For all the heightened chatter this year about whether college student-athletes should be paid, Dr. Kenneth Shropshire suggests that making their education a priority is more important than a microscopic focus on financial compensation.
”The most important issue in college sports is educating the student-athlete,” Shropshire said. “Why are we stuck on this payment issue? Not to say that it’s not important, but education is more important.”
Shropshire made the remarks recently when he led a lively panel discussion as part of Arizona State University’s Global Sport Institute, of which Shropshire is the chief executive officer.
For the last week, Arizona State has been celebrating its new eight-story, 32,000-square-foot, Washington, D.C. campus with a series of panel discussions, speeches, receptions and other events encompassing topics ranging from national security, locusts and self-driving vehicles to police tactics, STEM and sports.
Formerly housed near the DuPont Circle neighborhood, the new campus is at the impressive Ambassador Barbara Barrett & Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Washington Center, a short walking distance from the White House.
Arizona State, through a partnership announced in June with Adidas, created the Global Sport Institute to research sports matters such as helmet technology, Gatorade effectiveness and academic adaptations in the sports world. Home base is the ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center in Arizona. Shropshire also is the Adidas Distinguished Professor of Global Sport at GSI.
The sports panel discussion, titled “For the Win: Innovative Approaches to Athlete Education,” focused on academic challenges facing college and professional athletes. And, as often happens, when the topic turns to major-college revenue-producing sports, the discussion quickly pivoted to the Black athlete.
