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| Junior libero Courtney Poirier serves in a match versus Allegheny on Tuesday evening (photo credit: Ron Szot) |
Colleges exist to transmit the knowledge people need to make informed decisions about our collective future. That's its purpose.
College athletics exist to transmit bodily knowledge -- a sort of phys. ed. requirement for higher education. That's its purpose.
College athletic conferences exist to create "competition", a word that comes from the Latin "competere," meaning, "to seek together." At its root, you don't compete against someone, you compete with her so that you'll both progress. The conference's purpose is to find similarly skilled teams to foster that learning environment.
Given this framework, our cultural obsession with the win-loss record seems purposeless.