They don't decide to give Bozo Johnson a scholarship over Brainiac Reynolds because Johnson has a better time in the 40. The counselors merely work with what they are given, which in many cases is a guy who views college as the mandatory three- year waiting period before the NBA moves him across the street from Bill Gates. You can fill Ohio Stadium with academic advisers and you can put a tutor on every street corner, but unless the athletes have a sincere interest in education, you might as well brush your money with butter and feed it to the Olentangy River carp. Many promising athletes have no interest in school. They go to college to participate in sports, and when their eligibility runs out, so do they.
Every story is different, of course.
Each person represents an individual case, and the sum of all of the individual cases can sometimes make a school's academic ranking look worse than it is. But there's a reason why schools such as Northwestern, Duke and Stanford score consistently high on surveys of this kind, and it's not because they don't have as many players transfer because they are unhappy with their playing time. It's also not because the NCAA gives their coaches more time to get to know the athletes during the recruiting process than it does John Cooper. Yes, the statistics can be misleading. Yes, extenuating circumstances can affect graduation rates.