I’m sitting here flipping through the manic news, the frantic and varied of opinions on various economic plans and their possible outcomes. I find it all too much of a maze at this point. I’m tempted to watch Ellen to see who is singing in the bathroom this week. I’m even tempted to sing in the bathroom myself and send in a video, and I’m fascinated by the news that John Mayer tweeted himself out of his relationship with Jennifer Aniston? Yawn.
I came upon some interesting NCAA Basketball Brackets. Not the bracket I’m losing with at the 20 Something ESPN site either, these are Higher Ed Watch’s Third Annual Academic March Madness Brackets, a bracket display of the evaluation of the teams “in competition of studying for and obtaining a meaningful degree”.
NCAA Graduation Success Rates, Sweet Sixteen. Click to Enlarge.
Not surprisingly, as best as can be interpreted from a not so transparent NCCA, most of the top seeds coming in to the tourney wouldn’t even come close to championship status if academics were the basis for the win. Overall the tops seeds have a pretty dismal record in graduating their athletes. Taking what is left — the Sweet Sixteen — Villanova and Purdue make the final, with Arizona and UConn losing big time whether using the NCAA’s GSR (Graduation Success Rate) or the FGR (Federal Graduation Rate). I mean seriously, Arizona has appeared in every NCAA tournament for the last 50 years and it looks like the student athletes, as they like to call them, have the lowest graduation rate –13%.
Federal Graduation Rates, Sweet Sixteen. Click to Enlarge
There is no doubt these teams make the schools money, some say in the billions each year across the USA, with millions spent on recruiting the best players and coaches, yet only a small number of these players, as that NCAA branding commercial constantly reminds us, will ever realize the financial dream from playing a revenue sport post college. Most will be doing something else. Apparently a large number of them won’t be doing that something else with a college degree in hand. The schools making millions off of these athletes, in general, don’t appear too concerned.
Is it any big deal that the graduation rates are so paltry, especially in revenue sports? Do people even care? I’m not sure I do, but then again I’ve never really thought of top team Division 1 players on revenue producing teams as students, at least not for the most part. It’s always seemed like a farce to me. Would it not be better to recruit a school team which doesn’t have to actually go to school, stop the pretense and actually compensate the players while they play their 4 years, instead of pretending they are students? If once the school is done making millions off of them they send them on their merry way, degree or not, wouldn’t it make more sense to do it differently? Unless the schools really want to start trying to make these athletes students, while considering the question of whether most of these revenue sport athletes even went to go to be students?
On another tangent, wouldn’t it be great if people got the same adrenalin rush — and sense of false pride they get seeing “their team” win — from seeing scientific research projects face off against each other in large arenas, bringing in millions in research money, allowing schools to recruit top notch students and professors?
Information obtained from The Higher Ed Watch Blog.
Tags: basketball, college sports, NCAA
Some of us do get a rush from scientific papers. I don’t need no ESPN to tell me what’s exciting. Hey, do you want to hear about some chi-squared distributions I found?
Doug’s last blog post..Out-of-doors
I thought it was words that gave you a rush??
“Hey, do you want to hear about some chi-squared distributions I found?” Probability not.
I promise you they don’t care, you know I know that.
I don’t get a rush from science usually, sometimes, not usually. I do get a rush from Philosophy and surfing, but no one offered to pay my way through college fro that and it’s hardly a revenue producer.
Of course it’s a joke at the larger revenue producing schools, to pretend otherwise is fun though, let’s pretend they are students just like me.….some of those schools will chew you and spit you out faster than you can say an I have a pickle with that please.
Still there is that rush …
g’s last blog post..Portia De Rossi Apologizes For Her Marriage
You forgot the rush you get from arguing.
Then there is the question of those who do get degrees, with a barely passing grade, in what they call “jock majors”. One of those majors that makes you an expert in coaching or something ridiculous and qualify you for not much.
I’ve known some stellar student athletes, but when you are talking the big money making schools you’re right it’s a farce. I can’t help loving the games anyway. I guess I think of it as “not my problem”. Our culture accepts all this and doesn’t bat an eye.
jacob’s last blog post..Stuff
I’m batting both my eye, right now as a matter of fact.
Honeslt I’ve taken som eheat fo the jock majors thing and really there isn’t anything necessarily bad abut those major, only how many Kinesiologists do we really need.
I agree. College athletes in the big-ticket sports should be treated as semi-professionals and be compensated for their services. It makes more sense to pay them for their time if they aren’t receiving a comparable education as the rest of the students are receiving. Or I always thought, after their eligibility is up, that these student athletes should be afforded a chance to received that degree when they the time to study and earn it. It does take a lot to fund a university, but it doesn’t take so much that some of that money can’t go back into the students, all of the students, themselves.
mojo shivers’s last blog post..And The Waves Crashing Around Me, The Sand Slips Out To Sea, And The Winds That Blow Remind Me, Of What Has Been, And What Can Never Be
students and some of the programs this country seems to be week and excelling in, the sciences for example.
Love your last paragraph – but not just for sciences. If we had some system of rewarding the “best” to teach.…
pia’s last blog post..Renovation Court
That doesn’t look to be happening any time soon.
BC, does well but that is using the NCAA criteria not the government criteria, you’ve said it-before the Jesuits love their sports — they also love their education. U of Maryland doesn’t do bad either, or at least they used to do well, they all use 6 year grad rates though. The year I graduated BC they boasted 16 NCAA teams with 100 percent grad rates. They have less going pro types though and like I said it is a 6 year grad rate.
It’s what the market will bear and what will bring in the money.
kait’s last blog post..Paul Smith
Money, the answer to everything.
The scientist face off is a good idea, but you’d have to dumb it up a bit. Women in bikinis walking through holding giant cue cards with elements from the periodic chart.
Entertainment news sucks, but I’m guilty of flipping through those trashy Star magazines. I saw an image of Christina Aguilera, almost losing her flip-flop, and that is news worthy my friend.
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When someone losing their flip flop is news it is time to …uh…rethink things.
This reminded me of James Thurber’s “I Went to Sullivant” which describes the baseball team in his grammar school. Some of the players were rumored to be out of their teens already but could never get past fourth grade. The university teams were afraid to play them.
I’m playing recreational softball each week and vowed to play an intellectual game, because with my brawn, that will be the best I can hope for.
I hike and run it is my contribution to sports.
Inde, it is so nice to see you up and around. ;)
Duke all the way. They graduate and win championships.
Chris’s last blog post..Delusion is the First Sign of Desperation
I’m not fond of Duke but they have a slightly better record in that regard than some — for sure. I am not sure if they graduate them smart though.
You let the air out of my balloon again.
I’m a fan boy off college sports, but you’re right,it stinks that some of the players are not getting what they think, and you’re also right saying some of them don’t care. When you get to some of the large schools, where their graduation rates are so pathetic clearly showing the players aren’t students it does seem stupid to pretend. It makes you appreciate those schools where they are really students and where some of the money is spread around to other departments.
casey’s last blog post..Weekend Update
They don’t spread athletic money around it is seperate in D1 that is the kicker and the farce.
Sorry I forgot what I was going to comment… my TV wife (Sarah Shahi) just came on and distracted me. I guess that’s what happens when you are desperately looking for a distraction… not to mention the few glasses of wine i had this evening.
Leigh’s last blog post..Getting Dropped on Facebook
I hear you on that leigh.
Given the stats I won’t feel at all guilty watching Villanova square off against Duke this evening.
I think there is much room for improvement if they want to try to convince us most of these athletes are students, that or they shouldn’t try to convince us.
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