The Challenges of Being a College Athlete

The college athlete is one of the many undefined positions for students across the country and college athletes often find themselves in interesting positions on a college campus. College Athletes must abide by rigorous practice and game day schedules while balancing their grades. Although the NCAA does set minimum guidelines for student athletes to maintain, most students realistically know that they will never be a professional basketball or baseball player and want to do more than just have a C+ average in school. By having higher grades, they have a better chance of going to a professional or graduate school or getting a better job once they come out of college.

Most college coaches fail to realize this with most of the players on their team, especially when it comes to teams in the bottom Tier of Division 1 sports. Kids from top sports schools such as Duke or North Carolina have a much better chance of going pro than a player from a lesser known school such as Bucknell or Vermont. Yet college coaches continue to push their athletes to maximize their potential while adversely affecting their grades. It is a very delicate situation that student athletes are in.

In addition; most student athletes get financial aid from their schools and probably could not afford to go to their respective schools without the financial aid. This money comes to students from the FAFSA financial aid program that is sponsored by the national government for college students. However, most student athletes also face the reality that they must get a job on their college campus or off campus if they want to have any kind of social life or just plain pocket cash to spend. Without a job, student athletes would be unable to go out to the town and buy shopping items or go to a restaurant and have a nice dinner with their friends or their date.

Adding all three of these things up between excelling at sports, the pressure of maintaining high grades, and having a part time or full time job, you can see how stressful it is to be a student athlete. In fact, this has also caused student athletes to get into a lot of trouble with NCAA sports because student athletes have been found to be taking illegal money from college boosters which are prohibited under college sports rules. Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith got into trouble his first year at Ohio State because he illegally took money and he was then suspended.