[Costas] said that the bottom line for [university] higher-ups is that the consumers of football and basketball games generally prioritize athletic performance over academic success.
“If they found out that half the team was composed of illiterates, but the team went to the Rose Bowl or to the Final Four — they had that choice — or they had the choice of a competitive, entertaining team, but everyone was a legitimate student, most of the alums and most of the people in the stands would choose ‘A,'” Costas said.
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… Boeheim is still number one among the Syracuse faithful … [and] any mere university administrator [had better not] even think about removing Boeheim as head coach.
As with most major college coaches, Boeheim is virtually untouchable and clearly a more important figure on campus than the university president. Indeed, there are many presidential careers that have crashed and burned seeking to control powerful coaches and booster organizations.
… The scandals at Syracuse and North Carolina, the shadows over Duke, the many scandals of the past and future will not vanish. The only thing that ultimately will vanish is the integrity of American higher education.
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[The Syracuse scandal is about the ways in which] perfectly nice universities with wonderful faculty and illustrious alumni turn themselves into trash bins.
…Boeheim says he’s “not going anywhere.” The question is why that’s his decision, and not school President Kent Syverud’s. The simple answer is that no one has the authority to criticize Boeheim, much less fire him.
Presumably Syverud, who has been on the job for only a year, is not an unethical man, nor [University of Tennessee Chancellor Jimmy] Cheek an amoral one. Both have respected records. Syverud is a legal scholar, and Cheek an award-winner for teaching excellence in agriculture who has worked hard to lift Tennessee into rankings of the top 50 research universities. (Full disclosure: I have met Cheek and like him and have occasionally donated money to Tennessee women’s athletics.) But no lone tweedy president or chancellor has the clout to stand up to coaches and athletic directors backed by power bases of rich fanatical donors.
March 10th, 2015 at 11:36AM
It’s called division of labor, and it’s no surprise that people who are extraordinarily good at one thing are often stunted at other things. But there has to be a better way of providing preparation for high school band directors than to bundle a music program with a money-losing minor league football enterprise, no matter how enjoyable the accompanying events are.