This is an archived page. Images and links on this page may not work. Please visit the main page for the latest updates.

 
 
 
Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Nothing new here.
But the reference
To “Hoop Dreams”
At the End is Nice.


From Newsday:


When will these [March Madness] players attend class? Will they be studying physics on the bench during timeouts? Will they be arguing about the Protestant Reformation while practicing layups? I don't think so. Doesn't it bother anyone - their parents, their professors, university officials - that they are missing nearly a month of school?

…I work out daily and avidly follow the New York professional teams. As a teacher, I encourage my students to play something - anything.

But I don't support college teams. The whole environment seems unseemly to me. It would be nice if players practiced for a couple of hours after classes and had a weekly Friday night game. But that world disappeared long ago, if it ever existed.

Today's "amateur" college game forbids players from collecting endorsements, but it allows coaches to serve as hosts on television shows, incorporate their clinics and moonlight for companies such as Nike, which pays a handful of big-name coaches between $120,000 and $200,000 yearly to distribute free shoes to their players. And what happens to the players?

Many of the players weren't "college material" when they were admitted. And not only were they admitted, but many were given scholarships (blocking out deserving students who actually wanted an education). Only a tiny percentage make it to the pros. And the others? I shudder to think.

In the wonderful documentary "Hoop Dreams," which followed the lives of two basketball players during their school years, there was a particular scene that drew great laughter from the movie audience. One of the high school players, a sad, inarticulate, lost young man, was asked what he wanted to major in at college. Head down, he mumbles, "Communications."