With 100,000 screaming youths in a packed stadium in Michigan, a hand full of fans in the midst of a blue and yellow Mexican wave strategically held out placards to form the letters of the team. A man dressed in a blue mascot suit ran wildly across the field holding aloft his team’s flag. This was no professional team playing in any prestigious club competition, but the Michigan University’s American football team playing at home, in USA’s largest stadium measured by seating capacity.

The Big Advantage

Today an average student in the US graduates from college with a student debt of around $30,000. With such a burden on their backs, students are forced to focus on academics and give up on sports as a profession where 98% of them are not going to make it as professionals. However, when the superstar wages players are provided a degree instead, it motivates a sportsperson to pursue the sport they so desire and in the process earn a college degree which they could use to find alternate means of living if they do not become a sporting professional.

Bigger Sports Industry – The existence of a college-based sports system has created a whole new sports industry that creates more jobs and more avenues. With players of college level sports being treated like stars in the professional sport, brands in merchandising and beverage companies are more than willing to sponsor teams and players often agreeing on multi-million dollar deals that make some of these teams almost as rich as their professional counterparts.

Robust Sports Infrastructure – US gains excellent sports infrastructure built by various universities and college teams. Some of the largest sports arenas in USA belong to sports teams of educational institutions such as University of Michigan, and Pennsylvania State University. With excellent facilities and infrastructure made available right from the developmental stage, participants are already tuned to function in a completely professional sports environment with the guidance and equipment’s necessary to reach the peak of their performance.

Drawbacks

The current system also proves to be a disadvantage to students who excel both in sports as well as academics. It has been reported that players are often forced by coaches to pick courses that are less taxing from an academic point of view so that they have more time to devote to sports. This causes some of the players to study subjects that they probably are not interested in. Such a situation might be dreadful for the student if they were not able to make it as a professional sportsperson as they would end up confined to an industry which might be quite difficult for them to fit into. When it comes to the other students who are not a part of the sports program, the burden of a subsidising education for the sports personnel is usually loaded on the tuition fees of  other students, leading to a very high cost of education. If college sports do make a lot of money, they are generally reinvested into the sporting system and do not benefit the student community of the university as a whole.

The outrageous salaries that sports coaches earn easily outweigh some of the most intellectually gifted professors in the university by a margin that is questionable. Some of the best coaches heading football teams part of the Big 10 league easily make an average of 2 to 3 million dollars as salaries. The distribution of budget questions the very existence of some of these institutions as educational hubs. Sports has become the new public face of some of these universities which seem to have caused a massive imbalance. The worry earlier was the lack of sports, which is now turning to a situation where there is too much sport.

A college based sporting system could be an apt avenue to convert our country into a nation excelling in sports. Our current focus on academics is mainly due to the fact that sports as a career option comes only at the cost of sacrificing studies. With professional sports, apart from cricket and more recently football, paying almost no money in professional environment, sport is often reduced to be practiced as a hobby rather than being pursued as a profession.

Introduction of a collegiate sports system in India could ensure people who pursue sports are given the opportunity to obtain a college degree, thus eliminating the fear of lack of an alternate career option. Sports such as Hockey, Basketball and Kabaddi would have a well-established league in a collegiate system that would not only fuel our Olympic teams, but also give the nation a steady supply of skilled sportsmen to professional leagues thus improving the overall quality of our national as well as local talent.

One of the biggest threats of starting a new sports league in India is the uncertainty of gaining a committed audience. However, in a collegiate sports system, students and alumni of the respective university can be the committed audience attending the games on a regular basis with their friends and family members roped in to tag along. Hence with a little bit of marketing, these University teams can gain a more loyal following and develop steady fan base for some of the lesser known sports. The American Collegiate Sports structure would indeed be an excellent role model for India to follow in establishing college sports system to nourish all sports in our nation.