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TITLETOWN - A Decade Long Celebration Of The Greatest Achievement In College Athletics History => Kansas State Basketball is hard => Topic started by: felix rex on September 24, 2010, 08:23:31 AM
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Some great stuff here (http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=172&f=2481&t=6369111&p=1).
This latest article (http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2010/09/records_differed_on_bledsoes_p.html)will without a doubt have UK fans referencing Arthur's grade change in Dallas. However, as has been documented, Arthur was able to qualify despite what that grade was, Bledsoe would not have qualified without the alleged grade change.
Arthur would have gotten his high school diploma regardless of the math grade change, it only allegedly made him eligible for high school basketball, so he would have earned his degree, but not been eligible to play college basketball.
So yeah, I have no problem with a kid from a very tough background leaning on the only thing that he has ever gotten support for and giving him a little leeway on his academics particularly as long as the NBA won't allow them to come in right away.
My main problem is that there should be some sort of way a kid who is getting say a 2.0, which would be good enough to graduate from high school, but has no intention of ever being in college longer than a couple of years, if that, can get maybe a probationary status, like they can't play the first semester unless they get at least a 2.5 in college.
To say the education system got "compromised" when Arthur received a scholarship is to infer, among other things, that he took an opportunity away from a deserving candidate. Maybe KU would have instead signed a player with a more deserving academic background (if I remember correctly, it was likely the scholarship would have gone unused had Arthur gone elsewhere), but that hypothetical individual would have received an opportunity elsewhere.
But I think it's far from the worst thing in the world (and far from the educational system being "compromised") that a kid like Arthur, who by all accounts didn't receive much early influence to concentrate on academics, left Kansas in good academic standing (IIRC) with a base of credits that he could add to later on in his life.
Just because a student athletic fails out or enters with dubious credentials doesn't mean there aren't other widespread academic issues among the general populous of his college.
And finally, his issue was that it was determined that he shouldn't have been eligible to play in his high school basketball district based on their determined standards. I think additional investigation would have been needed to determine if he wouldn't have been eligible for the NCAA had the grades been what they were supposed to have been.
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WUT??!?