They are accepted for a high level of ability in a specific major. Like it or not basketball and football is their major. It will demand the time and work, plus bring in millions to the school while they do it. If they don't make the extremely competitive low number of opportunity professional field, hopefully they get a fall back career from their studies. They are there for the same reason 90% of students go for, to prep for the career in their field of choice.
The way I would clean up college basketball
- Thread starter IU Scott
- Start date
That student showed extreme talent in a field of study that made the difference/athletics. It is done in many fields, the music prodigy accepted may not have the overall GPA either. A athlete did not take your childs spot, the other candidates for general admission did.
You can make that rationalization all you want, but it's still a matter of employing special admission standards for athletes. I'm fine with it, but Scott's reform efforts aren't focused on academic integrity, only on his personal entertainment, which is the point of this exchange (exposing his hypocrisy).
Special admission is common practice, even for those students that don't fund all the other extra curricular athletics that are provided for the student body and produce millions for the school at large while attending. There is a reason they are recruited to attend.
Checked indiana.edu, no basketball or football majors offered at IUB.
I would argue that anybody who does not acknowledge that big time athletics is the primary major for many athletes is naive. The time mandated, and the instruction by " profs" in weight rooms, training, practice, games is their major. They are wooed to come to the University, with the participation in the athletic field being the primary reason.
I understand that fully, but that has never been consistent with the academic priorities of any university.
For the top tier, basketball is their profession. Professions are learned in college.
Unless you also want to make the top software engineers dunk and do ankle breaking crossovers, and pass the same physical tests the players must, you're being a hypocrite.
I understand the rationale, but similar arguments are often made regarding providing athletes with easy classes and majors, all in an effort to maintain eligibility and enhance the overall positive impact to the university. One person's virtuous compromise is another's sell out of the purity of higher education.
But it certainly has been with the bottom line. It also is clearly argued that those admissions help immensely with the academic priorities of the University in many ways. From donors, admissions requests, immediate funding, national recognition, overall campus environment/experience. Major part.
If they are just "athletes", and not "student-athletes", then they don't belong on campus. The gutless university presidents who allow themselves to be bullied by big time coaches and athletic boosters are the root cause of the problem.
They have to maintain a overall GPA, and are student athletes, but just like a musician, technology student, etc. their focus is on prepping for their desired profession. If that profession feels they are ready and offers employnent before they graduate then they spent their college training very well! You can be a student, with a single focus toward your desired field. Best not to limit your options though. Where is the bullying of presidents, they are a cash cow for them and their Universities while there.
As noted earlier, IUB does not confer degrees in basketball or football. How many college athletes found employment in their "desired" field of professional basketball or football?
No offense intended, but you and a few others on this board don't seem to understand what a college education is.
No offense taken. The players need to "use basketball/football as a vehicle, not let it use them". In most cases that means GET YOUR DEGREE! I graduated from college and know what a college education is. I also know college athletics is a a buisness, a economic behemoth that fuels entire economies. The largest economic stimulant to the millions in central Ohio is not a corporation, it is Ohio State football. I think it is very naive for people to not recognize that aspect of what college education is.
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How can this happen? Summer basketball doesn’t belong to the NCAA, and the people who play in it are outside the control of the NCAA.
Why? Is not athletics in all it's varieties from training, to coaching, to administration, and playing etc a profession?
Athletic boosters are so 1970's, dude, it's agents and runners now, please catch up.
We are talking about 2% of all the athletes in the country who will go professional in sports and the rest will not. I am not in favor to make a lot of changes so 2% of the people can be paid.
You go to college to help you get a job. The NBA is a job. So yeah, the primary focus for a lot of college athletes is getting to the NBA.
VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
I like the 3 year rule because the kids have a real chance at a degree because they take summer courses to stay on campus to train. I also like it from a college fan perspective. When I see Victor Oladipo play for the Pacers I get excited because he was at IU for 3 yrs. When I see Eric Gordon play in the NBA it's nice to see him, but I don't get that excited.
I would think the NBA would benefit too. If players are in an organized minor league then all they have to do is develop as players. In the end this would be a better finished product that is put on the floor in front of paying fans. Who wants to pay a lot of money to see a guy develop?
