The Story The Media Has Ignored At Baylor

[Stallion]

Let's see we got a kid-Patrick Dennehey who comes to Baylor with the promise of a scholarship then is asked to give up his scholarship for a year so Baylor can fill up its NCAA alotment. Then you have Carlton Dotson a kid suffering through some mental disabilities at the same time his scholarship is being yanked presumably to make room for other players including Dennehey. It is MORALLY WRONG for NCAA schools to recruit STUDENT athletes to receive an academic scholarship and then yank that scholarship because the student ATHLETE does not produce on the field. This is the story the big Football Factories hope gets sweeped under the rug. UT has been running hordes of players off for years and you don't see a single mention of that practice in the papers. If you want to see College Coaches take a sincere interest in the academic performance of its players then all you have to do is change the yearly scholarship limit to 25 and abolish the 95 man scholarship limit. Recruits would be given 4 guaranteed years to complete their studies and players who redshirt could be allowed a 5th year of eligibility. The same schools that annually receive NCAA recognition for graduating their student athletes would likely still have over the present 85 man scholarship limit while factories like UT, OU, et al that have engaged in this disgusting practice of running kids off WOULD HAVE to change their policies and take a genuine interest in their STUDENT athletes. The silence from the Media and the NCAA is defeaning.

[Hoop Fan]

Exactly. I posted last week that it was digusting what Baylor had done to Carlton Dotson, and getting discarded probably contributed to the kids obvious mental spiral.

[bubba pony]

if my memory serves me right, Bliss ran off some SMU basketball players on scholarship way back in the late seventies when he stated with us. don't they all do this when they take over a program?

[Roach]

Isn't the annual scholarship limit already 25?

[Stallion]

yes but only if you are under 85. So schools that focus on academics are rarely able to take 25. Rice has trouble taking 18 per year.

[GoRedGoBlue]

I agree with you Stallion in principle.

However, what about the athlete that gets the free scholarship and gets lazy? What should be the school's recourse?

More to you point, while everyone always gave Bobby Knight accolades for graduating his players, they never scolded him for kicking the "less desirables" off his teams so that he could free up new scholarships...and how this affected his true graduation 'rate'.

[Hoop Fan]

There should be a way to remove a bad apple, but there also should be a disincentive to programs who recycle players constantly. Or conversely, a reward for programs who retain and graduate players. For instance, if you graduate more than 70% of kids you get an extra scholarship. Graduate less than 40% and you should lose a scholarship. That would mean that Rice and SMU would get 13 schollies to work with, whereas Baylor and TCU would probably get 11. Extrapolate that for football too.

[EastStang]

I think once a school gives a player a scholarship, it is taken for four years, unless he transfers and gets a scholarship at another 1-A institution. That way, it accommodates lateral transfers, but not drop-outs. Sure the school pays a price if a player doesn't get along with the coach and tanks and drops out of school or goes and joins a band or goes to Sam Houston State. The idea is that the athlete is going to get an education. If a player flunks out, in all probability the player should never have been admitted to the school in the first place. It would really make schools think twice about taking what used to be called "partial qualifiers". Given our grad rates vs. BCS schools, I think you'd see this sort of program helping the SMU's, Dukes and Rices of the world, and hurting the big factories. That reform will never pass, but it would be the one reform in all of the reform recommendations that ought to pass.