nycfan" post=416416 said:
Beast - my points were no athlete is being forced to go to college and due to the physical nature of sports it should not be expected to have same rules as a musician for example. I agree no one is saying 15 yr old is going to the NBA - not yet at least.
I still think it is a bad idea as I expect it will devalue education and not allow kids to be kids and will not work financially.
I understand others will like pro HS league and they are free to do so.
Sorry, I missed your point.
There are a ton of ways to look at this for certain.
When you roll education into the argument, I get really concerned about college basketball.
When I worked at St. John's right out of school, my office was in the academic computing lab. The student workers there were paid to help students doing assignment only with technical problems of using the computers, not the assignments themselves.
Towards the end of semesters, some basketball players would come in with a pile of assignments that they never did during the semester, and look for help fisnihing them so they wouldn't fail. The only guy who stood out was Frank Gilroy, who came in several times per week from the first week of school and did his own work, presumably on time. I was amazed that here was a rotation player, a starter, who was putting in a solid academic effort in addition to the rigors of baketball.
Having gone to pharmacy school, I have a crazy amount of respect for Charles Minlend in tackling what is undoubtedly the most challenging undergraduate curriculum at St. John's, PLUS be a starter on our teams. Before that, Rudy Wright was a chemistry major.and a rotation player.
For sure there have been others that have been solid students AND roster players for us.
The reality is that too many athletes who play college basketball are permitted early on to make a decision of basketball over academics, as early as grade school and middle school. Many are barely getting by in high school, and are forced to go the prep school route where not only is failure not an option, but not a possibility either. I wonder how many athletes get to college with subpar academic skills plus are expected to handle the rigors of a D1 sport.
Richard Lapchick is one of the highly respected guy who is very concerned about academic progress of basketball players, and proposes that the NCAA needs to raise its academic progress rate to 60 percent rather than the current 50. He said 78 percent of the men's teams and 97 percent of the women's teams currently meet those standards, but more schools need to strive to reach that level. He also feels that schools need to provide more academic support to studnet athletes, particularly basketball players.
The sad reality though is while we delude ourselves to thinking that college basketball is an avenue and opportunity for kids to receive a college education, for many college basketball athletes, attending college is merely a vehicle for what comes next - profesisonal basketball in one form or another. It's crazy to think that college basketball encompasses 3/4 of the fall semester months, and 3/4 of the spring semester months (if you exclude May, when many schools are just about done).
We need a better structure is college basketball is to produce more
student athletes. Until then, it may not be a horrible idea to have an option that allows kids to bypass college. Paying HS kids is not the answer I'm certain, but we have to provide a better way to allow athletic ability to be a provider of a solid college education than the current system.
