We Live in a country that places athletes on pedestals. As a senior in high school, just having completed the college application process, the competition to be admitted to the Nation's top colleges is exponentially rising. College admissions are based on a variety of things including: GPA, SAT scores, and your extracurriculars. This last part takes us to the ethical issue I have chosen to explore.

In this fight to get into colleges, the image of Rousseau's noble savage comes into play. It is every man for themselves. Every prospective freshman finds themselves using and playing every angle that they can to bump their name up this last and catch someone's attention. For many,the angle is through athletics. It seems as if every year there is a story about an illegal recruit or a person who uses their athletic talent to gain admission to a school to which they wouldn't have been admitted without their athletic ability.

Is this ethical? Should colleges have different requirements for college admission? As athletes, they bring prestige and money to the school. College athletics are a business and marketing tool for the universities. So, aren't the athletes merely using the system just as they are being used? On the other hand, isn't it degrading to other athletes that standards have to be lowered for their teammates, and thus the name athlete is synonymous with not intelligent? Some believe colleges shouldn't have different requirements for athletes, but instead should raise the standards so that every potential freshman is on equal footing. This is the dilemma that plagues our country and the dilemma that will be discussed on this site.