Customer Reviews

The Game of Life

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Last week I delivered a letter to the president of the University at Buffalo faculty senate that began: "I write to recommend that the University at Buffalo withdraw from Division IA athletics. I base much of my argument for downgrading at least to the university's former Division III status on the recently published book THE GAME OF LIFE by James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen (Princeton University Press)...."

It is not often that a book can have as major an impact on a reader as this one has had on me -- and, I add, should have on everyone interested in education. It makes a compelling case that Division IA athletics is bad not only for a university's academic community but for the community at large as well. And it has led me to take this drastic action. I only hope that the university students, faculty and administration will have the wisdom to act favorably in response to this recommendation.

THE GAME OF LIFE is a myth destroyer. The authors bring to bear statistics gathered from 90,000 students at 30 colleges that are selective enough to have to turn away many well qualified applicants. "Every spring," the authors say, "valedictorians with straight A averages, and applicants with stellar SAT scores who may have conducted original laboratory research or made a full-length documentary film, are rejected because there are only so many spots in a class. Because there are so many outstanding candidates, a place in the entering class...is a scarce resource."

Basing their conclusions on a massive ten year quantitative research program that includes data collected in 1951, 1976 and 1989, these authors effectively destroy such accepted convictions as college sports programs pay for themselves, playing sports builds character, athletic contests encourage alumni support, and college sports play a major factor in the integration of underrepresented minorities into higher education. The authors brought to their task impeccable qualifications. Both are officers of the Andrew F. Mellon Foundation and Bowen is a former Princeton University president. Earlier they drew on the same resources for a widely respected study of race-sensitive college admissions called THE SHAPE OF THE RIVER.

Here are a few of their conclusions: Scholarship athletes not only arrive at college with poorer credentials (a 237 point SAT deficit in IA schools) but, despite their special tutoring programs and gut courses, they achieve even poorer records once on campus. It is rare for an athletic program to pay for itself even when the teams are winners. They site the University of Michigan where the teams did very well in 1998-1999 but the program lost $3.8 million. Their bottom line: "athletics is a bad business." College expenses for all other extracurricular activities represent a tiny fraction of those for athletics. Minorities are not well served by athletic programs. And, perhaps worst of all, the special entrance attention given to athletes has a strong negative effect on the attitudes of secondary school students.

Required reading for all concerned about the future of education.

The findings in this book are very important. The authors prove that Ivy League and other prestigious schools admit athletes with significantly lower SAT scores than regular students need for admission. They also prove that an "athletic culture" is taking over these schools just as it did big-time college sports schools (see the recent well-written book, Beer & Circus). Then, in their most valuable finding, they prove that women athletes are not really helped by spending so much time in sports and away from serious studies, and that athletes do not become better leaders than regular grads of schools (the book looks at many grads from the 1950s and 1970s).

All that is good stuff but the authors make it very hard to find that out. They write in a tepid prose, full of passive constructions and qualifications, that makes reading the book very slow going. Often it is like reading against a full-court press. Although Frank DeFord endorses the book, the authors should have read a lot of his work before starting on theirs. BTW, author William Bowen is the head of the Mellon Foundation and author James Shulman is a financial officer with the foundation--no wonder they write bureaucratic prose!

The ideas in the book are very important but many readers will be put off by the prose.

I was enlightened and educated by this book. My starting opinion was directly opposed to college athletics as they are at many major universities. However, through this research, I've come to see the differences between "big-time" sports such as basketball and football, and most other college sports. This agreed with my college recollections where I knew many athletes in "smaller" sports who worked hard as schoolwork and their sport. They played their sport for the love of the game and the camaraderie, but most knew that their careers ended at graduation. I continue to admire them and wonder why some many universities continue to hurt those sports to maintain the larger sports.

College football and basketball, in particular, are fully-subsidized minor leagues for the NFL and NBA. If the NCAA drastically changes the way it does business, those leagues will have to find another way to test and screen athletes. This won't hurt the schools at all; in fact, the schools will benefit. Good student/athletes will still get a college education (as many baseball players do today), and pure athletes will still have a chance to compete and become professionals.

This book substantially helped shape my opinions on college sports in a well-researched and documented manner.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants a balanced yet critical look into college athletics. jgalt5@yahoo.com

Let me start out by saying, I am only about a third of the way through. I am also a former student athlete and current coach. But it seems as though someone should chime in with their views on the book since no one else has. So with that in mind, take my initial observations as such.

While I am struck by the depth of analysis and the thoroughness of their methodology, I am also struck by the sense that the authors have decidedly taken the view that college athletics, in of itself, is an entity unto itself. And that in the instances cited, are incongruent with the mission of an educational institution. While there certainly is merit in the academic performance analysis, it is unfortunate that they fail to see the merits of athletics in the educational environment. While it is easy to quantify the development of a student in a classroom, it is impossible to quantify the role of collegiate athletics in the development of the individual student. Does devoting 12 hours a week to studying for Western Civ. add something more, something more fundamental to the student that spending 10 hours a week on the practice field does not? Regretably, academicians have spent more time dismissing the value of athletics, rather than creating methodology to judge its worthiness. And while classroom performance remains something tangible and quantifiable, no one has endeavored to quantify the merits of working within a team for a common objective, experiencing leadership within a team environment, and all the ancillary benefits that are brought about from participating in collegiate athletics. Instead, they are quick to point out and highlight everything that is detrimental, but not unique to, collegiate athletics (alcohol, violence, etc.).

My overriding concern is one that may or may not have merit and could potentially be dismissed by the end of the book. Written by and for academics, it is with great concern that this will be adopted by institutions of higher learning to justify the alienation of student-athletes based upon quantified generalizations. This could very well become the classic coffee table book that so many quote and act on, but have never read.

