On Dec. 22, I saw a post from the Santa Clara Men’s Basketball team about a private jet they chartered to an away game in Las Vegas. I know it is not uncommon for university athletes to fly private, but it still is an experience that most college students cannot fathom.

Photo Credit: Santa Clara Athletics/SantaClaraHoops on Instagram

As a devoted professional sports fan, college is where the rubber meets the road. It's where the money can skyrocket, seeds of entitlement can grow and the passion gets lost. The games lose their sense of pure competition and begin to transform into facets of a multi-billion dollar industry.

Changes in college athletic spending and new Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) sponsorships have prompted questions about how college athletes should be treated. Should these students be treated like professional athletes, even if it is unlikely that many of them will ever make it to the professional leagues? Or should they be treated more like skilled high school athletes who play truly for the love of the game?

Flying on a private jet is far closer to what professional athletes experience, but is it a bad thing for our men’s basketball team to fly private to Las Vegas? I don’t think so. Flashy luxuries like this are effective recruiting tools for players and high-performing athletics can contribute to higher levels of alumni donations.

Matt Penland, Associate Athletic Director of Media Relations, acknowledged that while images like the one posted to social media on Dec. 22 can have positive effects on recruiting, the main reasons behind chartering flights have to do with ease of travel.

“It's more for our student-athlete experience,” Penland said. “It's part of the investment that we've made in athletics and our current Santa Clara Bronco student-athletes.”

Other Santa Clara athletic programs, such as women’s basketball, volleyball and soccer, have also chartered private jets this year, and the men’s basketball team has been doing so for a few games a season over the past three seasons.

This has raised questions about the tension that academic institutions have as both a place of higher education and a pipeline of highly skilled athletes. This manifests in differing approaches to whether financial resources are better used supporting athletics or academic investments.

It’s not immediately clear how this tension could be solved. Athletics and academics are so intertwined that it's hard to have one without the other. And maybe a successful and well-rounded institution does support and foster both.

Sports bring something to a campus culture that is hard to find elsewhere: a place to gather across majors, interests and years. A place to celebrate the fact that we all go to the same university, together.

If the private jet meant the team had extra time to rest, practice or just stay on their game ahead of the big Gonzaga win on Jan. 11, then maybe it was worth it. This school hasn’t had a moment like that in a while, and the win was certainly more memorable than anything we learned in class that day.

This piece is an editorial and does not claim to reflect the opinions of The Santa Clara.