Priorities and the gridiron
A winning spirit
Regarding “Is winning at football worth losing moral standing?” (Page 13, Thursday), the author must know that it’s all about ego — the wealthy alums’ ego to be exact, because they are the real movers and shakers when it comes to decisions about football programs. All the alums and students matter of course but to a lesser extent.
Critical thinking tells us that it is foolish to pay the football coach 40 times what a professor makes, but when have we ever made decisions based on critical thinking alone? We want automobiles that can exceed the maximum allowed speed by a factor of two because we like speed. We pay football coaches five million dollars a year because we like to win, as simple as that. Ralph Tibiletti, Spring
Clear choice
Apparently winning was important at Baylor University. They allowed some of their student football players to sexually assault some of their female students and go unpunished for the sake of winning. Obviously this is not teaching any moral standards. We should not allow any athletic program to overwhelm any academic program.
Let’s look at the results of each program. In athletics, they might produce a few professional football players who don’t have much of a future after their careers end. In academics, there is no limit to what can become of these students. Their futures and the results of their work are unlimited. So, what is more important, athletics or academics? Robert M. Louie, Houston
Critical thinking
The athletic departments at the University of Texas should share their revenue with other school departments as payment for the resources they consume like labs, libraries, facilities maintenance and for hiring the best teaching staff to ensure a superb education for all students. Administrators and faculty members should not be forced to compete for grants and funding their departments.
The bigger hurdle is teaching critical thinking and reasoning skills to our athletes and nonathlete students. I would have liked the author to expound more on how critical thinking could be used to reduce low value and addictive activity in social and commercial media.
Developing critical thinking skills will help students concentrate on their studies and block the daily distractions from beeps, tweets, oil prices, stock market flux and political shenanigans. UT should have a yearly requirement of students to enroll in curriculum teaching critical thinking that provides tools for success in work and life.
Competition is good but only for the right reasons. Let’s raise the bar on our first-rate University of Texas. Tim Whipple, Spring