Knowledge, one of the most valuable things to us as a people, is the thing that separates us from the animals and helps us advance forward in math, science, art, music and so on. Knowing how to throw a football, hit a baseball or dribble a basketball are among the least important abilities to the advancement and betterment of us as a people. With this in mind, it is only logical that a professor at a university should get paid more than a sports coach at that same university, especially when it is run by the government, much like the University of Iowa. Sadly, this is not the case. In fact it is far from it. The average salary of a college football coach is a mind blowing one million dollars, while the average professor makes around ninety-four thousand dollars. The average coach makes over ten times as much as a professor.

This controversy is very important to me because I am going to college to be a teacher. To see that the state of education in this country is so backwards that teachers are making far less then a sports coach, is very concerning for many reasons. One reason is that if all this money is being pumped into sports, then that is where the attention is going as well. Also, with No Child Left Behind legislation, fine arts programs in schools are getting cut. Why not sports programs first? There is also the issue of money; even though money is not why most teachers, including myself want to be teachers. The low pay can turn away even the best natured people.

As an aspiring teacher, I think that the general goal of education is to better oneself and improve upon the world as it is today. I think we can all agree on this point. If that is the case then how can we possibly accomplish it when the government is allowing colleges that are under their control to pay a professor a tenth of what a coach makes? Education should be the main focus right now because we as a nation are falling behind in education to Europe and Asia. Another problem that arises from team sports in schools is students miss practices and classes for games in other cites. I think that this is totally unacceptable because the student’s education is a higher priority than an extracurricular activity, such as a sport. As the strongest nation economically, there is no reason for the U.S. to be falling behind in anything, especially education. Although it is inexcusable that the government is allowing this to happen in the schools that it runs, the government is not alone in the blame. We, the people of the United States, are to blame. We focus so much attention and value on things other than education that this problem has gone virtually unnoticed. Knowledge is not perceived to be cool; knowledge does not get you the winning goal, but being able to throw the skin of a deceased pig down a field does. This is the reason we are falling behind; we put too much of our focus on things like sports. When you say the word college, most people don’t think degree anymore; they think baseball, basketball, or football.

Team sports are not to be confused with physical education. Horace Mann said in the Report of The Massachusetts Board Of Education “In the worldly prosperity of mankind, health and strength are indispensable ingredients…”. I believe this to be true; physical education is a pivotal part of a well rounded education, but I also do not believe that sports teams are a pivotal part of a well rounded physical education. Knowing this, there are two plans that I believe would fix this horrendous problem.

The first to rid ourselves of this problem is to eliminate team sports programs completely from public schools. Let sports teams exist in private venues whose competitions and practices take place outside school hours. This would allow sports to continue to be a form of entertainment, but prohibit it from interfering with the activities of the young players’ education, which is far more valuable than a team sport.

The second solution is to take the money being spent on sports and allocate more of it to the school and less to the sports program. It would be beneficial to make sports related absences inexcusable. Even the money that is made by sports programs should be reallocated to the school. That is if the point of the sports programs is really to help better their athletes.

The time for change is now. Coaches for college sports do not deserve the same pay as a college professor much less ten times as much. We are falling behind in education, there is no way around it, and there is no amount of footballs thrown or baskets made that will help.