Today use to be a day I looked forward to all year long…the start of the NCAA tournament. Brackets complete and turned in no later than 12 noon. I’d have my portable TV tuned into CBS, waiting for the ball to be tossed in the air.
When I worked at the US Shoe factory (several years ago) I was the one who passed out the bracket sheets for everyone to fill out. I’m not sure how many people were employed at the time, but almost everyone filled out a bracket sheet, or two or three. I'd also put all 64 teams in a can and for a buck you could draw a team from the can in hopes of winning the pot of $64 dollars. Usually, I'd have 2-3 cans going around! I always enjoyed being the score keeper and posting the names of the people who were leading early in the pool, only to be overtaken by someone who picked the upsets correctly. Some could have been skillful pickings, but for the most part it was just pure luck. I miss those times.
Today, as the tournament begins again, I haven’t passed out any brackets, I haven’t filled one out, and I don’t have my portable TV at my side. It’s just not the same for me anymore. The hype is long gone.
I did find an interesting article today as I was looking through the headlines. The title of the article is: Which NCAA teams have the best and worst graduation rates? The US Secretary of Educations says college basketball teams that don’t graduate at least 40 percent of its players should be banned from the NCAA tournament. There is an annual report of the graduation rates of the teams in the tournament and it seems the top seeds have the worst graduation rates. I guess that means the days of the student-athlete are long gone at some colleges. Not surprising, to me, the number one seed, Kentucky, graduated just 31 percent of its students, the sixth-lowest rate among the 65 teams, but far ahead of Maryland, which only saw eight percent of its basketball players graduate on time. Eight is just ONE player!
The annual report wasn’t all bad news as some top programs like BYU, Duke, Marquette, Notre Dame, Villanova and Wake Forest graduated over 90 percent of their players. The average seed for these teams is 8.8. For many of the college players the days of being a student first has stopped and academics have taken a back seat to athletics.
Earlier this week we had the opportunity to meet with this years high school baseball coaches. They went over what is expected of themselves, the team and the parents. It was not a surprise to hear them call the players student-athletes. All the coaches were concerned with the players’ grades and have set aside time to help the team with their studies, if needed. Of course, there aren’t any of the athletes looking to be playing for the New York Yankees with a 2.5 million contract in their near future.
Maybe some (most) of the men’s college basketball teams need to take a step back and look at the reason for their education and worry about the academic part of their life first!
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