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Well, another bowl season has come, and we are finding more and more athletes getting into trouble. A.J. Nicholson, a needed defender for the Florida State Seminoles, was sent home after being accused of sexual assault on the team's trip to the Orange Bowl. Other athletes have missed court appearances to play in bowls and have found themselves in all types of minor trouble. The bad headlines just lead more people to conclude that athletes are bad seeds who are protected by academic institutions making millions of dollars off students' hard work.

I have another view, though, and I think that more people should consider it. Do athletes get in trouble more proportionately than the general population? What about in comparison to other students? To be honest, I am not sure. Athletes may in fact get in trouble more than the average student, but I really do not think so. The difference is that people have their hopes and dreams riding on the backs of 18 and 19-year-olds who make stupid decisions sometimes. No one knows if Johnny the pre-med student gets arrested for disorderly conduct, and quite frankly, no one cares. But if Johnny the quarterback gets arrested, then everyone cares.

In defense of these college athletes, few of them get in trouble. A college football team has 75 athletes. One getting arrested is not a huge percentage. If you factor in the number of students who play less-celebrated sports, such as track, cross country, and lacrosse, then you will find the percentage of student athletes who get in trouble dwindling even more.

If you could get the time or opportunity to know any of these athletes, you would discover that most of them go to class, go to practice, and then go on with their lives. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has a line of commercials that says that that there are "millions of college athletes. Most of us go pro in something other than sports."That line of reasoning stands here, too. Most student athletes are not high-profile. They simply live their lives and pay for their college education based on talents they have on the courts or fields of their universities. These students are not trouble-makers; they, like the people in many other areas of life, are often branded spoiled and excused based on a very small number of them who make poor decisions.

I also think that people who are not sympathetic to student athletes should think about what their lives are like. While everyone sees athletes running out of the tunnel and being celebrated, few people see what goes on behind the scenes. These athletes often rise at 5 or 6 in the morning, either for mandatory team practice sessions or to help ensure that their individual performance gets better. Then these students go to class and have homework and all of the other requirements that other students have. After class, these athletes spend their time practicing again before going home to learn new plays or to get work done for classes.

The pressure on these students is enormous. People want them to win and do it with confidence. People put pressure on these students to do well and to perform before the media and fans without flaws. These students are supposed to be everything to the fans and the media, and then they are not expected to falter.

Instead of putting these students up on a pedestal, we should remember that they really are children. Few people expect their 18-year-old sons and daughters to have their lives figured out. We expect them to falter a little bit until they find their footing. We have come to accept youthful indiscretions as part of the journey to adulthood. Yet when it comes to student athletes we do not want them to have the same margin of error.

These are young men and women who work hard everyday and give everything they have to themselves, their teams, and their universities. As a group, they are not selfish and unconcerned with anything outside themselves. They are hard workers who are trying to learn their way in the world - just like other 20-year-old college students. It is time we treated them that way.


By Julia Mercer