Josh Rosen, a junior quarterback at UCLA, doesn’t shy away from making unfiltered and controversial comments about the life of a collegiate student-athlete and what it truly means to hold that descriptor.
“Look, football and school don’t go together. They just don’t,” Rosen told Bleacher Report in an early-August interview. “Trying to do both is like trying to do two full-time jobs.”
Rosen continued by calling out fellow college football players, saying that some of them “have no business being in school” and that they are only there because “this is the path to the NFL.”
Finally, arguably the phrase that amassed the most disdain was a statement made on NCAA powerhouse and consistent national title contender, Alabama.
“There’s the other side that says raise the SAT eligibility requirements,” Rosen said. “Okay, raise the SAT requirement at Alabama and see what kind of team they have. You lose athletes and then the product on the field suffers.”
Of course, Rosen’s comments incited a slew of backlash from both the national media and other collegiate football players.
One of the more notable responses to Rosen’s comments came from former Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones, who infamously tweeted his disdain for classes while at OSU.
“Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL,” Jones said in a 2012 tweet. “We ain’t come here to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS.”
Today, Jones is an OSU graduate and plays for the Los Angeles Chargers. His response to Rosen’s comments was short and simple as he turned to Twitter again, telling Rosen to “Chill bro, play school.”
It’s important to take a moment, however, and examine the weight of Rosen’s statements. An elite Division I quarterback with a legitimate chance of being selected in the top five in next year’s NFL draft, just spoke out about the life of a student-athlete.
He knows that. Yet he still chose to do so. Why?
The latter portion of the interview with Bleacher Report, a part that noticeably received less media attention, sheds some light as to why Rosen chose to say what he did.
“I love school, but it’s hard,” Rosen said. “It’s cool because we’re learning more applicable stuff in my major (economics) — not just the prerequisite stuff that’s designed to filter out people. But football really dents my ability to take some classes that I need. There are a bunch of classes that are only offered one time. There was a class this spring I had to take, but there was a conflict with spring football.”
As a result of football, even if it was the offseason, Rosen was unable to take a course that any student not on the UCLA football team had the full opportunity to take. He of course had every right to skip spring football and take the course, but doing so would have put him behind on the field.
This is why it is important to validate Rosen’s comments.
An average day for a student-athlete can include any number of the following: early morning practices, time spent in the weight room, team meetings, film study, recovery time, team meals and more. Once the season gets underway, one must also factor in time spent traveling for games week in and week out.
As most college students can attest, classes can be very stressful and time-consuming themselves. This of course can vary from major to major, but all require significant time spent studying, reading and learning outside of the classroom.
The issue Rosen raises here is not new. The term “student-athlete” implies student first, athlete second. Based on what Rosen is saying, however, is this truly the case?
I am not saying that it is impossible to graduate as a student-athlete and acquire a full-time job; thousands do this every year. I think it is important, however, to question the narrative being fed to the public by the NCAA, an organization that rakes in nearly $1 billion annually, that Division I athletes are unequivocally students first.
