basketball grad rates

Here is a link to an interesting interview with Nolan Richardson on the 0% graduation rate for his players. My personal view is that a 0% grad rate for big time college basketball schools is OK since all of those players have the skills to play professional basketball in the NBA or Europe. with all the pressure and practice time required you can't seriously be expected to put much effort into class. Add this to the fact that many of those guys come from family environments where school was never very important. College degrees are highly over rated anyways.

The whole system is just a sham. There are a limited amount of good student/athletes. It seems like half of them wind up at stanford or duke, the rest are dispersed around the country. A reminder of the kids at each school either aren't extremely talented (or short) or are talented but not good students. Some schools would rather go for the talented but not good student types. Others go for the less talented but better student types who have good work ethics. The bottom line is some colleges particularly go after kids who have little chance of graduating. To me this seems like exploitation on a high order. And it is always the same schools.

We had a discussion about this on the Other Gambling Games forum. Nobody yet has been able to convince me that paying players in college a stipend for the services would compromise their status as "studend athletes." What if the players got a piece of the action from the revenues brought in and the various endorsement contracts that exist? In order to continue to receive the monetary benifits the players would have to maintain a certain academic standing i.e. the NCAA could do it this way if they were sincere in their concern for "student atheletes." In reality what's happening is that there are those that are prospering economically, e.g. coaches like Richardson among others, and those that are not namely the players and those that prosper do not want to give up anything that they have now.

It was good to see Colorado and Idaho on the 0% list, since I paid taxes and tuition at CU and now pay taxes for Idaho. Needless to say CU has a lousy program and Idaho will never ever ever have a good program. It is not a very hard school either. So I am happy my tax dollars are being completely flushed down the toilet. (No way do these programs make money for those who think they are profit centers. Duke makes money, no way Idaho does.)