Prestige Is a Hell of a Drug

How Well-Read Parents Still Fall for the Flashiest Lie in College Sports

The myth of Division I supremacy remains one of the more intellectually dishonest fictions in modern sport—and, curiously, it is clung to with special desperation by families who pride themselves on their academic sophistication.

Let us begin with a premise so self-evident it ought to offend: not all Division I offers are created equal. Indeed, some scarcely qualify as opportunities at all—geographically remote, athletically unstable, academically inferior institutions that issue scholarships with the ceremonial gravity of a commemorative keychain, offering a semblance of prestige absent its substance.

Yet, time and again, families whose children boast 4.3 GPAs, National Merit commendations, and admission to Phi Beta Kappa–caliber liberal arts colleges will eschew world-class D3 programs—Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore—in favor of a forlorn seat on the bench at a third-rate D1 program whose only claim to notoriety is a televised blowout during March Madness. Why? Because the label reads “D1.” Because it sounds better at the holiday table. Because pride, when dressed in desperation, makes cowards of the well-educated.

What masquerades as ambition is too often social insecurity in tailored clothing. These families do not seek development—they seek validation. They confuse the spectacle of scholarship with the merit of substance. And so they barter world-class education and real impact for late-game minutes and bus rides through the hinterlands.

Even worse, their judgment is couched in a rhetoric of sacrifice—“He just wants to compete at the highest level,” they’ll say, as if the stage alone sanctifies the performance. The truth? Many of these young men and women could become Rhodes Scholars, CEOs, or public intellectuals—but instead, they are steered into mediocrity under the banner of false achievement.

Let us call it what it is: a failure of discernment disguised as loyalty to a dream.

There is nothing inherently virtuous about playing Division I basketball. It is not an automatic marker of excellence, just as being handed a microphone does not confer wisdom. The real question—the only question worth asking—is this: Where will your child be challenged, mentored, and positioned to flourish over time?

That question, regrettably, seldom appears in these deliberations. What dominates is ego. What dominates is narrative. What dominates is a clumsy conflation of level and legacy.

To be clear, this is not an indictment of aspiration. It is a defense of sanity. No sensible family, particularly one invested in education, should accept an inferior offer simply because the branding is shinier. That is not ambition—it is abdication masquerading as strategy.

And so, the child suffers. Stranded at the end of a bench he was never meant to warm. Ignored by professors whose courses he barely attends. Anchored to a school that will neither elevate nor remember him. All because someone mistook the idea of Division I for a future.

There is dignity in choosing well. There is freedom in rejecting the myth.

And there is folly—deep, preventable folly—in letting a label dictate a life.

Author’s Note

One wonders whether, if these same families applied such flawed logic to the rest of their child’s future—choosing a job for its business card rather than its fulfillment—they would recognize the cost. But such is the grip of status: it flatters the ego while bankrupting the soul.