From: rsmith@strobe.ATC.Olivetti.Com (Russ Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.college
Subject: Re: Prop 48...
Keywords: Flag, country, ashokan fiddle music, etc. redundancy, repetition
Date: 28 Jul 92 20:03:28 GMT
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino CA, USA

In article <1992Jul28.143906.19806@ms.uky.edu> fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis) writes:
>So, since the schools can't be trusted, the student should be punished?
>There are admissions policies at every school. Every school, apparently,


So its punishing students to tell them "here is the minimum we'll
require from you in order to admit you into a college as a student
athlete"? The only punishment is that they lose a year of eligibility
if they can't afford to pay their own way or choose not to go to
JUCO. We both agree this is wrong, but whats so wrong about these kids
who can't pay their own way going to a JC? Thats one of the purposes of
JC's to give students good education, and hopefully an AA degree so that
if they either didn't qualify for a 4 year school or couldn't afford
it, they're now able to transfer in better prepared, and with only
2-3 years to pay for instead of 4-5. There are some very good JC's
in California, in part because JC's pay more to teachers than to 
faculty members at 4 year schools, so they often get better teachers.
The problem with JC's is alot of them are basketball factories like
San Jacinto that each year get a ton of Prop 48's who were bigtime
recruits, give them years of easy classes and a meaningless AA and
then off they go to UNLV(pre-Rollie) or Oklahoma to finish their
"college education".

The kids aren't to blame for whats wrong with the system no, but knowing
the system isn't working, shouldn't the NCAA have tried to make changes
to make it work? If I recall correctly, prop 48 originated because of
requests from member institutions to police the schools that they thought
were taking advantage of the kids. Pearl Washington, Chris Washburn,
Denny Crum's Lousiville teams, were all significant reasons why Prop 48
was passed. Pearl and Chris both had over 200 schools willing to accept
them, so you can't just blame Syracuse and NC State for taking them.
Louisville's graduation rate was atrocious but Denny said that he was
doing what he thought his job was: win games, and prepare kids for the
NBA, both of which he did. When Prop 48 was passed it said to Denny,
now we want you to have legitimate students too.  When Louisville 
announced they were makeing the requirements even more stringent,
Denny complained of unfairness because he would lose kids to other
schools with softer standards.

Without a minimum standard, there will always be a Jerry Tarkanian
taking kids who in some cases can barely read, and giving them
college scholarships. If we really don't care if these kids qraduate
or not, lets just come out and say so(and set up a minor league)
instead of pretending that they're student athletes.



Russ Smith
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"Mellow is the man, who knows what he's been missing
many, many men can't see the open road".
                                    Over the hills and far away- Led Zeppelin  
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