each idea with a shadow

My wife and I were just talking about this on Tuesday night. This sums up exactly how we feel about the issue. Great article.

theatlantic:

Both the NBA and the NCAA Want to Keep Athletes in College for Too Long

I hate to take a cynical note on this, but I don’t think Mark Emmert, the president of the NCAA, or anyone else in the NCAA really cares about young men going to college—or at least attending college classes. I think what they care about is whether or not these young men play college basketball, and I think what they would like is to have the NBA’s cooperation in doing anything they can to keep boys playing college basketball for as long as they can.

The simple reality is that most basketball and football players who wind up in the pros had little or no interest in going to college in the first place. They want to be first in line for the professional drafts that will take them away from the world of amateur sham, very reasonably wanting their talents to produce revenue for themselves and their families instead of university athletic departments. Now, when the boys are in the best position to make that pay for them, colleges pretending to show some concern.

“It makes a travesty,” said Emmert, “of the whole notion of student as an athlete.” One might call that poetic justice since for nearly a century colleges have been making a travesty of the notion of athlete as student.

Read more. [Image: Reuters]