11/05/24
May 29, 2003
Politicians get into ACC/Big East conflict: and it should surprise no one. Senators from several states with Big East member colleges are asking Syracuse, Boston College, and Miami not to leave because, they believe, it would devastate college athletics. Don't these scumbags have better things to do?
posted by jasonbondshow to general at 10:01 AM - 9 comments
Doesn't the ACC have better things to do than try and break up their rival to the North? Why are two basketball conferences fighting over friggin' Miami? What the fudge....
posted by Justin Slotman at 10:41 AM on May 29, 2003
Don't these scumbags have better things to do? Yes. Sure, they can give more tax cuts to the super-wealthy, vote to fund nuclear weapons research instead of preserving fragile eco-systems, and give the RIAA the legal rights to snoop through our PCs. Not to turn this into a MeFi thread but I think sending letters on this topic is a lot less harmful than their other activities.
posted by billsaysthis at 01:13 PM on May 29, 2003
"What message do we send to student-athletes when decades of history can be destroyed as a sole result of economic considerations?'' Wow. Decades of history. I can't side with anyone on this one. (Interesting to note who's signatures are absent from the letter.) This is all a fools game. A huge bubble is building in college athletics -- perhaps all of sport -- and it will burst. I just can't wait for it to happen. /Grumbling crazy man at keyboard wondering if this will happen in his lifetime
posted by 8ighteenAcres at 10:38 PM on May 29, 2003
Tinkering with conferences is so far from what needs to be done to reform college sports that the mind reels. Let's think, where would actual reform actually start? I've said before that the simplest thing to do would be to disclose the graduation rate whenever a program is written about or mentioned on tv or radio. ("The 14 and 4 Cougars, who graduated 37% last season....") On the one hand, it seems grotesque for something as trivial as college sport to be engaging these people. On the other, look at who we are talking about-- I mean, who wouldn't rather see George W. Bush as Commissioner of Baseball than as President. The real bottom line, though, is that corrupt college sport is a corrupting influence on our educational system, and should not be tolerated. When a school like St. Bonaventure can get dragged into a place where lying and cheating are an acceptable part of the culture, we have sunk to a point where something has to be done. Who plays in the Big East, or whether there is a Big East, is not the way to fix something that is in dire need of repair.
posted by outside counsel at 10:57 AM on May 30, 2003
outside counsel: It’s pretty apparent what happened at St. Bonaventure was not viewed by anyone as, "an acceptable part of the culture." When was the last time a school president, AD and a coach (two actually) were fired for NCAA infractions? And while in theory I like the idea of frequent, public disclosures of grad rates, until the NCAA redefines what constitutes an actual “graduation” the number is meritless.
posted by kloeprich at 12:19 PM on May 30, 2003
Graduation rate is a hard thing to dictate. In all seriousness, the graduation rate of my friends from high school (who went on to 4 year schools) is probably lower than most of these teams. And they weren't all dumb. Some were, while others went hog wild when they first realized they were unsupervised. Fact is, what was once reserved for the wealthy is now commonplace. More kids than ever are able to go to college due to the availability of loans, grants and scholarships. And colleges are only to eager to let them in. I just found out a buddy of mine was offered a scholarship to Princeton for baseball 10 years back and he said he had no chance of ever getting in. In reality, they gave his 91 mph left arm that scholarship. Just for the record, I did graduate in 4.
posted by usfbull at 08:03 PM on May 30, 2003
usfbull: You've hit the nail on the head on grad rates. Athletic departments have it even tougher to quantify thanks to the NCAA's Byzantine factoring system. Schools can't even include JC transfers who graduate in their numbers. FYI - Princeton hasn't offered athletic scholarships since before the Ivy League was formed in 1954.
posted by kloeprich at 02:07 PM on May 31, 2003
Thanks for the correction kloeprich, I clarified and he was offered admission. I'm so major conference/D-1 biased that I assumed that meant a scholarship. That's what I get for going to a state school.
posted by usfbull at 06:43 AM on June 06, 2003
Don't these scumbags have better things to do? Yes.