Former Auburn track guy has fascinating proposal: Have the Armed forces provide thousands of NCAA sports scholarships

Olympians:

en.m.wikipedia.org

U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program

The U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program (WCAP) is a military unit whose primary mission is to support nationally and internationally ranked soldiers in participating on the U.S. Olympic team. The program is headquartered at...

Open link

Recent results:

https://www.armywcap.com/results

Alan

so the sum total of the program is:

6 bobsledders
3 lugers
4 kenyans
1 racewalker
3 wrestlers
3 shooters
2 multi-sport athletes that involve shooting
1 boxer

By my count, that's a total of 4 American athletes in NCAA sports who made the Olympics in return for military service. What a success.

This plan is nothing but a military draft.

I assume that Ivy League Rojo never went to the military.

What a stupid idea to have young kids sign up for something they don't understand. A couple years after their athletic adventures the US government send them into a silly war in a country they would not be able to point out on a map and lose their limbs or come back mentally damaged.

Isn't this already in place? Get a basketball scholarship to an academy, play, then serve your 4 and get out with a degree and no debit.

Robinson went this route but shoes to pay back the education instead of serve.

I don't believe the intent here is for the college educated athletes to be officers. As you say, officer commissions are highly competitive, and many applicants are turned away. This program is to fill the enlisted ranks. However, a force of college educated privates, airmen, and seamen can pose its own problems. Cleaning weapons and chipping paint, not mentioning literally watching paint dry ("fire watch" - in case a fire starts), certainly is not mentally stimulating. So, the business major with a concentration in organizational change might just start organizing within the ranks. In that light, perhaps the true intent of the program is seen.

The scholarships should be granted by the government instead of building bombs and planes. The Pentagon budget is way over what it should be, it should be shifted to education instead of guns and bombs.

I don't get this. Why not just offer scholarships to all kinds of students instead of just athletes?

As mentioned, these opportunities already exist via the Military academies and ROTC.

Coaches should actually be looking looking at how they can leverage ROTC scholarships to increase their team numbers. With only 12.6 scholarships available, a coach should already be working with the ROTC office to recruit additional talent. Both departments can benefit from this arrangement. Would there have to be some give and take? Yes, but overall it can work out well. Coaches get to conserve limited scholarships while gaining quality athletes and students. ROTC gets to tell potential recruits they could compete at the D I level and maybe make WCAP. Students get the benefit of free college, athletics and a guaranteed job after graduation.

BTW, did this myself and after three combat tours have yet to have my face blown off as many of the experts on this board have suggested would happen.

If my post was deleted because a commissioned officer like yourself believes my post interferes with recruiting, should you comment on the post you likely got deleted?

I would argue at D3 they are very much a marketing/ admissions activity. D3 schools added sports because high school kids wanted to keep playing especially guys wanted to keep playing football. With them paying tuition, fees, room and board that can be quite a haul for the college.

At D1 it is a marketing activity that the schools have embraced. They get paid a lot of money and get 3+ hours of free advertising for the university. How much would 3 hours of ad time on ESPN cost?

First off you cannot borrow that much money for an undergraduate loan. The big numbers come from people going to grad or professional (med, dental, law, etc) school.

Kinda interesting that we have service academies that basically do the same thing.

Sorry your thread got deleted; wasn’t me.

Does the exclusion of Football and Basketball players indicate that those athletes are of lesser academic quality ?

I mean, that's not possibly the answer, right ?

Get the military out of our sporting events, out of our schools and out of our communities. We should support military schools, ROTC and National Guards, we should honor our veterans, but we should not let our society be overrun by the glorification of war. Modern marketing/propaganda is pushing the military into places it shouldn’t be in our communities.

Agreed.

The National Guard is in all of our communities, and a member could be living next door to you. Why would you want them out? Now, if you believe we should return to the original state militia system free of Federal Government control and the lure of the addictive Federal dollar, that would be a constructive argument to make.

I literally said we should support National Guards. I have two Guard families on my block and a retired veteran on my street. None of them bring the military into our community: they are not patrolling the streets with M-16s, they don't post propaganda in their yard and they aren't hanging out at schools to groom kids into joining the military (official recruiters are okay at a school, as long as they don't have a long-term presence). My veteran neighbor flies a U.S. Army flag, but that is not propaganda, he is simply proud. If he put up a recruiting flag instead, such as "Army of One" or whatever slogan, I might have a different opinion of him.

War glorification is a sign of a sick society, same with militia fetishists.

not only is it not fascinating it is a disgusting classist idea that would be an insult and attack on the poorest desperate citizens of the USA

That is an ignorant comment. If it wasn’t for the men and women that defend our country past and present you wouldn’t have the freedom you and all of us enjoy each and everyday. Never ceases to amaze me the ignorance in these forums