Buzz Bissenger claims that college football steers away the students from what they are supposed to be doing at college, which is learning. He says, "in more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything to do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics." He also makes the argument that the only people who benefit from college football are the alumni and the coaches that make absurd amounts of money. The students don't benefit at all. Even the players don't benefit because they're being "exploited by a system in which they don't receive a dime of compensation". Bissinger even begins to trash talk the concept of the game of football alone, and says that it causes injuries that don't need to happen, including sever head trauma.
Bissenger was able to help his stance through the example about the university in Baltimore, Maryland. He claims that the school cut 8 varsity sports to create a leaner athletic budget, so that crumbling basketball and football programs would get money, and track and swimming wouldn't. He then went on to explain just how much money the school spent on football, and the numbers were very surprising. A little statistic like that can change the whole meaning of the article, which was effective in my opinion.
However, although his arguments were valid in some points, surprisingly, I didn't find his article very effective. This being because the way he crafted the article was extremely sloppy. He would make one little argument and only support it with a sentence or two and then rush to his next argument. This didn't allow his main arguments to stick out to the audience nor did it solidify his argument. The essay overall brought up good points, however each point was rushed and the audience was not able to have a clear handle on what Bissenger was arguing.
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