Use a Helicopter, Get a Recruit?

Apparently, helicopters are the latest trend in college athletic recruiting, says the New York Times. There's the high school team, scrambling across the field when, with a whirlwind of rotor-driven dramatic effect, a college coach descends from on high. Any teen would be wowed, right? One UCLA coach says there's more to it than shock and awe. He uses helicopter hours that have been donated by Lawrence Welk's grandson to get around Los Angeles' notorious traffic. With a helicopter, he says, he can hit four or five games in the time it would take him to drive to two. But his colleagues at other copter-using schools, including Cincinnati, say they make sure they don't arrive at halftime, when attention might be distracted, but during the game: first a "Tom Cruise fly- by" and then the landing.

Shock and awe are one thing, but having watched so many friends' athletic kids struggle with academics in college - there's a reason college teams hire tutors for their athletes, the kids miss so much classtime, it's the only way they can maintain any kind of grades - it seems a pity that colleges don't concentrate a little less on the grand theatrics, and spend a bit more time on the making-sure-students-have-balanced-lives end of things. Because in the real world, helicopters don't swoop down for job interviews. Your thoughts?