I will be back for another review when I am struck with the additional thoughts that inevitably come from reading a book of this nature.

For all the harping made of affirmative action, little is made of the three-fold greater leg-up given to athletes. At every turn, athletes are lesser academically and intellectually, require more resources, and provide little in alumni funds. Although jocks benefit greatly from college, they are an incredible waste of a precious resource.

It is a book based on facts by a person in the know.

Bill Bowan, the former president at Princeton pulls together a lot of accurate facts about athletes having a leg up gaining access to our most prestigious academic colleges, but like most people who argue about anyone being given a leg up in any situation he fails to give you all the facts. Yes you can argue that these institutions academic experience might be somewhat lessened at some minor level, but in reality, that is not the case. The professors in these colleges have very very high expectations for their students which do not change because they have a minor amount of students in their classes that are not prepared to deliver honor like efforts. He does a great job of presenting statistics on the negative impacts, in his mind, for allowing a small number of slightly below academic show stoppers into these schools. But on the other hand does nothing to highlight the positive impact that these athletes and their teams have on the entire college experience. He seems to think that putting all the best and brightest together and enclosing them around a similar group of students is the true path to real success.

Nothing could be further from the truth as many of these lesser students, in fact, represent the working world that most of these graduates will enter upon graduation. Somehow Bill makes the leap of faith that these gifted students will have the luxury of being completely surrounded by gifted academia's for the rest of their lives and all problems and issues can be resolved by this group of elite students simply because they are so talented. Bill completely misses the point here, in that, this world does not exist and just because these learners were gifted with the ability to memorize information, which comprises the majority of the SAT tests. Again the reality is that having a much more diverse student population than Bill advocates for is the best interest of all the students. Diversity is something Bill doesn't like to consider, yet somehow he likes to have you believe that this non-homogeneous academic fantasy he promotes will take care of itself and having a nerdy group of thinkers hunkered together is the road to true wisdom. Sorry Bill, but that's the case. I could, but won't point out specific schools, but trust me there are a small number of schools that have taken this track and besides not producing a significant number of high climbers than the schools that do embrace athletics as a positive, these schools have one common characteristics, and that being and abnormally high suicide rate. Opps he forgot to mention that. He also forgets to point out that the athletes do bring a true diversity to their campuses, unlike the students of sidewalk diversity ( a phrase used by students who recognize the joke of having foreign looking students, who usually come from money to present the allusion of diversity).

The other thing that Bill does not point out is that leg up opportunities that are afforded to students of wealth that these same schools allow entry into. Having worked at one of these schools, I can tell you first hand, that these schools have the same standard for these students than they do for athletes. Bill somehow doesn't mention this. Don't make the mistake of thinking that these families of wealth pull out a hundred grand to buy entry; that is chump change in these schools minds. I'm talking about putting up a million or more to level the playing field.
Lastly, Bill doesn't point out that most of these schools have the highest levels of grade inflation in the college ranks. This fact is due to the pressure that the profs are under to give better grades than students deserve of they will be shown the door. ie They know that the wealth that drives these buddy system of entry are not ponying up big cash for their sons and daughters to being hitting the streets with a bunch of C's on the transcripts.

Don't waste your money on this overblown and inaccurate set of conclusions.

As promised, I am coming back to you with my observations after having read through most of the book.

Sadly, for all the hype and all the praise the book has received, I am beginning to wonder if a) reviewers actually read the book, and b) if they did read it, did they actually question the merits of the authors research and conclusions. After having read most of it, I conclude that they did not.

I could go point for point, but alas, because of space I can not. A number of troubling points however -

First, the authors take liberties with anecdotes and too frequently back up their claims with them. For example the discussion about the Williams College Lacrosse team, or the Ivy League Lacrosse player.... I think it is a mark of dishonesty that the authors quickly point out the poor state of collegiate athletics because they read a story in a university newspaper... as was the case in the Princeton players instance.

Second, in graduate school we were always told never to overlook footnotes. After reading through most of them, I am glad I did. In a number of instances, there conclusions are based upon data that was compiled at one school in their universe of thirty. Or that an anecdote used as an illustration, was actually from a instance taken from outside the universe of schools they used.

Third, I think they demonstrate a disdain for athletes when they question at length their value to the diversity of campus. In their mind, because of a whole host of issues, they don't add to the amount of diversity in a university.... what are some of those issues? Political inclination (Not Liberal or Far Left), choice of major (economics or Poli Sci), tend to group with other athletes. Which begs the question, what type of student do the authors believe add to the diversity of university.

Finally, there is a terrible lack of balance. If you knew nothing else before you read this book, you would finish by thinking athletes are a lower caste of intellectuals that for some reason were admitted into these universities, not based on their academic abilities of course. That universities have made some sort of deal with the devil to accept these sort of intellectual anchors to improve their markting and PR machines that are built solely on athletics.... which begs to ask....

Where is the critique of these institutions and their pactices? And why is it only athletics that is responsible for losing money, while all the other departments are deemed as critical elements in the mission of the university? Sadly, these are questions that aren't answered but should... if athletics is going to be put under such scrutiny, shouldn't the rest of the university be submitted to the same rigours?

Anyhow, I will be back. If you are interested in my notes, feel free to email me ...

This book resembles two men with a vendetta over people with a solution. Using a lot and I mean a lot of statistics they turn the data to favor their arguments. If one school out of many supports their claim, that is the stat they use, ignoring the stronger evidence. The authors do not offer solutions beyond "there should be changes made nation wide." These are the same people who write the mellon report, so getting additional attention is their goal, over informing a reader.