SHOCKING! Bobby Knight rails against NBA's "one year in school" rule

It's not an issue of it being or not being the NCAA's rule. The issue is how it can have a negative impact, moreso, on the NCAA than already exists.

 

Actually it is, because if the NCAA hadn't done away with freshman ineligibility, everything would be completely different (and better).

Shed no tears for Knight or the NCAA. If you want to do away with the hired guns and make college basketball for STUDENT-athletes again, the answer is simple.

Reinstate freshman ineligibility.

 

Get rid of ALL academic requirements/standards for Division I sports. Don't even require athletes to enroll in class.

Yes, some schools (probably most) would admit functional illiterates to play basketball and football. If that's what they choose to do, so be it.

Yes, many athletes (probably most) would do nothing except drink beer and play sports. If that's what they choose to do, so be it.

But what would be eliminated, once and for all and forever, would be:

1) Screwing around with high school grades and entrance exams to make players eligible.

2) Fradulent grades in college -- giving jocks fake grades in order to keep them eligible.

3) The waste of considerable academic resources (including enrollment in class) on idiots many of whom have not the slightest interest or desire to actually learn anything in college.

4) The caterwauling about the "responsibility" of the institutions to "educate their athletes." If the athletes want to get educated, it's up to them.

 

Usually I get a kick out of your solutions, but that's an idiotic, throw-in-the-towel mentality.

If you want the meaning of your diploma watered down like that, fine, but I don't. (I know education is what you get out of it, but there's something to be said for a school's reputation too.)

Reinstate freshman ineligibility and you eliminate the overwhelming majority of athletes who don't give a damn about academics, without throwing in the towel.

 

You're completely wrong: the diplomas are watered down NOW, when morons are admitted to class who are unqualified to be there, who are given grades when they don't (and can't) do the work, who are given credits and in some cases degrees simply because of their ability to perform a sport.

Get them out of the classroom completely. If they don't deserve to be there academically, get them out of there. Get the frauds out of the classroom -- remove the incentive to hand out fake grades and fake degrees, and a diploma means something.

 

No...get them off the campus completely. Freshman ineligibility will do the trick.

What the hell are you going to do when a bunch of bonehead non-athletes sue the school to gain admittance to the dorms so they can drink beer all day because they don't have to enroll in class and there are no academic requirements/standards?

You think the universe of morons is restricted to athletes?

 

Simple -- the athletes don't live in dorms -- they get a housing stipend (equal to dorm room and board fees) and live wherever they choose (or can afford) off campus.

If they choose to attend classes, and can qualify academically, then bully for them. If they don't, who cares?

 

So your answer to potential lawsuits is to kick all athletes out of the dorms, even the ones who really do want to study and get the full college experience?

Good solution. Take the crazy route when the easy one is right in front of your nose.

 

Then why recruit high school kids?

 

Florida State University To Phase Out Academic Operations By 2010

SARASOTA, FL—Bowing to pressure from alumni, students, and a majority of teaching professors of Florida State University, athletic director Dave Hart Jr. announced yesterday that FSU would completely phase out all academic operations by the end of the 2010 school year in order to make athletics the school's No. 1 priority. "It's been clear for a while that Florida State's mission is to provide the young men and women enrolled here with a world-class football program, and this is the best way to cut the fat and really focus on making us No. 1 every year," Hart said. "While it's certainly possible for an academic subsidiary to bring a certain amount of prestige to an athletic program, the national polls have made it that our non-athletic operations have become a major distraction." FSU's restructuring program will begin with the elimination of the College of Arts and Sciences, effective October 15.


http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52822

 

I now offer an official apology to the board for starting this thread, and thus drawing this vermin from his hidey-hole.

 

Because they are good football or basketball players. Any pretense otherwise, especially any pretense at academic objectives, is at best amazingly disingenuous and at worst incontrovertibly hypocritical.


I went to a university with Division I football and basketball. I was in class with a number of big-time athletes who rarely came to class, and when they did, slept through it half the time. I didn't give a shit.

But I would have given a shit if those guys got 3.0 simply for showing up, while I had to work my ass off to get a 3.0, and I REALLY would have given a shit if I had tried to register for the class, only to be told it was full, and if 10 of the people in the class were jocks snoozing their way to a 3.0 so Bigtime University could continue to field its wonderful football and basketball teams.

Once you take a torch to the academic rulebook, the snoozing jocks are out the door. They can stay home and snooze on the living room couch. And the people in the classroom are the people qualified and interested in being there.