Vince
If this is all the author said I would have no problem with the statement.

"High school athletic programs should be treated as a necessary and vital part of the education process, but not at the expense of academic standards and expectations."

After making the above statement then the author must have imagined some school where the other incidents I referred to in my post occurred at. He has no research or facts to back the supporting material up, it just happened somewhere. That's crap, I have worked one year in western Kansas, 20 years in northeast Kansas and one year in Kansas City as a teacher. I can cite specific years and coaches that back up each of my statements. I have journals from each of the years I coached and taught. This person wrote an article that someone is going to believe and has nothing in it about where it happened or who it happened to. I have been around 50-100 or so coaches in those years and thousands of athletes. I have not seen the stuff this writer mentions, school sports are not as written in the article "Sports are a serious high school business that frequently includes weekend practices or invitational competitions." The business schools are in is one of high stakes academic achievements and testing to meet No Child Left Behind Mandates and provide the taxpayers with competent workers to maintain and develop the economic system of our country. Not producing athletes, its crap to make that statement, how many of our "serious high school athletes" go on to professional sports, if that were our business we would go out of business for lack of success.
Sports are an extra curricular activity just like all the other extra curricular activities at the school. People just happen to enjoy participating,watching, and commenting on physical challenges so sports are followed by more people that the other extra curricular activities. Our society values some sports at a level that is quite amazing. If Lebron James and I put in the same number of hours at work there is a difference in our paychecks at the end of the month.

If the author wants to make his original statement and be done with it that's fine, I agree, just don't invent crap to support the statement.