We take so much pride in the abilities of our sports teams here at the University of Texas. I actually talked about this same topic in my sport sociology class. Our professor asked us how our college experience would be different at UT if we didn't have sports. Most, if not all of us, responded "we wouldn't even be at this university if there were no varsity sports." Personally, I chose to come here because of our strong athletics program. Of course I also wanted a terrific education but our football team was a huge decision-making factor when deciding where I was going to go to college.
Every athletic department has their own mission statement to inform student-athletes, the university community, and the citizens of the state of Texas what they value. As we progress into the future, we become more focused on graduating our athletes. This is a positive step in the right direction. It is understood that there will be athletes who are good enough to make it to the next level professionally and won't necessarily "need" to graduate; however, there are top universities everywhere that are encouraging these athletes to finish. This looks great for the graduation success rate and academic progress rate.
Vince Young is a great example for this. He is a tremendous athlete that was more than capable of making his sport into a professional career. Although he took this route, somewhere along the path he realized that an education is a very important thing to have; therefore, he came back to UT and finished out his degree.
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