Sports and Education

It is true that complete health includes mind and body nourishment. To that extent staying active is a positive contributor to mental agility. That said the US education model of tagging excellence in marketable sports as a qualification criteria to the elite centers of learning aka universities has been a source of mystery to me. I guess saying source of mystery is rather nebulous when I know exactly why its done. To boost ratings and in turn drive more people (non atheltic kind) to spend more money at these institutions. The players in turn have a shot at going pro after college thereby earning unheard of monies. But it takes away the focus of imparting world class education and then securing a professional career - to building better bridges, better medicine, better foods. Instead you get a country that has the most Olympic medals ever. Is that a benchmark to pursue? For someone with an academic bent but lacking in the physical attributes then becomes a handicap since playing gin rummy while solving complex arithmetic has no takers. But say Football (the american kind) or Volley ball or any ball based activity and your GPA may not matter (unless its negative). Of course there are other criteria I am told (since I am not in the proverbial boat YET) that do matter - contribution of time to third world countries; unusual talent in using a musical instrument etc.. All that makes for a well rounded individual and clearly the top schools want nothing more than the round ones. What I guess I am alluding to is that the natural selection starts early and eventually spits out a well connected world of alums that started out with a lucky leg up (through lot of hard work in some cases; but mostly because they were privileged) in the sense of being born in a culture designed to promote these roundness inducing attributes.