Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, I bet you’ve heard about the recent spat between former U of Mich great Jim Harbaugh, and well, the rest of the University of Michigan athletic department. In May, Harbaugh decided to take a jab at the academic standards at Michigan by telling the San Fransisco Chronicle how he really felt about the athletic department:

Michigan is a good school and I got a good education there, he said, but the
athletic department has ways to get borderline guys in and, when they’re in,
they steer them to courses in sports communications. They’re adulated when
they’re playing, but when they get out, the people who adulated them won’t
hire them.

Then Michigan star running back Mike Hart had a nasty retort, the media got involved and it all got ugly quick between the two parties. It’s great that Stanford has the highest academic standards of any Division 1-A program. And it’s pretty darn good that Michigan has the third highest academic standards in the Big Ten. I think that’s saying a lot for a team that has more football fans on a Saturday than any pro football team. (And probably makes more money.)

But the argument is getting lost in semantics. At the end of the day, should it really matter what athletes major in? I personally majored in History, and I can tell you straight up I’m not doing anything in that field. I think what college athletics should focus on instead is raising the athlete graduation rate percentage, and providing career counseling for ex-college players. So that athletes have choices and plans for what they’re going to do when college programs chew them up and spit them out. Or when the NFL doesn’t need them to run passing routes.

Fretting about whether these athletes go pre-med or biz school in their sophmore or junior year seems like a waste of energy. Really, at the end of the day, what matters more – if the player can remember who won the war of 1812? Or if they can put together a good resume for a job interview? I think the play calling is easy on that one.

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Sara is a former member of the University of Michigan football team and currently blogs at: Self-Made Mom.