When I get ready for a football game at my school, I throw on some shorts and a team T-shirt. If I’m feeling really festive, I’ll wear an orange headband or some blue eyeshadow. But these people put me to shame. Some football fans live for Saturdays and show support for their teams by going all out. Without these people, Saturdays would seem more tame. But why would we want that? Keep doing what you’re doing, crazy fans! Read More »

So you played sports in a high school, and you were okay. But you never quite got to the level that would attract any attention from a college recruit. That’s fine, life as a college athlete basically sucks anyway. I mean, their partying is strictly monitored, and who wants that when college is obviously supposed to be the four years of your life when you drink the most and let yourself fall into the worst shape you’ve ever been in? College athleticism ruins all of that.

However, there is now a competitive league out there that I’m sure would peak the interest of a lot of fat and lazy college kids. Just kidding, we’re not really fat and lazy…

Anyway, this year a new organization by the name of The National Collegiate Competitive Eating Association found its way onto college campuses across the nation. The purpose of the NCCEA, according to their website, is to “connect Student Eaters and Sponsors to sanctioned competitive eating contests and championships.”

Read More »

I think we can all agree that college sports are a big deal. Whether it be March Madness or school rivalries or outstanding athletes, college sports are definitely worth commending. (And that includes women’s sports!) But even the best institutions have their issues and like many institutions before them some of the largest issues surrounding college sports right now are surrounding gender equality and Title IX.

Title IX is a federal gender equality law which seeks to ensure that equal opportunities exist for both men and women in college athletics. It requires that the number of sports available for men and women on a team are in proportion with the number of men and women on campus.

But in recent years, as the number of women attending college has begun to overtake the number of men  (women are now 56% of enrollment), the issues have begun to get more complicated. Unwilling to lose male athletes because of an increase in women attending college, athletic departments have begun searching for loopholes which would allow it to appear as though women and men are equally represented without actually increasing the number of female players. Whether that meant counting men who practiced with women as women, or putting women on the team, but never allowing them to play, schools like Duke, Marshall University, and Texas A & M have begun to get creative when creating the roster for their teams. Read More »

Let’s talk about student athletes.

With March madness at its peak right now this topic probably doesn’t seem like all that much of a stretch to you, but you might be surprised by the direction this topic is going in…

Should student athletes be paid?

Jalen Rose, ESPN/ABC studio analyst, member of University of Michigan’s Fab Five, and  the writer of this piece seems to think so. And while my first response to that question was an undignified snort, I have to say that after reading his points, I might be reconsidering my stance.

My immediate reaction was absolutely not. Sports are an extracurricular activity that students choose to take part in. Just like the school paper or honors societies or student government. They do is because they enjoy it. Or if they don’t have a love of the game, they’re often very good at the game, and they do it because they get a scholarship for playing that game. Full tuition paid? A free education? That was their payment. What more could they possibly need?

But Rose offers some good points.  He argues that being a student athlete is a full time job. (CollegeCandy reader and student athlete, Chelsea, agrees.) Rigorous training schedules, practices, and games take up the majority of these students’ time, far more time than most other extracurricular activities take up.  And the free time they do have is often spent in class or studying for classes. They do have to maintain a respectable GPA, after all. Rose points out something we all know but never seem to truly grasp: student athletes don’t have much free time.  And as the sister of someone who played high school football for four years, I have to agree. If high school football left my brother without much time to do anything but eat, sleep, and breathe football, then I can’t even imagine the demands that come along with being on a college team. Read More »

If you overhear someone talking about NCAA athletics, you probably automatically think of the football and basketball games you see on TV during March Madness and hear about on the news. You may think of swanky warm-ups, the Big 10 teams who win every year, and spoiled brats who don’t work very hard at anything.  But that is not a very accurate representation of the NCAA.  There is more to the NCAA then those two big name sports. There are over 20 different sports, spread over 5 divisions. There are more then 380,000 student-athletes that participate in an NCAA sport each year, including almost 100,000 females.

And I happen to be one.

Many people only see us on TV, or goofing around together in the cafeteria, or maybe see us playing a pick-up game when driving by our field, but we work extremely hard almost every day during the year: pre-season, fall season, off-season, and spring season. We miss class, and have to teach ourselves full lessons. We ride buses for hours and hours, missing out on typical college activities. We go through more laundry soap in a week than most people do in a month and our rooms smells like sweat, feet and Febreeze. But I love it. I love my team. I love my sport, and I love what my college experience has been like because of it.

