)
It’s a job. When the coaches care as little about the educational side of college football as the five-star kids chasing their NFL dreams, it’s a job. Sorry, romantics.
Get The Picture 
Is it just me, but does anyone else hope Fisher flames out in College Station? I have a lot of people I work with who are Aggies, but I hope they get buyer’s remorse in a big way.
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I think he’ll flame out. And I used to be sort of an Aggie fan until I moved out here. “Cult” only begins to describe it.
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Aggies are terrible. He’ll flame out simply because College Station is one of the ugliest places in ‘Murica. I think I met be willing to live in Lubbock before living there.
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To be fair, he did just put out another graphic touting Fisher’s FSU teams having a 2.4 average GPA in exercise science and communications, along with a rape arrest rate of <2 annually, so we probably should give him a little credit.
Isn’t he also the same coach who last year stated the ACC is the best conference in football, only to then proclaim the same about the SEC after making the jump to A&M?
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C’mon man. You know damn well people say what they’re paid to say. We’re all whores, we’re just negotiating the price.
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Could that also be TA&M COA stipend?
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It does sound kind of sleazy, and misleading, to float that at all recruits as a whole, but how different is it than schools marketing what the average income is for graduates? I understand that a smaller % of players ever make a single dollar from the NFL but the graduate incomes are distorted by the very top echelon, and those who stay within their field.
It will be interesting to see Jimbo and Herman go head to head in the talent rich state of Texas. Also be interesting if that hyped up battle will impact OU, TCU, and Baylor’s ability to maintain their recent level of success.
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Because they’re graduates with degrees that factor into what they earn after school?
Nobody gets a BA in Football.
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Is it the schools fault or the coaches fault or the kids/parents that they don’t take advantage of a $200k + education?
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I’ll take the bait … it’s all of the above. The schools set up these worthless majors for athletes. The coaches steer them into these majors because they know they’ll stay eligible. The parent(s) may not have gone to college themselves so they can’t help the kid pick something worthwhile. The athlete wants the path of least resistance to their professional career.
OTOH, you have someone like Keith Marshall who changed to a more difficult major (Finance) within TCOB after he was injured.
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Personal accountability. You can be Ben Watson or countless others like Roquan Smith, Jeb Blazevich or Issac Nauta or Keith Marshall or many others over the years or you can take the bait (in your terms) and go for Door #1 and if you don’t make the NFL (or even if you do) you have a limited future. Either way its on the PLAYER and the PARENT. Our society is just rife with blame, its always somebody else’s fault.
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I said it’s all of the above. I think the system makes it easy for the player and the parent to choose Door #1 at the request of the coach and the “academic advisor” provided by the institution’s athletic department. I also think the parent has an obligation to convince the player to have a back-up plan. Eventually, it comes back to the player to balance the athletic commitment with the academic commitment and make a choice that may require more study and less time downtown.
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Agree
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Not sure where your kids are going to school but not many institutions are going to cost you $50,000+ a year. Most of these kids ain’t getting anything worth near that. Not to mention that much of the money schools “spend” on athletics are either sunk costs (pretty much 100% of academic costs) or they’re coming in as “donations” and other forms of outside revenue (TV contracts and the like). A scholarship costs a school almost nothing. Literally.
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Get your kid a private tutor, a full time academic monitor, a membership to a top flight gym with a trainer and all the other perks a football or basketball player enjoys and you’ll see how fast you get to $50,000 a year. Georgia is about $26,000 a year in tuition, room and board and fees before the $5000 a year “cost of attendance” figure is added and before the above mentioned extras are added.
Your statement about a scholarship costing the school literally nothing is technically correct. It cost’s the athletic association, not the school. The athletic association pays the actual university the cost of tuition, room, board, etc.. Add the travel costs, the costs of support staff, equipment, etc. and you will find the per player cost is pretty staggering for the athletic association.
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They should be able to get a BA in football, or any sport.
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And if a frog had wings…
The point is, they don’t.
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Don’t give Auburn any encouragement.
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True. Auburn would sign a frog with wings if it flew a sub 4-40
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Universities are more interested in maintaining their accreditation than catering to the student-athlete. Majors like that would certainly risk scrutiny by those who provide accreditation.
If an athlete wants to major in something like that, go get a degree in physical education, exercise science or sports management.
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Correct. My roommate at UGA was an exercise science major. Dude graduated with something like a 3.5, rarely studied, and was out partying 3-4 nights a week.
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So a frog had wings….
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I would assume something like that would give a guy a leg up on a high school coaching job or a strength and conditioning guy.
