The University of Kansas football team won enough games to earn a spot in Friday’s Fort Worth Bowl. But if eligibility was linked to academic performance — as the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics has been calling for — the team would be back in Lawrence studying.
The Knight Commission wants the NCAA to ban teams with graduation rates of less than 50 percent from bowl games. KU’s federal graduation rate for scholarship football players was 46 percent, according to the commission’s report. KU also had the 10th lowest NCAA Progress Rate of the 56 Division 1-A football teams competing in bowl games this season.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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16 Comments
And where does the Knight commission plan on getting the extra teams for the games…considering (a) there are barely enough 6-5 teams for bowls now, and (b) there are other groups–including one in KC–that want to add games?If there are enough teams, by all means, take the ones with the higher graduation rates, all else being equal.
We have this fiction that pre-professional atheletes are students.
Too many people have too much at stake to change the system.
It’s too bad. Students should have a real opportunity to participate in sports, instead of letting a tiny elite get millions of dollars lavished on them.
Careful who you criticize here.One of these flunked out football heroes may very well be your boss soon. Good Ol’ boy stuff.You know it’s true.
Students do have an opportunity to play sports. They do not have millions lavished on them. Last I checked everyone playing college football was a student. The graduation rate does need to be improved, no doubt about it, the schools make revenue from these student athelics, and should hold some responsibility to get the graduation rates up.
Darrell,
Come on, be real. The idea that there is an opportunity for ’student-athletes’ in the major sports at top universities is a fiction. These guys are recruited from high schools for their skills. There are even high schools that recruit from grade school and Pop Warner from around the country. There’s one in Cincinnati that provides top prospects to all the major universities. College football is essentially the minor leagues of professional football. There might be an occasional “walk-on” but teams are composed of prospects for the NFL. It’s nice they have an opportunity to get an education, but antyone who thinks that universities really put their educations above ticket sales and NFL recruiting is wrong.
Man I wish Phillip would actually discuss things on HIS blog.Oh well.
Ask Yale, Harvard, et al how much revenue they have from their sports teams.
Before folks like Phillip start criticizing the colleges for having low graduation rankings, he better be prepared to pay for it. The football and basketball programs at KU bring in tens of millions of dollars for the school (and the state for that matter).be careful what you wish for egg-head.
Phillips was probably one of those geeks at KU that complained about how the atheletes got tutors and only took easy classes, etc.
I loved those guys in class, they were nice comedy.
The NBA and NFL need to pony up and develop true minor league systems as they have in hockey and baseball. The vast majority of these low iq black ballplayers are just going through the motions of being “students” and it’s time to end the charade!
There shouldn’t be college sports at all. It’s a business and nothing else. Players are not paid, they are students “suppose” to be there obtaining a degree.
Same goes for high school and so on. I can’t tell you how many times in high school that students who played in team sports were able to leave class early to go on a bus to the next game, didn’t have to do homework, and was slided on the requirements to graduate. This is no secret, the same goes for college.
Many of the students are not even qualified to enter college, but since it is the business of sports, we overlook that. All I can say is the recent Barton County Community college scandal as an example. It is no surprise that more than half don’t graduate.
That is why I don’t watch nor care for college sports.
Galahad,”It’s too bad. Students should have a real opportunity to participate in sports, instead of letting a tiny elite get millions of dollars lavished on them.”
Students do. It’s called title nine.
But you are incorrect with your assessment even without TN: The NCAA frowns big time on any of it’s student athletes taking any kind of money, other than what is earned from a legitimate job. Schools loose scholarships, bowl eligibility, and the kiss of death: that sport.
You are using the tired Liberal logic of damning the rich. There are only so many athletes who can perform at the high degree of skill necessitated by current collegiate sports. So colleges are vying for those individuals using scholarships as a tool. Of course a gifted athlete is going to take the best scholarship, which usually is offered by big time sports orientated schools. Sports is big business.
The ones who are going to lavished with millions are the ones who are good enough to make it to the professional level. Sure, there are instances where boosters, coaches, etc, give money to student athletes, but not on the scale you allude to.
The bottom line is, the colleges are not doing enough to see that these athletes graduate at an acceptable level. Tiger woods did not graduate. He turned pro early. Guess he’s one of those “Rich People” you love to slam. Oh, by the way, he started a program for children stressing education. So far he has capitalized it with millions of his own money. Damn those rich people.
There are some words I never thought I would hear a sports reporter say.”The Jayhawks are going bowling!”Way to go KU!
Fort Worth bowl? Damn, now I know there’s way too many ‘bowls’.
Why not the Fort Scott bowl?How about a Lawrence/Free State bowl?
The Fort Worth is a good reward for a KU football team that is possibly on its way up.
They do need to work on the graduation rate, however.
So we know about KU’s rate, what about other colleges? Who’s worst, who’s best?
JM–lighten up, dude. I used to teach half the football team when I was a graduate student at a big midwestern college you’ve heard of.
I’m fully aware that the students themselves don’t get actual pay. But the college spends a ton on them.
The idea that the rowing team or the wrestlers get the same kind of money thrown at them (for facilities, travel, housing, meals, etc.) as the football and basketball teams do is absurd.
How much money does Butler Community College spend on its football team, the one that wins its division almost every other year? They recently built an entire new gym for them and the average student in El Dorado (let alone Andover) doesn’t even have a rec center to work out in.
Get the point? The elites get beau-coup dollars and the average student gets bupkis . . . sports should be for everybody, not just the recruited and groomed athlete.
Also, JM, I don’t hate rich people and I don’t think I slam them.
I just don’t like government (and state colleges get over half their expenses from taxpayers) should help the rich at the expense of the poor.
And that’s what we’ve got now. Just look at the latest budget bill . . . oh, man, what an abortion.