College Student-Athletes

All In For Him by Gwen Thielges: Book Review

 

Gwen Thielges

(Photo Credit: Gwen Thielges)

In All In For Him: Twenty-One Devotions For College Athletes, Gwen Thielges offers college student-athletes a 21-day devotional that empowers them to combine strong athletic preparation and performance with robust spiritual practice and commitment. For Thielges, any athlete, including a college student-athlete, cannot become a complete athlete without building and buttressing his or her spiritual life and foundation. Intending this book to inspire college athletes to develop a closer relationship with Christ and use their platform to display His glory, the author wants these athletes to maximize the potential of their platform to spread Christ’s message and win souls for Him. This book aims to help college student-athletes practice daily gratitude for the opportunity Jesus has given them to perform athletically and be a part of an athletic team.

Athletes, at any level, will find the “Day 1” devotion quite useful: begin the season with a prayer for God’s favor.  The “Day 3” devotion calls for them to abandon negative thinking and discourse and refuse to surround themselves with negativity in any form. On “Day 7,” Thielges makes an important point for college student-athletes to pray for their coaches. As any athlete knows, and the author highlights, a coach is a critical dimension of any team’s success, for if the team is to experience success, it will need a coach who employs principle and discipline.

In a postmodern epoch where many college student-athletes demonstrate such egregious selfishness, “Day 8” provides a sobering reminder of their need to commit themselves to humility and place their confidence in Christ. If athletes, as “Day 10” explains, walk in humility and in the confidence of God, they will serve as role models for their community, nation, and world. Living a humble life, one where confidence in God is at the center of the athlete’s life, he or she will have a proper understanding of how to conduct himself or herself when using social media, as revealed in “Day 12” and “Day 13.”  

Thielges encourages college student-athletes to win with grace. When one considers how nasty, how vicious college sports have increasingly become, her words are timely, calling these athletes, specifically Christian athletes, to serve as an example of what grace looks like in athletic competition. For the author, when athletes win with grace, it’s not about belittling their opponents but more about thanking God for the opportunity to perform successfully and more about showing gratitude for the spirited competition their opponents gave them.

As a coach and scholar who focuses on student-athletes, I am happy to see this book published. For this book to reach its maximum value, it must reach the hands of as many college student-athletes as possible. The publisher and/or author needs to send a copy of this book to college athletic departments across the nation. While this will cost some money to do, I’m confident that this will be a profitable investment, leading to a significant increase in sales, and more importantly, strengthening the lives of college student-athletes.  

To have an interest in purchasing and reading this book, one, most likely, will need to an authentic investment in student-athletes, especially college student-athletes, for its written to and for them. Having said that, though, I would recommend that coaches, athletic administrators, higher education administrators, advisors, mentors, and tutors of college student-athletes, parents of current and future college student-athletes, and serious college sports fans read this book. By reading this book, one gains a stronger understanding of what college student-athletes need, the challenges they face, and how to maximize their impact on and off the field.

Book Crash provided a copy of this book to facilitate this review.

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison  

Reduce the NCAA’s Power

Northern Iowa v Michigan State

(Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images)

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) functions as a cartel.  One of the most significant ways to check the powers of the NCAA is to form a body of composed university presidents from each conference and division, former college student-athletes, and professional coaches to vote to approve, modify, and/or reject rules and decisions rendered by the NCAA.  Essentially, this new body would have line-item veto power over the NCAA.  For rules and decisions of the NCAA to be vetoed, this new body would have to arrive at a two-thirds majority agreement.  By creating this new governing body, the NCAA’s current absolute power would be eliminated.  Although this is not a panacea to the problems in intercollegiate athletics, it does provide critical oversight for the NCAA.

A governing body with real oversight powers over the NCAA is needed.  When the NCAA recently evinced that it cannot abide by its own rules during the investigation of the University of Miami, no substantive consequences ensued.  The reason why no consequences followed for the organization is there’s no oversight body in place to address the NCAA.

The NCAA constantly produces rules and decisions that aren’t beneficial to student-athletes and the schools they attend.  Although the NCAA markets itself as a zealous advocate for student-athletes, the organization’s marketing is completely phony.  If the NCAA was serious about being an advocate for student-athletes, then it would supply student-athletes with all the resources they need to be successful academically and would allow student-athletes to receive stipends.

Higher education administrators, students, student-athletes, fans, alumni, and policymakers must federate to call for an oversight body for the NCAA.  An oversight body for the NCAA would help to improve phenomena in intercollegiate athletics and significantly benefit student-athletes and the schools they attend.

If you care about student-athletes and reforming intercollegiate athletics, then you will join the effort to institute a new oversight body for the NCAA.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Introducing Me and My Blog’s Purpose

Hello, All:

My name is Antonio Maurice Daniels, Ph.D. student and Research Associate in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My primary research interests are African-American male college student-athletes, African-American male students throughout the educational pipeline, and ecological sustainability in higher and postsecondary education.

For my first blog, I wanted to start with explaining the purpose of my blog. The purpose of my blog is to serve as an extension of my purpose in life: to unsettle, unnerve, and unhouse. This blog will be a venue for sharing information and ideas. If you are looking for discussions about serious issues, this will certainly be a place where you will be quite satisfied. I look forward to engaging with you on a constellation of diverse topics.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison