In the following pages, I consider the troublesome relationship between rhetoric and athletics in American higher education and how this relationship plays out in the first-year composition classroom. Specifically focused on Division I universities and the high-profile and high-revenue sports of football and men's basketball, I move from illustrating how athletics was instrumental to the rise of rhetoric during fifth and fourth century BCE Greece, to theories of multimodality in the contemporary first-year composition classroom. Throughout, my emphasis is on charting how the field of composition and rhetoric has exacerbated this troublesome relationship but is well-positioned to advocate on behalf of student-athletes and (re)discover fruitful connections between athletics and rhetoric.