Here's a novel concept: Instead of asking how we can graduate more athletes, we should be asking how we should best educate our athletes. We place way too much emphasis on graduation rates and far too little on the importance of educating athletes. The pursuit of an education is the important principle, not simply graduating a certain percentage of athletes. A diploma is not an education -- it is just the best evidence that one has pursued an education and has successfully completed degree requirements.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once said that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, apparently in college athletics, it takes only a head coach to graduate a player. Proposals have been floated to have graduation rates attached to coaches and follow them from place to place.
Those proposals, while well intentioned, are absurd.
Pretty detailed stuff here from Bilas, an expert on these matters. To explore further, though, you must be an ESPN Insider. (If you're a college hoops fan and buy Insider now, you'll be a year ahead of the Lunardi-projecting-a-68-team-field curve.)
Jay Bilas
College Basketball analyst- College basketball analyst for ESPN and ESPN Insider
- Played and coached at Duke
- Practicing attorney
ABOUT THIS BLOG
Jay Bilas
Jay Bilas provides expert color commentary from courtside on college basketball games and serves as a studio analyst and as the co-host of ESPN's popular studio shows "College GameDay" and "College Gamenight." He also writes for ESPN.com and contributes numerous reports for "SportsCenter." Since 2003, Bilas has provided in-depth player scouting and analysis for ESPN's coverage of the NBA draft.
