With the NCAA basketball tournament heading into the Sweet 16 round, it’s time for dissident commentators to pull out alternative scorecards of the abysmal records of our leading college sports factories in retaining and graduating their unpaid mercenaries. (Though you might start by trying to explain which school of economic theory champions the concept of unpaid mercenaries in the first place.)
This season the National College Players Association – a union precursor under the direction of former UCLA football player Ramogi Huma – has published a study with a different twist. NCPA (formerly called the Collegiate Athletes Coalition) scoured the public data of the 64 teams in “March Madness” to shed light on a phenomenon Huma calls “unexplained turnover rate.” Put this one right up there with field goal percentage and points in the paint.
Most fans mistakenly believe athletic “scholarships” – the very word is an Orwellian perversion – have four-year terms. Not so, Huma points out: “The NCAA only allows year-to-year scholarships. At the end of a scholarship year, a coach can take the scholarship away from a player for any reason, including permanent injury.” You can’t accuse them of reneging; the agreement is explicitly worded to permit the institution, at its sole discretion and convenience, to yank the scholarship out from under the recipient like a hook rug.
It’s outrageous enough that these bastions of higher learning do not assume the risk for permanent injury to their contract entertainers. But other factors triggering failure to renew may reflect even worse on the system. These include poor academic support (contributing to a player's becoming ineligible or dropping out) or low team morale (motivating him to quit or transfer).
And let’s not forget the coach who simply decides that the player he recruited, often at the end of a heart-to-heart in the kid’s living room with Mom and Pop and mentor, didn't wind up meeting expectations.
At the bottom of this column I reproduce the unexplained-turnover stats compiled by NCPA for each Sweet 16 entrant. To view the complete study, and for further information on NCPA’s inexplicably undercovered work to organize athletes in the college high-revenue sports, football and men's basketball, go to http://ncpanow.org.
Meanwhile, as we all know, President Obama capped off his recent California tour with an appearance on Jay Leno in which, among other things, they schmoozed college hoops and Obama's bracket picks. Our couch potato in chief thinks North Carolina will win it all.
Obama, who also and repeatedly has used his bully pulpit to advocate for a college football playoff system, has yet to utter one word about whether the values he professes to promote are served by letting only coaches and universities profit from delivering all-the-traffic-will-bear public spectacle, which has about as much to do with their educational mission as a Tenderloin massage parlor relates to muscle therapy. Fewer than one percent of college football and basketball players go on to NFL or NBA careers. While in “college,” they labor year-round under sweatshop conditions on “free ride” scholarships, which are neither free nor rides.
You’ve got to hand it to Obama, whose Leno yakfest proved yet again that he is plugged into kitsch like the finest circus master. I used to think Edward Gibbon offered the most predictive model for late-empire America. Now I turn for inspiration to Milan Kundera. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, a conservative who supported Obama, refers, more in sorrow than in anger, to the “unbearable lightness” of Obama’s flirtations in bailout politics.
Back at the hardcore sports ranch, Beyond Chron readers may recall that a few years ago I did a parody of Bruce Jenkins, the Chronicle columnist. In the piece, a Jenkins stand-in writes: “There's no excuse whatsoever for not staging a tournament among all 119 Division I-A college football teams.... [R]eplay and video-on-demand fees would bring in a pretty penny. Simply incredible how stupid the clods at the NCAA can be.”
In his column last Saturday, Jenkins actually produced the following with a straight face: “[H]ere's a vision for the future: 128 teams in the [basketball] tourrnament. Every single game available on an ESPN/CBS combination. More humiliation for the [Bowl Championship Series] football blowhards.”
SWEET 16 MATCHUPS
THURSDAY
Connecticut (out of 17 players in 2007/08, lost 0 players normally, either seniors or players who went to the NBA draft; 3 non-graduates are missing from this year's roster) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 17.6% Transfer Rate: 11.8%
v.
Purdue (14 players, lost 1 normally; 3 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 23.1% Transfer Rate: 7.7%
***
Missouri (14 players, lost 7 normally, 2 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 28.6% Transfer Rate: 14.3%
v.
Memphis (13 players, lost 4 normally; 2 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 22.2% Transfer Rate: 22.2%
***
Pittsburgh (14 players, lost 3 normally, 3 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 27.3% Transfer Rate: 9.1%
v.
Xavier (14 players, lost 3 normally, 2 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 18.2% Transfer Rate: 18.2%
***
Villanova (13 players, lost 0 normally, 3 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 23.1% Transfer Rate: 7.7%
v.
Duke (13 players, lost 1 normally, 1 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 8.3% Transfer Rate: 8.3%
FRIDAY
Louisville (14 players, lost 3 normally, 3 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 27.3% Transfer Rate: 0%
v.
Arizona (16 players, lost 5 normally, 3 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 27.3% Transfer Rate: 9.1%
***
Kansas (17 players, lost 8 normally, 1 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 11.1% Transfer Rate: 0%
v.
Michigan State (15 players, lost 2 normally, 0 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 0% Transfer Rate: 0%
***
North Carolina (17 players, lost 2 normally, 2 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 13.3% Transfer Rate: 6.7%
v.
Gonzaga (14 players, lost 2 normally, 2 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 16.7% Transfer Rate: 8.3%
***
Syracuse (16 players, lost 4 normally, 2 missing( Unexpected Turnover Rate: 16.7% Transfer Rate: 0%
v.
Oklahoma (13 players, lost 2 normally, 3 missing) Unexpected Turnover Rate: 27.3% Transfer Rate: 9.1%