The Big Ten and academics

Exactly. It's so fucking narrow-minded to think that these guys are all in school to get a classroom education. They're not. Sure, we should encourage every kid to get his college degree while he's there. But there's no way a coach like John Calipari should tell a kid like John Wall that he should stay in school and get his degree. If he did that, he should be fired for not doing his job.

 

Oh I agree the former is defensible, I just don't think it's true. It's my take that the more prestigious schools are, in some ways, bigger sell-outs because their showplace athletes (not all, of course, but the vast, vast majority) are even less representative academically of their typical student.

 

Wait, I just heard someone say, "Georgetown".

 

Many coaches, in a John Wall situation, would tell him to go pro, although they'd be doing cartwheels if the star stayed. It also makes them look good to say that they had a kid make the NBA.

It's people like Dicky V, who still thinks it's 1970 and that everything should be pure that is the problem.

The issue I have is that, after much kicking and screaming, the NCAA now allows a kid to declare for the draft and change his mind as long as he doesn't sign with an agent and changes his mind before a certain date. Yet, if the kid stays in the draft, and doesn't get picked, he's screwed.

They should allow non-drafted kids to come back to play in college, at least once.

 

They should allow kids to enter the draft, SIGN WITH THE TEAM, then if they get cut in training camp, come back to college.

Only when they actually play in a regular-season game should they lose college eligibility.

 

Although ND is down some, I hated when Holtz or someone else tooted the horn about ND's graduation rate or even Duke/NC's graduation rates because those schools (used to) had the pick of the litter, not only would the best HS athletes want to go there, the best HS athletes WITH great academics wanted to go there, so the schools were already way ahead of the game. A guy like Shane Battier would have graduated at Duke or anywhere else. Its a "clean" program because you're already getting the cream of the crop.