I grew up watching my dad yell at the TV every football weekend in the fall. No matter the team, not matter the game he always had an opinion, bad pass, bad call, or bad defense. There was always a critique. Fast forward to my freshman year at Notre Dame and my first home game, the irish were playing Michigan and there was an electricity in the air. Leading up to the game everyone was buzzing, ready to see those gold helmets run across the field. As the game went on I always had an opinion, bad pass, bad call, or bad defense. In my mind the players were pros, they weren’t allowed to make mistakes. A few weeks later I decided to walk on to the women’s division one rowing team here at Notre Dame. I quickly learned that I was the same as those players I was so harshly critiquing just a few weeks earlier. While rowing does not receive even a fraction of the attention from the media and campus community, my rank amongst the university is the same as the football team.
For some reason being an athlete here at Notre Dame sets you apart from the average student whether you like it or not. Certain stereotypes and stigmas are places on both students and student-athletes creating an unspoken tension between the groups. What should be one whole inclusive student body, is being driven apart by misconceptions and blindly held beliefs. Being a walk on gives me insight into both sides of the divide. I understand bot the tension of the regularly admitted students and the recruited athletes, and have found through conversations with my classmates, dormmates, friends, and teammates main areas for this divide. Regularly admitted students believe that athletes “cheated their way into Notre Dame”, “receive special treatment from professors”, and “have their tutors do their homework”. They also believe that their tuition money goes towards funding athletics instead of academics. From the other side of the divide, student athletes complain that they do not have enough time to socialise with people outside of their teams, therefore remaining isolated from the campus community. The growing divide between students and student-athletes is due to controversy surrounding time commitment and isolation, academic aids, admission to the university, and athletic funding.
The largest controversy dividing the student population is athletic funding. Regularly admitted students see new athletic facilities being built at the same rate as new dorms and automatically assume that their tuition steep tuition prices are footing the bill. They also see student athletes wearing Under Armour sweatshirts, sneakers, and backpacks, that they received for free, as a constant reminder that they will never receive that apparel unless they pay overpriced bookstore fees. What they don’t normally see if the millions of dollars in revenue that the football team alone generates through ticket sales, television agreements, and apparel sales and contracts. In 2014, 2015, and 2016 the football team averaged $112 million in revenue and $72 million in profit (Smith). In 2016-2017 the Notre Dame annual athletic report included “Notre Dame’s two-and-a-half-decade relationship with NBC Sports to televise Irish home football games has resulted in more than $100 million being allocated from contract revenues to University financial aid. Athletics has contributed in excess of $4 million per year of revenue from the NBC Sports agreement to the University’s financial aid program” (University of Notre Dame Annual Athletic Report). Looking at those numbers Football alone has the capacity to support all of the Notre Dame division one athletic teams with plenty of money to spare. But, football is not the only team to generate revenue, in 2014 Under Armour signed a ten year contract, “value of the deal, in cash and merchandise combined, is worth about $90 million”(Rovell), with the universities athletic department as a whole. These numbers exclude the thousands of dollars generated from ticket lotteries and endowment (University of Notre Dame Annual Athletic Report). With these statistics, it is easy to see that not only is the athletic department self sustainable, it is beneficial to to the overall growth and income of the entire university, “Athletic Director, Jack Swarbrick, has revealed that Notre Dame actually pours money back into the college’s coffers, to the tune of about $10 million in 2009.”(Dosh). It is safe to say that the belief that student tuition money is being used to fund athletics is false, and a consequence of misinformed opinions.
Another strain dividing the student body population is the tension surrounding student-athlete admissions. Many regularly admitted students believe that student athletes “cheated” their way into the university. The term “cheated” applies to any student who received admission when their test scores, GPA, and extracirruclar activities were below the average of regularly admitted students. As described in Rubin and Moses journal Athletic Subculture Within Student-Athlete Academic Centers, “Many Division I universities offer conditional admission for students- athletes, regardless of their academic preparedness (Rid-path, 2010)” (Rubin and Moses).
Work Cited
Smith, Chris. “College Football’s Most Valuable Teams: Texas A&M Jumps To No. 1.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 25 Sept. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2018/09/11/college-footballs-most-valuable-teams/#6f6d02786c64.
University of Notre Dame Annual Athletic Report . 2016, University of Notre Dame Annual Athletic Report .
Rovell, Darren. “Under Armour Signs Notre Dame.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 21 Jan. 2014,www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/10328133/notre-dame-fighting-irish-armour-agree-most-valuable-apparel-contract-ncaa-history.
Dosh, Kristi. “How Does Notre Dame Do Financially?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 July 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/04/19/how-does-notre-dame-do-financially/#4425a25b1559.
Rubin, Lisa, and Ron Moses. “Athletic Subculture Within Student-Athlete Academic Centers.” Sociology of Sport Journal 34.4 (2017): 317-328. Web.
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