Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 6, 1990 TAG: 9004060951
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If the UNLV program had a motto, it might be, "Basketball is our business; our only business." Obviously, education is not its business. Since Tarkanian came to the school in 1973, UNLV has won 33 NCAA Tournament games, but only 17 players have been graduated.
The NCAA says Tarkanian has broken its rules. The coach and school have sued to keep the NCAA from carrying out its punishment. The issue is still in the courts.
But aside from all that, the abysmal graduation rate of UNLV basketball players says enough. Perhaps Tarkanian and UNLV have bent rather than broken the rules. Still, the difference between a UNLV and a Duke, where education comes first, is stark.
Some have said in Tarkanian's defense that he gives "inner-city" players a chance when they have no place else to go. But this is a matter not of racial discrimination or economics, but of basic scholastic abilities and skills. A kid who has no interest in academics at the high-school level has no place in a major college. If he has spent all his time on the playground, and none of it in the classroom, he should go straight to professional or semiprofessional basketball.
And isn't it time for the NCAA to end its own hypocrisy? Let institutions that want to be basketball (and football) factories end the charade of the "student-athlete." Let them become part of a farm system supported by existing professional sports. Let them pay the players to play, and forget all this nonsense about attending classes and studying and learning and graduating.
But don't put them in the same league with programs that aim higher, and want true student-athletes to learn more than how to drop a ball through a hoop.
by CNB