agree with what you guys are saying. Obviously, I don't think any of us think that banning college football is the way to fix things.
But I might also argue, who has decided that it needs fixing? If universities are willing to lose money to field a team, who's to stop them? If a kid puts all his eggs in one basket to try to make it to the NFL, and doesn't make it to the NFL....who's to stop them?
If you are going to ban college football, then ban ALL sports/cheerleading, etc. except intramurals.
Who is going to pay for those very large stadiums that have been built or will be built? Will we even then need a marching band at universities?
Do we all need to be teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, business people, politicians (mostly lawyers and that's a problem), mathematicians, scientists, intellectuals, etc. Some of us need to be FIXIT people: plumbers, electricians, HVAC people, human waste engineers, etc. We need all Americans to be educated people whether you are a doctor, etc. or a plumber, etc. A plumber, electrician, etc. are really like doctors: they diagnose and prescribe solutions to problems.
All college students need to be able to think creatively and critically. All people need to be able to think critically and creatively in their chosen profession so that they can develop new and better ways to do whatever it is that they do. So could a football player be able to study plumbing, etc. at a collegiate level?
So, we need educated people in all professions. Should a football player or basketball player be able to study plumbing, electricity, etc. instead of majoring in education, communication, medicine, law, criminal justice, business, science, mathematics, etc. at the collegiate level. Maybe some football players would acquire a SKILL that they can fall back on after losing all their wealth for stupid investments or just spending as they get it and be able to get a real job with a skill that all people have a need for.
I think that it is true that a vast majority of student-athletes are in reality athletes who attend class without excelling in learning that will positively affect their lives. I think most students (not just athletes) major in raising hell and causing confusion. College time is party time! This happens in high schools also: many teachers can't teach and many students can't learn at the high school level because some students are not there to learn but seem to be there to raise hell and cause confusion. Many of those students do what they do because they can't read, write, communicate effectively, compute accurately, etc.
Either a student should be on campus to focus on excelling at learning higher level thinking skills and at a masters/doctorate level on applying these skills/learning to a specific profession or do the above and have students that study electricity, plumbing, business, science, mathematics, engineering, so they will have a skill that will help them get a job. Many people graduate from college and really have no skills to do much of anything. So, is that useless studying/learning at the collegiate level?
Too many athletes (football/basketball) in colleges move on to pro sports sign multi-million $ contracts, can't write a sentence/paragraph/etc. They eventually lose all the wealth that they accumulated in those contracts and end up on skid-row (whatever that is). So, education in general needs to change. It is really hard to rally around an English class. Build a ladder to Heaven and talk to Coach Bryant. He'll tell you the same thing.
I honestly don't know what I'd do without the Alabama Crimson Tide dominating at what they do best. What would the people of Alabama or west Georgia do without a Saturday football game? Would there be more people in prison since they would not have something constructive to do throughout the week (reading/listening to or watching something related to Alabama football) or on Saturday: the BIG game and all its ramifications?
How many people would go out of business because there is no college football?
These are just some thoughts and some not thought out logically. I do agree with many things that Buzz talked about.