Interview

I interviewed James Kim, a former football player and student at Rutgers. He supplied me with a lot of information on the perks that the athletic department receives at the expense of the university. He also supplies an athletes perspective on the matter of whether athletics negatively impacted his academic success as well as his view of where athletics stands in the academic institution. Before I started this research project James actually brought me to the Rutgers football stadium, and I was able to see first and the pleasures that the football team endures. The stadium has a state of the art gym where athletes from all school sports programs are able to train. The football locker room is full of several big-screen TV's that are mounted in ever corner, and each player receives their own locker which is made out of some expensive wood. The locker room resembles that of a basketball locker room, where each player has their own cubby to put their equipment; it just seems like there was an awful amount of money spent on something so simple. These lockers seemed nicer than a professional football locker room. There were also rooms with expensive TV's and couches where the player were able to lay back, relax and fool around. My question is, why spend money on things like this when the players have dorms that serve the same purpose. Recently, Rutgers spent a lot of money on renovating the stadium, which now seat a substantially larger crowd, and it now has a huge display screen. Was all of this necessary to ensure the success of the program which is still not even as close to as prestigious as such programs as Notre Dame and USC? Where did all the money come from to fund these things that were essentially unnecessary? James told me that he believes that athletics is extremely valuable to the campus culture of Rutgers, and it is hard to imagine the school without the program. He also stated that there should be a balance between academics and athletics, but how can that balanced be achieved with the athletics department has an open checkbook, and the university is attracting incoming students who are essentially there to be fans? Both James and I were in agreement that the salaries of the coaching staff, as well as other expenses are completely unnecessary and infringe on academic funding. James did state that the University is full of fans and in turn that may hinder the academic success of the institution, but as a student athlete he was unable to see any reflection of that. For James, the party's never ended, but he seems to think that the presence of Div IA athletics had anything to do with that. All in all he stated that he went to college to get a degree, not be an athlete. Coming from an athlete those are pretty strong, rare words; most athletes seem not to have any sense of education.