For the past two years, I’ve played soccer at my university. I started playing when I was 6, and had always dreamed of playing in college. By time I was 16, I had picked out my university, and started my training. Yes, that’s right. While you were picking out your junior prom dresses and worrying about graduation and the cute senior boys, I was already focused on my life as a college student-athlete. It has to be done that early, or you’ll miss so much, and won’t get through all the requirements that make you eligible to play. (The one thing the NCAA loves more then massive championship rings is paperwork.)

Because of where soccer falls in the school year (August-October), I have to arrive at my university about a month before classes start. While you’re on the beach sun tanning on August 1st, I’ll be moving back, unpacking my stuff, and already into the school mode. By August 2nd, I’ll be up at 6 AM to start my training. Every university sport has a two-week “pre-season” and it is the hardest part of the season. We run, lift, pass, kick, run more, press, run a little more, and basically kill ourselves at 6 AM, 11 AM, and 4:30 PM every day, for two weeks. It is not a fun two weeks. It is hard, grueling work. We do have a little fun as a team after workouts, as it’s usually only us and the football team there that early, but there is no partying in pre-season. By the time 7 PM rolls around, we’re all so tired that we just crash in our beds and sleep until the alarm goes off again. Then repeat.

And it only gets harder once school starts. We have practice at 6, classes from 8 until 2, practice at 4 and then a mandatory study hall at 7 from Monday to Saturday. If it weren’t for the Internet, we’d never even get to watch TV!

Part of being a college athlete is, of course, being a student. If you ask any administrator about the athletes at your school, he/she will call them “Student-Athletes,” because that’s what we are. Not only do we have to play our sport twice a day, we also have to stay on top of all of our school work. This gets hard during season, when, thanks to away games, we frequently miss class. You’ve probably seen the athletes going up to professors, telling them that they’ll be away, and been jealous of the amount of excused absences we get. But honestly, missing class is the worst part of being an athlete. First, our GPAs have to remain high or we could lose our spot on the team. Second, there is a maximum number of hours we can take, and usually it is not much higher than the university minimum. That means we really can’t afford to drop too many classes. I basically taught myself Business Calculus my freshmen year, because I missed so many classes due to away games and had to be able to understand what was going on when I got back. You can trust me on this: trying to read, write, calculate, or draw on a moving bus with 30 other girls and all their stinky equipment at 10:30 at night is not the best way to get an A. And because of all those absences, when I get sick (which is easy when you’re on the road so much) I still have to go to class. By time November comes, I can’t afford to take an off day, or not get up for my 8 AM lab.

Having said all that though, I love it. It’s hard work to try and balance school, soccer and attempt to have a social life. I love playing soccer, and I love my team. It is 30 girls who all want the same thing: To win it all. We work together both off and on the field; we run together, we cheer and push each other, we help each other with History, we complain about the cafeteria food, we go out dancing together, we creep cute boys on Facebook, and redecorate our rooms. My team is my lifeline, my best friends. My defense partners will probably be the bridesmaids at my wedding. I chose this life, and I don’t regret it. It has put me on the path to being the best I can – academically, athletically and personally. I strive to be the best I can in everything, because I’m used to having 30 others counting on me. I look to have friends who I can trust to work hard, who have good time management skills and can be friendly and persuasive without being bossy, and I’ve found them all as a student athlete.

[This post is a favorite of CollegeCandy fan, Chelsea....perhaps because she wrote it? Either way, thanks for reading, girl!]

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. Sometimes with mean words. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like is photoshopping wrong!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

Recently Kye Allums became the first publicly transgendered student-athlete in NCAA history to play as a male identifying player on the George Washington University women’s basketball team. It’s a big step for transgendered athletes everywhere and first off I have to say kudos to him. Still, with any kind of groundbreaking change like this, some questions arise, and it’s time to weigh in.

The big, obvious question, of course, is where does Allums belong in the sexually segregated world of college basketball? Though he hasn’t yet undergone gender reassignment, Allums does plan to have the surgery over the summer before returning for his senior season. He has no plans to take testosterone, and therefore won’t have any hormonal advantage over the other players on the women’s team, so it seems as though it shouldn’t be an issue. But on a very base level one has to wonder how things are going to be affected. Obviously it would be unfair to expect Allums to play on the men’s team, because of the physiological differences including the lower testosterone levels, but at the same time, he is essentially a man playing on the women’s team.

What do we do with that? Where does that leave the lines that have been set up by the sport’s governing body? Read More »

While every college girl shares many of the same college experiences (selling books, sexiled, one shot too many), she also carves her own path and has her own unique adventure. Have you ever wondered what it’s like for other girls? What it’s like to go to an all-girls school? To go to fashion school? To double major? To be an engineer? To get married?! Well wonder no more. Our one-of-a-kind CollegeCandy writers (and readers!) are sharing their unique experiences and opening our eyes to different college worlds.

