Buckeyes in Beijing: Redd Comments on USA Basketball Selection
June 30, 2008
Former Buckeye looks forward to Olympic debut, quotes posted at USABasketball.com
More: continued here
Title Town
June 30, 2008
Columbus has been named one of twenty top championship cities in the country by ESPN’s SportsCenter. Buckeye football has won seven national titles, seven Heisman Trophies, and thirty-two Big Ten Championships.
More: continued here
NCAA unfairly targeting mid-major schools?
June 30, 2008
The USA Today has an exceptionally interesting follow-up story to the May release of the 2008 Academic Progress Rates (APR) results of the Division I schools. What makes this article particularly interesting is that it more fully vets the notion that the BCS conference receive favorable consideration from the NCAA.
Citing analysis from the Knight Commission, the USA Today article states that BCS conference teams only half as likely to be punished as non-BCS teams for failing to meet the assigned APR minimums.
“The NCAA’s heart is in the right place. They want to improve the academic performance of student-athletes,” says Nathan Tublitz, a University of Oregon biology professor and co-chairman of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, an alliance of faculty senates at Division I universities. “But rules are only as good as their enforcement. At the moment, the enforcement seems a bit lax.”
Across Division I, fewer than one in three teams with subpar APRs — 218 of 725 — were sanctioned in the past year. The percentage fell to 25% in the six power conferences and climbed to 49% in the other five Bowl Subdivision leagues (Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt and Western Athletic).
Surely the NCAA wouldn’t play favorites with the BCS schools… would they? Well… you draw your own conclusions.
Two mid-level universities, San Jose State and Alabama-Birmingham, were docked more scholarships — a combined 23.62 in six sports — than all 65 schools in college athletics’ six biggest-name, biggest-money conferences.
…
The Pac-10, for example, saw only three of 14 subpar teams sanctioned (21%) while the neighboring Western Athletic saw 23 of 34 (68%) and the Mountain West 10 of 15 (67%).
OK… now what word do you use to describe penalizing the WAC and MWC three times more frequently than the Pac10? How in the heck does that not make everyone’s WTF radars go crazy?
Sunday Morning QB directs us to an article in The State that says the NCAA is handing out golden tickets to the biggest schools because they are willing to throw money at the problem.
Though 218 teams were penalized, losing either a scholarship or practice time, 492 were eligible to be penalized but were not:
- 256 teams were exempted because they represented a “low-resource” institution and could not afford more academic support because of smaller budgets.
- 59, including South Carolina State’s men’s basketball program, were left out because of the school’s or sport’s individual characteristics. One example would be if the team’s APR is above that of the school’s general student body.
- 253 teams, including Clemson’s men’s basketball, were exempted because none of their players went 0-for-2 — leaving school early and not being eligible to return.
- 66 schools received a waiver after submitting what the NCAA called an academic improvement plan.
The NCAA didn’t release the list of programs that received the waiver, but USC, Ohio State, Indiana and Purdue were among those schools whose teams were mentioned in media reports. Those big-time programs promised the same basic improvements: an academic tutor on road trips, increased tutoring, etc.
((emphasis added))
Ah, yes… the “have’s” keep having while the “have-not’s” get… penalized.
So… what’s a mid-major to do? If a school can’t pony up the money to boost academic support and keep atheletes eligible, then it might be time to reconsider FBS (DI-A) membership altogether.
At Boise State, President Robert Kustra also is joining the NCAA board as the WAC’s representative and similarly views the league-to-league disparity as a challenge rather than an injustice.
“It may mean (committing) more institutional resources. It may mean a stronger academic support program,” he says. “I think each university has to evaluate itself and make the decision whether it can afford the appropriate level of financial support … or whether it needs to self-evaluate and say, ‘You know what? Division I doesn’t work for us.’ The fact is there is Division II and Division III for schools that don’t think they have the resources to make their athletes successful in Division I.”
And there you have it - no black helicopters or tin-foil hats required.
Perhaps the NCAA is attempting to systematically thin the herd of Division I-A schools, keeping the coffers full and the big dogs well fed. And if that’s the case, then the APR is really just (yet) another standard intended to weed out the lower revenue schools, a la the minimum attendance policy (which has yet to be enforced).
And while I wouldn’t even disagree with the NCAA for trying to push some teams into the lower divisions — there are too many DI-As, in my opinion — if you’re going to have minimum standards, you have to apply them fairly, right?
A level playing field for all is the entire basis of amatuer athletics, right, NCAA?
HT: SMQ
© www.fanblogs.com
Comment on NCAA unfairly targeting mid-major schools?…
More: continued here
Penn State: 15 Years In
June 30, 2008
It seems like only yesterday when Columbus served as the Eastern tip of the conference footprint and the Big Ten had a, you know, logo that matched its name. It’s hard to believe, but it’s been nearly 20 years since Big Ten presidents floated the concept of adding Penn State as the conference’s 11th [...]
More: continued here
Football: Six Buckeyes Named to Maxwell, Bednarik Award Watch Lists
June 30, 2008
Awards honor the top offensive and defensive players in the nation
More: continued here
Koufos’ High School Coach Blasts Matta
June 29, 2008
I think it’s safe to say Jack Greynolds Jr, Kosta Koufos’ head coach at GlenOak High School, is not a huge fan of Thad Matta.In today’s Canton Repository, Greynolds called Matta “clueless” based on his thoughts that Matta was to blame for the rumored poor relationship between the slow to develop big man and the [...]
More: continued here
Big Ten Network
June 28, 2008
Starting on August 15th, just in time for football season, the nation’s largest cable provider will offer Big Ten Network programming to its customers via television, internet, and video-on-demand.
More: continued here
OU hires OSU assistant as men’s hoops coach
June 27, 2008
ATHENS — Ohio University has hired Ohio State assistant John Groce as its men’s basketball coach.
More: continued here
Bloggers Know: Conference Picks
June 27, 2008
Tressel’s not eligible, you say?If you didn’t catch it in the feed earlier, LTP has compiled the conference bloggers’ picks for various awards and other things deemed important enough to be voted upon. While several of the categories were no-brainers I’m baffled that people still consider the prospect of a Utah victory at the [...]
More: continued here
Breaking down the schedules - Cupcake City 08 Edition
June 27, 2008
One look at the “major” conference schedules shows… an awful lot of “minors”.
Who schedules the most cupcakes? Here’s a breakdown of the non-conference schedules for each of the BCS conference teams, with games against FBS schools (ie cupcakes) highlighted.
ACC - 14 cupcakes
Big XII - 10 cupcakes
Big 10 - 9 cupcakes
SEC - 9 cupcakes
Big East - 7 cupcakes
Pac 10 - 2 cupcakes
(For reference, here’s how it looked in 2004, when the ACC & Big East were Kings of the Cupcakes.)
HT: OU-Ron
© www.fanblogs.com
Comment on Breaking down the schedules - Cupcake City 08 Edition…
More: continued here