It’s Not About Us
17-Mar-10
March Madness has become perhaps the second most important sporting event of the year, but pretty much everyone tuning in is completely missing the point.
As frenzied as we get about our brackets, as much time as we’ll scam off work watching as many tip-offs as possible, as breathless as we will all be waiting for the inevitable Cinderella to emerge, the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament isn’t about us.
It’s about the kids on the courts and the schools they represent.
And what’s going on with many of them sucks.
The athletes are supposedly there for their educations, both on and off the court, and the schools are there to further their reputations and get some much needed funding to augment educational programs.
However in many cases – the athletes aren’t at school to learn, only to get their schools into March Madness.
Essentially they are unpaid professional basketball players.
One of the prime examples of this phenomenon is the University of Kentucky, one of the No.1 seeds, and the school that is tipping off this tournament’s primetime coverage. The Boston Globe detailed exactly what this so-called “house of higher learning’s” basketball program is all about.
To be blunt, they are stacking their teams with educationally ineligible black players to get ahead.
Their graduation rate scorecard for its black players for the last six years is zero, 17, 17, 9, 17 and 18 percent. Yet they pay their coach, and serial NCAA rules abuser, John Calipari $32-million.
Get an idea of U of K’s value system?
How can they get away with foregoing education to just win, baby, win? Because the NCAA stopped penalizing schools for atrocious graduation-rate reports because so many of the upper echelon school’s players were leaving early for the NBA. Schools like Kentucky are using that to game the system with both its recruiting, and on how hard it presses it’s student-athletes to learn.
Happy about having Maryland in your bracket? In 2009 they had a zero black graduation rate and 8 percent overall. It has been at zero for black students for the last three years.
These are just the most egregious examples.
There are other schools that are clearly recruiting more honestly and putting the money they receive to better purposes. Kansas, Duke, Villanova, Pittsburgh, and Georgetown have black player graduation rates between 67 and 100 percent. Marquette, Brigham Young, Wake Forest, Utah State, and Notre Dame had a 100 percent graduation rate for all their players.
So, what does all that tell you?
First, the NCAA has to set new rules for academic standards to crack down on the likes of Kentucky, Maryland and the University of Las Vegas. If schools are averaging in the lower echelons on graduation rates, say below 25% over the previous five years, they should not be eligible for the tournament. This would help them become more honest, and help a ton more kids get a college education.
And second, they have to expand from 65 to 96 teams.
Wait. What? Sure – there seems to be something perfectly symmetrical about the existing bracket, allowing the tournament to be spread out over three excellent television-viewing weekends.
Yet again, this isn’t about us. It’s about maximizing the number of kids getting diplomas.
As ungainly as 96 teams might sound, in reality that’s just another weekend of games played. However, the net effect would be to increase the distribution of educational funding to hundreds more student-athletes every single year.
What’s more, it would take the pressure off those fringe school coaches who might otherwise be tempted to fiddle with the rules to get in, as their chances just went from very long to not too bad.
So, what is the downside? Watering down the tournament? So what? It’s already watered down as it is. What’s the problem with another weekend of high stakes college basketball where upsets always happen?
AP conducted a survey of 20 or so high profile NCAA coaches recently, and they were pretty much evenly split on the issue. I bet if you asked the other 300 or so Div 1 coaches you might get a more positive result. You know CBS would be all for it. As for the NCAA – if they really cared about providing high quality education to the highest number of students possible, this would be a simple way to do it.
As for we fans, we’d all have to do your bracketology on legal sized paper instead of 8 ½ x 11 from now on.
I know it’s not all about us, but I think we can handle that.
Cheers – Gavin McDougald – AKA Couch
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