For some faculty and student as well as athletics and academics are mutually repellent. The majority argues that colleges should be a place of for cultivating the mind and not the body. It is certainly not the place of for engaging in the kind of recruitment strategies and profiteering associated with professional sports. Generally, athletic programs interfere with the very process of classroom education, as when student-athletes skip class to participate in out-of-school competitions and events (Jarvie, Thornton & Mackie, n.d.).
For others, however, college athletic programs are as essential to education as any other academic programs; they hold that the mind-body dichotomy is a false one. Several claims have been made that if athletic programs are to be scrapped, then why not scrap other theatre and dance as well. Moreover, athletic sponsorship in colleges gives many students their only opportunity to gain a foothold in academe, and a successful athletic program an other-wise unknown institution a chance to have a nationwide reputation. Majority of the alumni connected to athletic programs are often the most generous in terms of donation to universities.
From the theoretical perspective of this research functionality tend to concentrate on the benefits of sports, conflicts theorists see the downside, symbolic interactionalist focus on the personal meanings derived from sports, on the self-concepts and relationships developed through this activity.
Structural functionalism
The functional perspective examines the paying of college athletes in the context of the larger social system (Shaw, 2002). According to Shaw, functionality perspective, in general, explores how the paying of college athletes is necessitated by the social system and what it offers to the functional operation, maintenance, and progression of the social system.
Despite early insights, functionalism emerges as a leading theoretical paradigm in contemporary sociology mainly through several sociologists and their respective contributions. First are Emile Durkheim and his pioneer studies of anomie, suicide, religion, and social integration. Second is Robert Merton and his classification of dysfunction, manifest and latent functions, and functional alternatives. The third is the German philosopher Karl Marx who waged war against an assault against the capitalist and social economic order. Sociologists join in the effort by focusing on systemic variables such as anomie and social interactions.
Sport teaches basic beliefs, norms, and values. They ready the college athlete for adult roles, games, for instance, prepare participating athletes for work in organizations. With the help of college athletes, transnational sports companies create a market for their own products. The rather subtle and first path is designed to avoid rejection of their product. Towards accomplishing this goal, corporation produces goods such as shoes and clothes that mirror the local customs and taste. The cooperation then launches a media campaign and illustrating the compatibility between the company’s new products and preferences to the original preferences of the local culture. This media campaign is achieved through the college sporting sector who in turn boost companion sale but receive none or less income at long rand. Bearing this in mind college athletes deserve a pay and not to be used for lucrative purposes and then ditched when business is over.
Overall college athletes benefit from participation in sports. They tend to be better educated, earn more money, and have higher occupational prestige their fathers, reliance on sports for upward mobility, however, is detrimental to minority athletes.
From this functional perspective, the most common reason indulging in college sponsorship amongst young athlete in the current generation is to go pro later in their life, earn a source of income to keep up with the higher living standards, enhance an activity and alleviate depression (Boys, Marsden and Strang 2001).
Social dysfunction, which includes family, work, legal, and financial problems, emerge as a consequence of failure to thrive in the sporting sector. Addiction can be influenced by self-defeating personality traits that result from being raised in poor and dysfunctional families. (Lewis, Dana, and Blevins, 1994) define personality as the habitual way of thinking, feeling, acting and relating to others that develops in childhood and is consciously perpetuated in adult living. Personalities usually develop as a result of an interaction between genetically inherited traits and family environments.
Conflict theory
Conflict refers to the discord of ones feeling or action, the incompatibility of one’s idea or event to another, the opposition of one’s interest or principle to another, or general situation of disequilibrium, disagreement, tension, or confrontation (Shaw, 2002). Conflict theory perspectives of substance use emphasize mainly on the importance of conflict, power, and domination in a society and the outcomes associated with substance use and abuse.
Conflict theory reiterates on how the use athlete’s elite use power to satisfy their own interests. To conflict theorists, a sport is a social institution in which most of the powerful oppress, manipulate, coerce, and exploit other young athletes. Conflict theorist highlights the ways in which a sport mirrors the unequal distribution of power and money in the college institutions. While functionalist see the sports as a potential source of income and unification to the society, conflict theorists do not see. While several people from all Major segments of the community may join in cheering for their same team, their union is temporary. When the game is over, the enthusiastic dies, the solidarity runs short, and disharmony in other relations reasserts itself.
Conflict theorists likewise question the moulding of character. Among the college athletes, recent studies show that the degree of sportsmanship apparently declines as athletes become more involved in the sports system. Non-scholarship athletes also displayed greater sportsmanship than those with an athletic scholarship, and those who have not earned letters exhibits more sportsmanship than letter winners.
Conflict theorists can point a number of past and present scandals where athletes in college and other professional ranks, are taking drugs, cheating in school, or accepting legitimate cash and gifts in the expense of acquiring an extra cash to sustain their livelihoods or increase their performance which is usually associated with huge cash. Paying the college athletes at large irrespective of their performance will greatly reduce these scandals in the sports sector.
Minorities continue to face discrimination in sports. This kind of discrimination usually occurs in assigning player positions, salary levels, commercial endorsements and post carrier leadership opportunities. Females in sports suffer from a gender-based stereotype. Discrimination begins early, with a relative type of opportunity in youth leagues. It continues in secondary, collegiate and professional sports. Although intercollegiate athletes do not receive equal to males, this situation is slowly improving (White & Billings, n.d.). Fewer women are able to become professional athletes and are paid less than males when they do.
Athletes in colleges may use performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids and amphetamines to achieve a competitive edge. This results from the analogy of awarding only the top performing athletes and without appreciating the efforts of other minor athletes. Big time college coaches in their zeal to win have been found guilty of exploiting younger athletes who are easily lured with money.
Symbolic interactions
Symbolic interactions further contribute to the general understanding of sports as a social institution (Karen & Washington, 2015). This theoretical perspective concentrates on personal meaning, social relationship, and identity process. The meanings and interpretation of the symbols associated with the sports are important because they affect the self-concepts, as well as the relationship of athletes involved. Sports contribute to the upward mobility among athletes, but the opportunities are few with majority facing discrimination.
The autobiography of star athletes often points sports as their out of poverty. One educator ones predicted that “football would enable a whole generation of young men in the coal fields of Pennsylvania to turn their backs on the mines that employed their fathers” (Chelladurai, Robinson, Bodet & Downward, 2012). Many athletes use sports as a means out of their equivalent ‘coal fields’. Thus, in turn, raises the need to pay college athletes.
Indeed, symbolic interactionism contributes greatly to understanding the socialization process in sports but fails to address the broader social and cultural context. For example, it does not address the function of sports in the society within the power of context of power and social mobility.
References
Durkheim, E. (1974). Sociology and philosophy. Abingdon: Routledge.
Marx, K., Bottomore, T. and Rubel, M. (1990). Selected writings in sociology and social philosophy. London: Penguin Books.
Chelladurai, P., Robinson, L., Bodet, G., & Downward, P. (2012). Routledge handbook of sports management. London: Routledge.
Jarvie, G., Thornton, J., & Mackie, H. Sport, culture, and society.
Karen, D., & Washington, R. (2015). Sociological perspectives on sport. London: Routledge.
Tischler, H. Introduction to sociology.
White, F., & Billings, S. The well-crafted argument.