The NFL didn't make the 3 year rule to work with the NCAA. Baseball probably has their rule to benefit baseball not the NCAA. The NCAA needs to take care of itself and not worry about the NBA. That said, i do not believe the NBA will keep the 1 year moratorium on players out of HS. So i think that issue will fix itself.
I also don't think the NCAA wants to be involved in the summer basketball. Doesn't that open up a whoile different recruiting issue.
I think the NCAA should police it self on 1 and dones and xfers. Once you give out a scholarship, it can't be recycled for 3 years. So the recruited player better stay or his replacement is a walk on until the schoillie regenerates.
I also don't think the NCAA wants to be involved in the summer basketball. Doesn't that open up a whoile different recruiting issue.
I think the NCAA should police it self on 1 and dones and xfers. Once you give out a scholarship, it can't be recycled for 3 years. So the recruited player better stay or his replacement is a walk on until the schoillie regenerates.
Yet another argument for ending the one and done. Players who focus on basketball with little regards for academics should not be at an academic institution, taking schoarship money from actual student athletes.
You misunderstand how this works. They’re not taking money from student athletes. Football and basketball are PROVIDING money to other student athletes and other students in general. They’re self sufficient when it comes to money.
That tennis team tournament in California? Paid for by 2 men’s sports. The cross country meet in North Carolina? Yup, paid for by 2 teams. The softball matchup in Oklahoma? Again, paid for by 2 teams. On top of all this the athletic department is giving additional money back to the university which benefits non athletes.
These one and done athletes are giving a whole lot more than they’re receiving. And I haven’t even touched on the exposure part which has proven to have a direct correlation to college applications.
Say they decide to let the universities pay the players who do you think we be hurt first. It would be the tennis or the cross country teams because they would have to take the money allocated to them and give it back to pay the players in basketball and football.
While you know that and I know that, the problem is in convincing that liberal federal judge in Chicago or San Francisco of that logic. The absurd interpretation of Title IX is partly how college athletics got into this arms race in the first place. How long would it take the courts to declare that whatever is paid to a first-round NBA draft choice must also be paid to the last player off the bench for the women's lacrosse team ?
I have zero confidence that the courts would ever allow any academic institution to pay athletes based on market principles.
There is a reasonably simple way to clean up the mess that involves two easy-to-make changes (assuming the NCAA actually wants to clean up anything).
1. Require that whatever pricing policies and any free merchandise supplied by an apparel company to one member institution be available to all members. In other words, whatever Nike provides to O$U it also provides at the same cost to Chicago State. In addition, forbid university employees from receiving any free merchandise or any other gift from these companies.
2. Make scholarships the exclusive property of the individual student-athlete. The scholarship is not available to any other student for four years unless the original athlete graduates, transfers, chooses to leave the team, or is removed for disciplinary reasons. Cal can recruit a team full of OADs this year if he wants, realizing that if they all turn pro he's going to be fielding a team of walk-ons for the next couple of years.
Let coaches and schools choose how and whom to recruit recognizing the risks associated with recruiting athletes who have no intention of earning a degree.
Gates and Zuckerberg innovated something, and whether you want to admit it or not are exceptions to the rule, statistical outliers.
Sorry, but attending a university on an athletic scholarship comes with minimum standards that must be met of both and athletic AND academic variety. Even the average scholarship student has to meet minimum standards in all classes to maintain both their scholarship AND earn their degree. Also, while many people enter fields based solely on future earnings potential, just as many choose their passion when deciding their career endeavor.
Simply put, there are only a few dozen guaranteed contract opportunities annually for these kids in the NBA. Even for the most touted of high school athletes, there are so many potential applicants for so few available jobs...and as such to put all the emphasis on an athletic profession while disregarding the benefits of the actual education being offered via scholarship does a great disservice. I mean, really it's gambling on an uncertain future with the odds stacked firmly against you in many instances. For every Lebron, Kobe and Garnett there are dozens of guys who are drafted in the first round and fail. As for your surgeon comparison I would wager if you compared the past 40 years of NBA draftees and those who became surgeons the past 40 years on money earned, their quality of life and their current financial portfolios you would have an awful lot of happy surgeons and jealous NBA washouts.
