Showing posts with label MVP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MVP. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
By Libby Nelson, Apr. 7, 2014, Vox.com
The University of Connecticut Huskies made a triumphant
return to the NCAA tournament this year — winning the national
championship Monday night — after the school was barred from
competition in 2013 for poor academic performance.
But UConn's graduation rate for male basketball players is
still the worst of any team in the 2014 tournament.
UConn graduates 8 percent
of its players, according to the most recent NCAA statistics. To put it another
way: of the 12 players who started as freshmen eight years ago, exactly one
managed to finish a college degree or leave UConn in good academic standing.
UConn's terrible graduation rate is an outlier for the
tournament
Read the full story: www.vox.com
Related: The Elder Statement: Kentucky Wildcats Coach Makes $5 Million -- What About the Players Who Make It Possible? - By Larry Elder
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By Larry Elder, Apr. 9, 2014
Yes, it “opens up a can of worms” if colleges started paying the student-athletes who put fannies in the seat.
Questions include: How would it work? How much would they be paid? What about risk of injury and issues of liability?
Legitimate questions.
But there is something fundamentally wrong when the losing Kentucky Wildcats basketball coach earns over $5 million and the players violate NCAA rules if they accept a free meal from a fan. Maybe the end result is that some schools will drop programs if they find these questions to thorny to resolve. Not a bad outcome. That there are far more questions than answers doesn’t mean we can’t figure out something.
Shabazz Napier, the most valuable player on the winning men’s UConn team, said in a postgame interview: “We do have hungry nights that we don't have enough money to get food in. Sometimes money is needed. I don't think you should stretch it out to hundreds of thousands of dollars for playing, because a lot of times guys don't know how to handle themselves with money. I feel like a student athlete. Sometimes, there's hungry nights where I'm not able to eat, but I still gotta play up to my capabilities.”
Leave aside the claim that UConn allegedly plays its games with starving players. After all, student-athletes in elite programs like that of UConn usually have access of unlimited amounts of food. But Napier’s point deserves consideration.
UConn clearly recruits some “student athletes” knowing full well most will not graduate. The graduation rate for UConn’s male basketball program, for those entering between 2003 and 2006, was 8 percent. Meanwhile UConn’s winning female basketball team graduates 92 percent of its players.
Something is wrong. Very wrong.
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