http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-scores/index.html...
If you get a chance to read this it is on the front page of CNN.com, I found it pretty interesting. Could this be why we don't get many of the top recruits?
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Thanks for sharing. Interesting article. Adds to the argument of how schools, especially Duke, Notre Dame, even UVA, have difficulty qualifying student athletes within acceptance standards.
UNC and Louisville should join the SEC. They would fit in well there.
Still completely unsure of how UNC got away with a slap on the wrist....
UNC Hoops = $$$$ for NCAA.
Any real investigation and penalty of that situation could not have avoided incriminating Hoops athletes, as they all were attending the same classes.
It doesn't hurt when the investigator went to UNC. That whole thing was a sham.
I never buy the excuse that superior academics leads to subpar athletics. UVA fans have been using this for years, yet their program is pulling in one five star recruit after the other. Just look at Stanford. Those nerds are kicking ass.
Notre Dame also has strict academic standards and tends to do well in all sports.
This may be a slight exaggeration.
This, however, is completely accurate.
My mom was a graduate assistant at Nebraska back in the early 80's where she taught psychology classes. She always had football players in her classes (including Heisman winner Mike Rozier and Liberty head coach Turner Gill) and saw many of these same issues. There was a guy who couldn't spell the word "Education."
The best story is one time she gave a starting player an "Incomplete" for a class because he didn't turn in a paper. The next weekend she was at a friend's bar in Delaware when the bar's phone rang for her. She has no idea how they knew she was there, as she didn't tell anyone where she was going that weekend. The call was from a coach at Nebraska asking why she had not passed the player, and that if he didn't pass he couldn't play. They eventually convinced her to let the guy turn in the paper late so he could at least pass.
and then proceeded to have someone else write the paper for him so he could practice?
You don't know how they knew she was at the bar? THEY know everything.
That's so depressing. Especially in light of the focus on long-term brain injury, some kids are asked to literally give up their health and not even be given a proper education in return. I suppose that most have the opportunity to take the tutoring seriously and improve themselves, but how many willingly take advantage of it? How many are pressured to spend more time practicing and studying the playbook and just take the work the tutors do for them? Sometimes people don't know what's in their best interests, and could use a shove in the right direction.
I realize that this would negatively impact VT (and all of college football), but I think some kind of NFL minor league needs to be established. Let the guys that want to get paid immediately play there for 2-3 years, and let the guys that want to go to college do their thing without all the sleaziness of academic scandals and improper benefits. (I know it won't end these things, but maybe it will rein them back in to the realm of reason). The NBA already has the D-League, skim some off the existing revenue sharing and increase the contract size down there. There's bound to be a bunch of kids that would rather take a smaller contract now for a couple of years over playing one or two years for (kind of) free and skip the hassle of classes and admission.
The NFL tried this, as that's what NFL Europe was all about. Why would the NFL go out of its way a second time to spend money developing players when the NCAA does it for them? The NBA D-League only works because it has a low cost to run and can be played in almost any indoor facility designed with a flat floor in the center as opposed to needing football fields and a boatload of cash. Total personnel for a D-League team = 25 with coaches and staff
Total personnel for a D-League type NFL team would require close to 100
I never said it was in the NFL's best interest. ;) I'd like to think that if they stationed it where they actually have existing customers and marketed the hell out of it, that they might actually make some money. Or at least enough to recoup their opportunity cost.
Players can enter the CFL at 18.
Its amazing how fast the media responds with an article like this after an NCAA Championship team QB has his Press Brief.....
VT seems to do well with graduation rates, but what are the standards for those degrees? I hope we aren't pulling this nonsense (I mean low balling certain degrees just for athlete's - I'm all for helping them meet graduation standards within reason). I have no data, but haven't seen anything close to this at Tech, so my rose colored glasses tell me we're good to go.
Judging from this, I'd say most VT football grads tend to do pretty well for themselves after graduation:
http://beamerball.com/free/formerplayer.htm
If there are so many athletes with superior sports skills but not ready for, or able to succeed in college, maybe an opportunity exists for some smart entrepreneurs - an alternative pipeline (minor league) for the NFL.
College football is so huge, I'd see that as being very hard to get going. You're not gonna get the volume of players you'd need to have a competitive/interesting league. Even if you don't pay them directly (which may or may not be debatable at some institutions), you still give them a scholarship worth tens of thousands of dollars, especially if they're out of state. If I was on scholarship for a varsity sport, my family would have saved about $100k on tuition alone.
but if you didn't play a varsity sport would you still go to school?
I'm willing to bet the vast majority of recruits' families would smack em upside the head Mama Fuller style if they passed up a free college education to go to some minor league football institution in the hopes of having a chance to play in the NFL for 6 years. Then what? As it is, college football provides exactly that, plus an option after retirement/if football doesn't work out.
*EDIT* realized I didn't really answer the question, and I'm not sure how to. I don't play a varsity sport, and I still go to school, so yes?
The UFL tried to become a minor league for the NFL but were rejected.
and the XFL.
Those 3 letters, when combined, may in fact be hilarious.
That article takes too long to read.
This article is just a reminder that there are so many kids that would have some pretty sorry circumstances if it werent for sports. Statistically many of these athletes would have ended up in jail or serious trouble very early in life and football acts as an outlet of safety. This statements sounds ironic given all the new information on head trauma, but it is so incredibly true.
It also stands as a reminder to me why the kids at Tech are so incredibly lucky to be coached by a man like Frank. Given these possible academic deficiencies they are all the more likely to be shaped by their environment. Hell, I know that I want a championship so damn bad, but I would much rather have someone like Beamer shaping 18 year old minds and giving them a fighting chance in life.
I would imagine that this stuff started way before the entered college. I like how the focus is on the college aspect but their schooling prior to this part of their life is sub-par as well. Just being an athlete does not make you college material much less NFL material. After a while the stupidity will catch up to you. As you get higher up in the game you need to learn more and become a student. The worst part is that some of these kids live with the impression that they HAVE to use their athleticism to go to college. It is about opening the door with your athleticism.
Having coached younger kids (and I do not care about the sport) I made it a requirement that my kids were passing all of their classes and gradually increased those reqs: no failing, nothing below a C, attain Honor Roll (B average with nothing below a C), etc. You could see a correlation between the grades and how much they understood in practice. Smarter kids understand the game more. If they needed time for HW or a project they didnt have to come to practice. They will try harder for you. They get in trouble less.
The article made me think about this, as well. If a kid gets into college but is only reading on a fourth-grade level, then how in the world did he even graduate high school? I know a lot of this comes down in terms of politics and education policy, so I'm not trying to start a touchy debate here, but I think it is absolutely clear that things are systemically wrong way earlier than college. My mom was an elementary school teacher, and she had kids that were 9-10 years old and couldn't read at all. It was shocking then, and even worse now.
The problem isn't necessarily the Colleges. It starts much younger than that.
The school system I was in during elementary school had a strict no failing/keep behind policy unless at the request of the parent. They just made the kid go to summer school so they can advance. That led to graduates who didn't know simple math or being able to read a newspaper. It's really a shame that in order to not hurt a kid or his parent's feelings some places are irreparably damaging a students education and well being. Where a couple of hard knocks in elementary or middle school could have helped them become better and more rounded people.
Yes the problems do indeed start all the way at the bottom. By the time these kids are in college all you can do is damage control and help them in any way that you can. But these are still the lucky ones. There are many more that arent talented athletes that do not have football to fall back on.