Are you doing something spectacular/different/interesting that you want to share? Send your ideas over and perhaps you could be telling your story right here.

If you over hear someone talking about NCAA athletics, you probably automatically think of the football and basketball games you see on TV during March Madness and hear about on the news. You may think of swanky warm-ups, the Big 10 teams who win every year, and spoiled brats who don’t work very hard at anything.  But that is not a very accurate representation of the NCAA.  There is more to the NCAA then those two big name sports. There are over 20 different sports, spread over 5 divisions. There are more then 380,000 student-athletes that participate in an NCAA sport each year, including almost 100,000 females.

And I happen to be one.

Many people only see us on TV, or goofing around together in the cafeteria, or maybe see us playing a pick-up game when driving by our field, but we work extremely hard almost every day during the year: pre-season, fall season, off-season, and spring season. We miss class, and have to teach ourselves full lessons. We ride buses for hours and hours, missing out on typical college activities. We go through more laundry soap in a week than most people do in a month and our rooms smells like sweat, feet and Febreeze. But I love it. I love my team. I love my sport, and I love what my college experience has been like because of it. Read More »

Happy (almost) Independence Day, people! It’s time to bust out the sparklers and consume massive amounts of grilled meat, all in the name of this here country.

While there are many things about America that are less than lovable – Nascar, the current economy, the fact that Heidi Montag makes millions of dollars – we live in a pretty awesome country. And most of us don’t really appreciate all that we’ve got, like free education, freedom of speech… and Miley Cyrus.

So I thought it was about time for all of us to take a moment to reflect on what we love most about being Americans. Get your American Pride on in the comments below.

Katherine – University of Delaware: I love being an American because you can experience completely different lifesyles without ever leaving the country’s borders. Yet whether you’re from the south, the midwest, or the coasts, you still share a common bond.

Sara C – Fordham: What do I love about being American? Being able to be a woman who can speak her mind if she so desires. Being able to go for a run in a sports bra and compression shorts on a hot summer day. And Ben & Jerry’s. God bless Chunky Monkey.

Kari – Florida State: I love being an American most when I’m milling around a bar at Happy Hour and I can yell “F**K YEA, AMERICA!” Which will spark warm sentiments of agreement from other bar patrons. Not much more American than profanity and self-promotion!

Ricki – University of Michigan: The fact that I can wear whatever I want in the summer.  Can you imagine a country where women can’t wear shorts?  Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like porn! ) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

There’s been big to-do recently over whether or not cheerleading counts as a sport and it all started when Quinnipiac decided to cut women’s volleyball in favor of a competitive cheerleading squad. Some of the volleyball players are suing the school saying that competitive cheerleading is “as much a sport as chess”… which is kinda a non-sequiter of an argument, but whatever. Whether you hated cheerleaders with a fiery vengeance or dedicated your life to being one, it’s time to cast your vote – cheerleading, sport or not?

On the pro-sport side, cheerleading isn’t easy; there’s lot’s of physical training involved, it requires both special skills and a major time commitment just like any other sport. What cheerleaders, at least the ones on competitive squads like the ones we’re talking about, do physically involves years of work with gymnastics plus strength and flexibility training – I mean heck, they lift girls up and throw each other around and do all kinds of impressive flippy things, it’s hard not to take that seriously. And in terms of the dedication it takes to be on a competitive college cheer squad, it’s easily on par with what, say, football or basketball players go through, so why shouldn’t it be a sport? Read More »

To my father’s dismay, I was never a football fan growing up. While my dad and brothers would spend their Sundays on the couch watching game after game (after game…), my mother and I would hit the mall, grab lunch, and do other girly things. But then I went to college, a Big Ten college, and it was impossible not to fall madly in love with the sport. Not only did I wake up at 7am to cheer on my team with the other 100,000+ people in attendance every Saturday, but I learned the rules, I followed the players, I even – gasp – watched other games.

Michigan football became the center of my life. When they won, I celebrated. When they lost, I went home, watched the replays in bed and didn’t come out until I had to go to class on Monday.

I totally understand the glory that comes with watching a winning team. And, thanks to the past couple of seasons, I am learning the pain associated with watching a losing one. So I get that coaches and universities would do whatever it takes to build a team that wins. I mean, who doesn’t want to win?

But what I don’t get is the shady and pretty despicable recruiting process I’ve recently learned about known as The Hostess. Read More »