Some of the stuff athletes “major” in aren’t worth the paper the diploma is printed on … come to think of it, a number of majors across a university fit that bill.
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Absolutely. Majors like Housing, Communications, Women’s studies, Art, History, etc. immediately come to mind. I’m always blown away by college students who continue to go into six figure debt obtaining pointless degrees that aren’t transferable to the real world, who end up working at Starbucks. Meanwhile, there are millions of 6 figure jobs that are sitting there unfilled because they can’t find young talent to appropriately fill them.
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Well, when news organizations want to write stories about “crushing” student debt they have to talk to SOMEBODY. They’re filling a need. Capitalism at it’s best. On the bright side, since their marriage and family prospects are severely limited by their combination of debt and lack of earnings potential, perhaps a few of them essentially eliminate themselves from the gene pool.
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Damn dude. You gotta lump History in with those others?
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How do you lump History into that category of “pointless degrees”?
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He was just looking back over time.
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Tell Malcolm Mitchell that his Comm degree is worthless. Please.
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It should be a serious program combining things like nutrition, physiology, kinesiology, sports management, and finance with courses in football (or basketball, or other sports) strategy, coaching, organization, etc.
Pro sports (and below) are billion dollar industries. Set up serious programs that teach these kids how to succeed in that field rather than leaving them to figure it out on their own after they get cut by their fourth pro team. I think it can be as legitimate as many other current majors already mentioned, and much more useful.
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I agree in theory. The question is whether those majors end up being accredited. I don’t see a bunch of academics accrediting a major in name-the-sport.
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I’ve always wondered why they don’t simply offer a degree in football. Not that it would solve the pay for play issue, but it’s absurd that the highest paid educator at the university doesn’t oversee field in which you can earn a degree.
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I’m pretty sure the catch has to do with he difference between a trade and a profession. Fields of study usually categorize into education, medicine, arts, law where trades are more like task oriented disciplines. No one will ever know all there is to know about education or medicine, people can and maybe do know all there is to know about football.
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“but how different is it than schools marketing what the average income is for graduates?”
Hmm, I don’t know…because perhaps the overwhelming mission of an institution of higher learning is to educate students and prepare them for the workforce, not field a football team and prepare them for NFL success.
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Another difference. T A & M is marketing the salaries of graduates from colleges other than T A & M.
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Isn’t that what all colleges do, though? Think about it. Georgia touts the Terry College of Business as not just a great business school, but in regards to how many graduates find jobs post-school, how quickly they’re hired, and how much they make compared to other colleges.
They Ivys do it, too. So does any college or university. They sell themselves to perspective students on their ability to prepare them for a job in the real world.
Why is it any different than when a football coach does it? It’s possible this can be both. They get an education, and they’re prepared as best as possible for the job they want, in the profession they want, should they have the talent. Just like every other student.
I don’t see this as a, “Gotcha!” moment at all.
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TSB is selling academics.
What academics is Brewster selling?
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It’s not about selling academics vs. selling football, to me it’s just selling the best place to learn what you need to learn in order to be best prepared for the job you want in the real world.
For a high school football player, it’s the quality of the football program they will be part of in college that will help them make the NFL if they have the talent.
For a high school trumpet player, it’s the quality of the music program they will be part of in college that will help them become a session musician, or a part of the symphony, or a music teacher if they have the talent.
For a high school kid who wants to be a lawyer, it’s the quality of the undergrad programs to prepare them for law school, and then the quality of the law school to help them land the job they want in the real world.
As much fun as I had at UGA, it was just a step to getting to where I wanted to go. I enjoyed the journey, but the destination was always on my mind. Well, maybe not as much as most, as I originally planned on being a career Marine but God had other plans.
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Well, I guess that settles it, then.
The funniest part of this is that Brewster’s not even selling accomplishments at TAMU to recruits.
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Maybe you need to spend some more time in college if you think comparing a business school to a football team (where many, if not most, NFL-bound players don’t graduate with a degree) is an astute analogy.
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Yeah, you got me man, you are soooo smart. I think I did mention how few players make it to the NFL. Perhaps it is you who needs to be “better learned”.
Both are overselling using a similar technique, of course there are significant differences. You realize many freshman do not leave with degrees also, don’t you? And that many never reach the “average” pay on an adjusted basis? What we have here is an exaggeration , just arguing about the degree. If you don’t care for, or see the analogy, move on. It’s a point, whether you get it or not. I could nitpick some of your phrasing, but I don’t care enough to given your approach.
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How is this any different than schools touting their ranking in US News or Forbes?
