Yesterday I was sitting on the bus coming home from one of the most fun meets of my life, and I was so blissfully ignorant of how unimportant my sport is. You see, I thought that all sports were created equal, ya know. That we all work hard and we all deserve respect, but unfortunately that is not the case. Yesterday I was unaware of the hierarchy of college athletics, but today I am not.
I have spent a lot of time running cross country, and for the most part I have felt like other athletes have given us respect. I think that we all acknowledge how hard the others sport is. Athletes respect other athletes, but administrators are not so respectful. Yesterday I realized that most administrators only respect football. They don’t care about other sports because they don’t bring in money. This is frustrating because, while I love football, there are so many other amazing athletes that I go to school with. We all work so hard at what we do, and I believe that we all deserve equal recognition.
Now, this isn’t just some epiphany that occurred yesterday, this was something that was so clearly displayed by some of the athletic administration at my school that I would have to be blind not to see it. Yesterday my team ran well, but not many of us ran our fastest times on the hilly course we were given, and that’s okay. No one was upset with our performance. No one was upset at all until we read the article that was written about our meet. The grammar was horrible, the results were incorrect, and none of the returning runners ran career bests. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you work so hard to run a fast time, you don’t want people to think it is two minutes slower than it actually is.
When we emailed the administration about what had occurred, they made excuses about how they have to manage so many sports and about how they can’t be right all of the time. This was frustrating because that is their job, and last I checked most people cannot be wrong all of the time at their job. They usually get fired. I’m not saying these people need to be fired, because of some mistakes, but I am saying that they need to be held to a higher standard. My school needs to hold them to a higher standard. When every team blatantly ignores the articles they write because they are so incorrect, they need to realize there is something wrong. It is not very hard to manage nine teams a season.
When reading the football article after it was published, I realized that it was a way better article than ours. They actually spent time on this article, and it was a little insulting. I am not sure if the information is correct, but I am sure that there were less grammar mistakes. I guess I just never realized how little respect our athletic administration cares. It’s sad because our coaches and athletes care so much.
Now, I know I sound like I am offering a problem with no solution, but I have thought of a solution.We should offer an internship spot to one athlete on each team to write their teams articles. This takes some of the work off of the administration, gives students more opportunities, and guarantees that the articles will be correct.
I hope at some point this problem gets resolved and that there is equal importance put on all athletic programs. Athletics are a very important part of my life, and hopefully my administration begins to see that.