So, while you could make the argument that the PRIMARY focus of scholarship athletes should be athletics and the potential financial rewards, I believe that there should be just as much emphasis on taking full advantage of the educational opportunity while it's being offered.
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For my daughter to keep her scholarship she has to keep a 3.3 GPA and work at a homeless shelter 10+ hours a week(not paid). She also has to go to meetings with her counselers and if she does not show she could lose the scholarship.
My daughter had similar requirements to maintain her scholarship and had several strings attached to a few grants as well. She has also completed several hundred hours of con-ed requirements in order to stay licensed/certified in her profession(s) since graduating nearly a decade ago. Sounds like they may have chosen similar paths.
As to the OP's intent to "fix", I agree that something must be done to provide separate avenues for those who have no interest in being a student and those who are willing to meet the expectations of student-athlete. Maybe a combination of re instituting the freshman eligibility rule in some form and getting the NBA to lower their minimum eligibility age. IMHO, there is unfortunately too much money involved for agents, shoe companies, athletic programs, coaches, parents and the rest of the in betweens, go betweens and hangers on for anything of substance to happen. It would take a concerted and perpetual effort to clean it up and keep it clean by too many parties.
It's just not the same anymore, and it's why I follow with little more than a passing interest.
Not really.
You go to college, to get a degree, to then help get you a job.
No one's offering gigs to kids based on their freshman year business school pre-req grades, because the FDIC decided to pass a law that no bank can hire a kid right out of college.
College Presidents and the NCAA are rolling over to be the NBA's minor league because they are too scared to:
1) pass a universal rule on eligibility that would make (probably) 75% of current D
I would like to propose a solution that might placate both the NCAA and the university officials that still cling to the student athlete paradigm. For an example basketball, 13 scholarships, when a kid signs that schlolarship is locked, period end of discussion for four years. No matter what happens, injury, early NBA entry, transfer, flunk out, death and any other calamanity that may befall. I understand that walkons and that program of extending kids that option ends. Injuries would receive a one year extension as long as the player remained with the university and was within the NCAA guidelines as far as season eligibility was concerned. This rule puts the onus back on the institution, instead of the NCAA. The NCAA becomes what it should be then an enforcer of a simple rule that impacts university's that don't value a student athlete.
The admission requirements for athletes at all major schools are below those for the freshman class in general. I worked in admissions for years. Some where shockers. The only school that openly admitted that they showed favoritism to athletes was Notre Dame. Now, if a student meets NCAA guidelines, he or she will be admitted almost anywhere.
I did not know that he proposed that, this is my logical approach to multiple problems that impact both the NCAA and its institutions.
He proposed that when an athlete was given a scholarship, it could not be used again until the student graduated or six years had passed, whichever occurred first. Puts onus on university and athletic program to make sure kids get their degrees. He had no provision for transfers. Felt that transferring was not a reason to not graduate.
You refer to their education as if it’s only available while they’re 18-22. These players have the ability to go back to college when their playing days are over. And they’ll probably take it more serious then and get more out of it. What’s the difference in graduating at age 30 or age 22?
Let’s put this in perspective for the average student. Let’s say a Fortune 500 company came to a Freshman student in IU’s business school because they were the best at something in the world and offered them $5 million per year to drop out and come work with them. The student knew this technology that they were getting paid to work with was going to be obsolete in 10-15 years and they would have little to no value then. Would that student be smart to leave school, earn that money while they can, then go back to school when they’re 30-35 if they want? Or stay in school and lose out on 3 years of that earning potential? There’s no difference between this and athletes. The NBA isn’t a game...it’s a profession. And these athletes are outliers just like Gates and Zuckerberg.
Gates and Zuckerberg make so much money because they provide value. These kids/athletes are the same way. They provide value that most others can’t. And people are willing to pay for it. They should worry about maximizing this earnings potential while they can since there are a limited number of years they can earn it. Then go back to school if they want/need to once they’re older and their knees are shot.
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Athletic scholarships are year to year and can be taken away even if they are meeting all those requirements.
Fair enough. Then have them qualify for school like a regular student. If they do that, and want to leave... cool. Then, they'd be like Zuckerberg...who actually had the grades to qualify for school.
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