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It looks like many of you are having a hard time grasping the overwhelming purpose of an institution of higher learning.
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Hard time grasping the overwhelming purpose of an institution of higher learning? That’s probably because of their experience with the University of Georgia trying to monetize it’s students, graduates, fans, employees and citizens of Athens at every single turn. Morehead bragged about raising $270 million in a year where tuition got raised. Shouldn’t for the sake of higher learning the tuition have gone down?
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No. It’s called inflation + UGA’s continued academic rise (which equals attracting higher quality professors) + supply and demand. Good for Morehead for raising 270m; I applaud his efforts.
UGA can’t take in and educate everyone, so sorry to burst your bubble that UGA doesn’t have its arms wide open and being welcoming of all. The average GPA of the ’18 class was 3.9 – that is astounding. Finally, as for UGA ‘trying to monetize its students; graduates, fans, citizens, etc.’; nobody is putting a gun to your head and demanding you attend or contribute, so I’m not exactly sure what all the bellyaching is all about.
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#1 I assure you nobody is putting a gun to my head nor anybody else’s. That’s a rather ignorant assertion since I learned (and many of the awesome other veterans that attend and work for UGA) while serving this country exactly what putting a gun on somebody is all about. Let’s leave putting guns to people’s heads out of this–we ain’t some piece of crap school like Auburn (or whatever crappy orange coloured school you want to name).
I’m not bellyaching, I read that you believe there is some other “overwhelming purpose to an institution of higher learning” and pointed out it might not be monetizing every possible revenue stream (heck, it might). Now we find out, in your eyes, the “overwhelming purpose of an institution of higher learning” is to increase revenue through inflation by leveraging the demand to attend with extremely positive measures based on the improvement of the University’s students (who are stellar based on the fact I work with them every day), faculty and academic ranking (all good things). That’s fine but is that your view of the “overwhelming purpose of an institution of higher learning”? Just interested because I think it’s educating students (and by all means not going broke and to fund raise and all that stuff). I’m not so sure cloaking the mission in some high ideals that don’t pan out after a little scrutiny with regard to finances is the best supposition to enter into this discussion.
ps I made my choice to graduate from UGA and work here and support the University with some donations. Regardless of the killing stick, sword, musket, rifle, pistol, nunchuks, ninja flash bombs, rocket launchers or any other implement of war that you feel gets figuratively put to my head.
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No need to blow up like that. You should get some anger management.
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3.9 due to HOPE grade inflation….that’s my take.
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Higher learning, they are getting 2 degrees for free. 1 in football and another degree of their choice.
The college also makes money off of grad students’ studies and they do not get a cut of the revenue.
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Maybe US News should start including the final AP Top 25 in its rankings. 😉
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Possibly Bama and Miami both used football to attract students with better grades.
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Keepin’ the NFL minor league narrative going- way to go! Love the “coached by Elko” BS parenthetical as if that was his only coach in his career.
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Most football factories are all about just trying to grease these kids through and keep them eligible. Get them in a joke of a major and flood them with so much academic “help” that it becomes almost impossible for them to fail.
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I think the Ramsey tweet is by far more interesting than the coaches tweet. The coach has to get out there and pump the program for recruiting.
Ramsey suggesting that FSU value add to his skill set was minimal is noteworthy.
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My brother in law just finished a scholastic event in Orlando where Malcolm Mitchell was the key note speaker. It is just amazing what the opportunity to go to college did for that young man, and he was still able to play professional football. The romantic in me loves that story, however the realist in me knows that the whole system is extremely flawed. Contrast Malcolm Mitchell to Brewster’s twitter post.
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Even Money Mitch admits it took an injury to get his attention about the educational opportunity he had at Georgia. His run-in with the woman at Barnes & Noble and his involvement with her book club likely would have never happened if he hadn’t been hurt. Now he is making a bigger impact off the field with his book and his advocacy for child literacy. #DGD
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“Know I have nothing but respect for you Coach Brew but don’t use me on a poster for a school I didn’t go to & for a coach who didn’t teach me how to be a DB.”
Sounds like someone had his NLI used without his permission. Hmmmm…….
He’s no longer a “student athlete”, maybe he can squeeze a few bucks out of ’em. Romance be damned.
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Not only that, but the document that Ramsey signed authorizing use of his NL and I was a scholarship agreement with FSU, not Texas A & M, or Jimbo Fisher.
It would not be worth his time and expense to sue A & M, but it would make the Torts casebook if he did.
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Sounds like FSU didn’t teach Ramsey one thing about grammar, either.
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