Who is to Blame in Rose SAT Scandal?
Posted by Seth Walder | Posted in College Basketball | Posted: June 2, 2009 at 2:26 pm
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I spent most of the time I watched the Celtics-Bulls series marveling at how dominating Derrick Rose was, in just his first playoff series of his professional career. Now it’s come out that he had some sort of fraudalent SAT test to get into Memphis. No one knows who to blame. Rose? Memphis? Anyone? But what happened got me thinking. It got me thinking about how Rose really got his professional career started off with Memphis. I mean sure, we all know that many college athletes, particularly ones as good and high profile as Rose, really are professional athletes when they are playing their collegiate sports.
So, back to Rose and his SATs. Who’s fault is it? Memphis’. And Kansas’. And Florida’s. Tennessee’s. UConn. Kentucky. UNC. All of them. And of all of us too.
When did we decide that tertiary education was more about athletics than academics. And also, when did we decide that college and professional athletes were demi-gods that happen to have to walk around a college campus for at least a year before they can start getting paid like demi-gods.
A good article I read at By the Horns discussed all of the extra privileges that student-athletes get while at their selected University. Sure, there’s lots of money in collegiate sports, but do these schools have to self-respect with regards to the diplomas they hand out?
And as far as the fans go, we’re just as bad. Every time we hear of a college student benched because he couldn’t maintain his C average, I have to listen to constant complaints of “just let the kid play” and I cringe. Those “kids” go to whatever school they do to be both a student and an athlete. And they have to keep up both ends of the bargain if they want to be there. It’s pretty simple: If you want to play, you do your homework. And that’s that.
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I heard that the men’s hockey team doesn’t even have to take the SATs, just show up at age 24 for freshmen orientation
i think it’s important to note that this doesn’t start in college – it starts in high school. these kids are treated like royalty throughout their academic careers, which doesn’t exactly help them when they get to college or later in life.
these guys don’t go to school ‘to be both a student and an athlete’, they go to school to play a sport and make it big.
Maybe it was better when you didn’t have to go to college to get drafted by the NBA. If a person wants to become a professional basketball player, and can right out of high school, go ahead. If they’re not good enough, they will quickly find out by not being drafted.
If someone goes to school to become a doctor, they shouldn’t have to study english too. Why should college athletes have to pretend to be interested in academics when in many cases they have no ambitions other than to become professional athletes? NCAA loves the romanticism of portraying these kids as both students and athletes, but really academics has no impact on their future. In most DII and DIII schools you would find that athletes work hard academically, but that is because they do not have the skill to go pro. The college athletes who do, however, shouldn’t have to pretend to care about how they do in their school work.