Jameis Winston, controversy, again

I didn't mean to suggest that Winston's stupid. It just wouldn't surprise me at all to find that, had Winston the student (rather than Winston the football player) applied to Stanford, the outcome would have been different.

 

Sure, that's it. Billy Beane's admission to Stanford was revoked when he chose to sign with the Mets, but that's not at all informative with regard to whether a top-flight athlete's admission there might have more to do with his athletic gifts than with his academic preparation.

 

I'm not sure why this matters. I'm Exhibit A that it's possible to score high on SATs and still be a raving dumbass 18-year-old.

 

I don't doubt that Jameis Winston, student, gets rejected as applicant, whereas Jameis Winston, elite football recruit, gets accepted, but I'm fairly confident (having coverage college football) in saying there is a bar athletes must clear to get into elite schools, and it is not NCAA minimums or PAC-12 minimums. Whatever exception might have been made for Winston (and again, this is all based on rumors that Shaw and the administration has adamantly denied, not any stories written, even using anonymous sources) he didn't get into Stanford by scoring 1000 on the SATs. There's just no way.

Here is Shaw, by the way, saying academic standards are the same.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciajessop/2013/01/10/the-secrets-behind-stanfords-emergence-as-a-football-powerhouse/

 

He could settle all of this if he would just release his scores. No one doubts that Jameis Winston is intelligent. They just don't understand why, that being the case, he wouldn't just release his scores.

 

I completely agree with you. Given that position, however, that he was accepted at Stanford isn't remotely as informative (vis-a-vis his intelligence and academic preparation) as such an acceptance would be for a run-of-the-mill student.

To repeat: I'm not saying he scored 1,000 on the SAT (or whatever score puts you in the "has a pulse" category) and got into Stanford. I'm saying it's not unreasonable to think that his academic profile is not at all representative of the typical Stanford admittee and that therefore his admission there doesn't speak all that much to his intelligence and academic preparation. I would further think that the case with regards to athletes at any number of top-flight institutions with high profile athletic programs.

 

The long New York Times story from over the weekend should shock you pretty good about how that all went. It's worth a read not just because of that but because of all the cases that have been kicked over the years with a notation that the alleged perp is an FSU football player.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/us/florida-state-football-casts-shadow-over-tallahassee-justice.html?_r=0

The FSU athletic department met with Winston and his lawyers to discuss the case, and then not decide not to pursue it. Meanwhile ...

Some officers working game-day shifts are paid directly by Seminole Boosters. Three officers who played important roles in the Winston investigation were among those seeking private work with the group, records show, and the department’s top officials at the time — Chief Dennis Jones and his deputy, Cheryl Stewart — attended a 2012 fund-raiser benefiting the Boosters and Coach Fisher’s family charity. The close connection between the police and the Boosters is hardly hidden: The fund-raiser’s sponsor, a booster club called Old School, posted photos on its website showing Chief Jones kicking off the event by firing a shotgun.

Football town.

 

Being a raving dumbass 18-year-old is quite the accomplishment for a married man in his 40s*.

*Just guessing.

 

The rule of thumb I always heard, regarding the Top 100 recruits is year, was that the SEC schools could get 100 of them into school, the Big Ten could get 80 of them in, Notre Dame could get 50 of them into school, and Stanford could get 10 in.

 

I don't think he's stupid at all.

I think he's immature and self-entitled. You can say the same thing about a very high percentage of football and basketball players at elite programs.

 

As LTL said, it depends on who the coach is. Under Bill Walsh or Harbaugh and presumably Shaw, I'm guessing they get as many in as Notre Dame. Under Buddy Teevens or some of the other coaches they've had there, the 10 is probably accurate.

 

Stanford talks around that a lot. (As a private school, they have a lot of leeway to do so.) But Google the names "Richard Shaw" and "Robin Mamlet," the past and present admissions directors for athletics. You'll find things like: The infrastructure upgrades initiated by Bowlsby coincided with a different approach to the admissions process under Richard Shaw, who was appointed dean in the summer of 2005.

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/collegesports/2009/12/30/stanford-football-a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-the-rise-from-1-11-to-the-sun-bowl/

Maybe that just means they write crisper letters and get back to people sooner ... but I don't think so.