Not so much within our audience, but the image of the "dumb jock" is still commonplace with popular culture. The best way to combat the image that athletes don't go to class and enlist nerds to do their homework when they do bother to turn it in, is to show them a typical day in a typical athlete's life.
So Dordt College students Andrew Cameron and Jason Miller decided to do just that.
As part of a class project, Cameron and Miller produced a documentary showing just how hard athletes have to work to be on the same playing field as regular students.
The best part of the film is Seahawks corner Richard Sherman's testimony from before Super Bowl XLIX, show in the film:
"I don't think college athletes are really given enough time to really take advantage of the free education that they're given and it's frustrating because a lot of people get upset with student-athletes and say they're not focused on school and not taking advantage of the opportunity they're given. I would love for a regular student to have a student-athlete's schedule during a season for just one quarter or one semester and show me how you balance that. Show me how you would schedule your classes from two to six o'clock on any given day. Show me how you're going to get your work done when you get out at 7:30 or so, you've got a test the next day, you're dead tired from practice and you still have to study just as hard as everybody else every day and get all the same work done.
"Those aren't the things people focus on when talking about student-athletes."
Added Dordt College head coach Joel Penner:
"Our job as coaches is to say, it's easy because it's football and you love football, but football's going away in four years," he said. "You better learn how to apply this to other areas that maybe you're not as motivated in because these other areas are going to have long-term implications for your life. I try to encourage these principles that we're teaching in football into relationships and academics and how you engage in the community here. Any way that you're involved in something, you should be striving in your life."
This video will be a great way for Dordt's football program to educate prospective players and parents about what the life of a college football player truly entails.