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Gee. I wonder if a university would get the death penelty for paying its players to play with grades? Or is academic fraud OK and saleries are not?

Somehow, I still don't see how some pretty blatant programs (Ark Basketball for one) with poor academic results will ever have a seconds worth of difficulty from the NCAA.

Gee Ponyte, sounds to me like the prayers have been answered for those wishing the academics of the Arkansas BB team would improve. With this edict, I bet the grades start improving at Arkansas immediately. ( In your own words, please accept this as sarcasm)

Its going to be impossible to make the top basketball programs improve from this standpoint. All the top programs, have all the top players, and those players will never stay four years. One, maybe two. Unless the NCAA wants all the best players to not even attend college at all, resrictions will never work.

Well that's a pretty broad statement..."Unless the NCAA wants all the best players to not even attend college at all...". It all gets back to whether or not the colleges should be a farm system for the pros. Baseball seems to have it right...they actually have a farm system.

In my opinion, if the colleges are going to be the farm system for the pros, then the pro teams ought to pay the colleges (all of them) for their farm system services. Otherwise, college teams should be made up of STUDENT athletes, i.e., kids working towards a degree. Let those who are not capable of earning a degree or not interested, go into some kind of farm system meant to develop professional athletes, funded by the pro teams.

Most college athletes never make it to the professional ranks. Why pretend that some teams, handing out unearned diplomas to kids who can't or won't actually do the academic work, are really "college" teams?

<small>[ 01-14-2004, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: PK ]</small>

Ark highly successful BB program did not graduate a player the last 10 years of Nolan Richardson's coaching career. A new rule to have even one graduate would place a huge burden on the academic/athletic relationship that U of A currently enjoys.

This NCAA requirement will either change some programs recruiting or increase the level of fraud. I only wonder how much teeth the NCAA will put into enforcing academic fraud. I fear the NCAA will only use antique wooden teeth and nothing more.

But take Syracuse last year. They knew Carmelo wasn't going to stay very long. He was there for a year, they won a national championship, everyone was happy. Under the new guidelines, he might've never even attended college and opted to go straight to the pros and we miss out on one of the greatest individual NCAA tourneys in a while.

Ponyte-Arkansas has a guy similar to this in Al Jefferson. He signed with UA and they want him to come for basically one year and then leave.

If college basketball ever becomes anything close to college baseball, I'll shoot myself.

<small>[ 01-14-2004, 02:12 PM: Message edited by: Mike Damone ]</small>

Originally posted by Mike Damone:
But take Syracuse last year. They knew Carmelo wasn't going to stay very long. He was there for a year, they won a national championship, everyone was happy. Under the new guidelines, he might've never even attended college and opted to go straight to the pros and we miss out on one of the greatest individual NCAA tourneys in a while.

Well then you could have watched him in the pros.

College basketball in the worst case senerio would never be like college baseball. I mean the worst thing about college baseball is that it is baseball...slow, long and boring...sort of like golf.

<small>[ 01-14-2004, 02:37 PM: Message edited by: PK ]</small>

What if B-Hop had two seasons like we all hoped for- like TJ Ford and went pro after this year. Would we all be better off watching him in the pros than at SMU for two years, then leave, and then hurt us with these new rules?

There will continue to be fraud, but this can only help us.

It's kind of amazing, if you really think about it, that we have the kind of success we do at SMU. Our graduation rates ought to make us all very proud.

Exactly what success have we had oh Ponyboy Cheerleader?

The kind of success where we hope everyone else gets worse, that way we'll automatically be better. Its easier than actually getting better.

Oh yea the kinda success where you get to call UT and TCU chokers! I got it!

Remarkably, Academic fraud seems to get punished less severely than amateurism violations. Minnesota had a rampant academic fraud involving the head coach and got wrist slapped. We got wrist slapped in the Malin incident. Baylor has a mixed bag of academic, criminal and amateurism violations.

Paying a player does not cheat him of his/her opportunity to get a degree. Giving him/her grades does not cheat him/her either (technically a player with grades given to him/her would still "earn" a degree).

Ethically, would payment and an opportunity to earn a degree be worse than academic fraud where a player "earns" a degree but not the knowledge and skills associated with the degree?

One knows that the NCAA has serious concerns about paying players but one has no real good indication how seriously the NCAA will take academic fraud. As the cynic in me comes out, I see academic fraud as the latest weapon to keep Centenary College, SMU, and VMI inline. I doubt seriously that anything will be done to a BCS type school unless the violations is egregious and reported in SI for about 2 issues.