You and Mau made me smile this morning.
I don't get why these dolts continue to hang onto their agendas. I have long thought that BigEaredMcCrackhead was an alias of Clothy. In fact, there is strong evidenceit is.
I KNOW FOR A FACT that UConn players used to take the same core classes as everyone else at UConn. Period...end of story. We also know that Calhoun and Hathaway had some sort of falling out over the past few years at the same time the rules from the NCAA were also changing. Our fundraising efforts and academic oversight efforts also suffered at the same time. This is from a direct conversation I had with the liason to the board of directors. Do people need an actual document to provide proof to what is obvious to anyone who isn't a total moron? To keep our program and players eligible we needed to move from a real student-athlete focused program to an althletics only focused program like UNC. If were doing what UNC has been doing there is NO WAY we would have failed to meet the APR requirements. Hello????????
This is largely why I've been hammering away on this for a while. Now, I don't believe schools need to adopt UNC or ACC and SEC style "academik" systems. But you can still keep players eligible in other more subtle ways. This is what Bilas has been yammering about for some time, clustering, intersession courses, etc. APR and GSR are geared to reward you for simply keeping up appearances. Otherwise, you wouldn't have that ugly USF 88%/0% split between GSR and the Federal rate.
I have no doubt that UNC is not alone down south. Today S. Carolina's governor declared an Official Day in honor of Marcus Lattimore's injury. I'm sure Spurrier, in such an atmosphere, is not doing organizing anything like the phantom classes organized by his state's northern counterparts. This is why I laugh when people tout the superior academics of the ACC.
Up north, things used to be done differently. But this is only anecdotal info I have from working at 3 d1 universities. About 7 or 8 years ago, long before UConn got into trouble, I used to tell people on this board that U. Miami's program was a renegade, that their academics for athletes were all for show, and I saw this first hand as a Dean took me through their program. I can't get on U. Miami anymore. Because U. Miami's paradigm is now the NCAA's paradigm, and UConn has now adopted what Miami used to do for 2 decades or more. But even that is better than what goes on at places like Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, and now UNC.
This year I've been watching the Sun Belt schools rise to prominence. Schools at the bottom of the D1 pecking order have been playing with some outstanding athletes, and they've been keeping up with the SEC schools in many games. It's good that the BE and ACC don't actually schedule these schools, because they would be getting wiped out by them. It seems as though the old U. Colorado and Boise St. and Fresno St. techniques of lowering standards are working wonders for these schools, and they should continue into the future. Meanwhile, up north, I can only think of one school that has had a reputation of not caring at all about academics, and that's Ohio State. But right now, with the NCAA not caring very much, I'd say that the northern schools are at a severe disadvantage not only in terms of lack of talent, but in terms of academic standards. Especially in football.
It's really time that schools considered franchising their athletics programs and populating them with non-student athletes. Other schools can still keep the old model. But this in-between model is for the birds.
.........you and Big Crack are a joke.......just go away and lend your spewing to the UMass board or somewhere you'll be appreciated!!
