Classes Basketball Players Take

[4decadedukie]

Not surprisingly, there is a lot of competition...

Gminski and Bilas seem to have accomplished a lot on and off the court, although the G-man had the better basketball career. Trajan, once his career in Europe ends, will likely have some other accomplishments of note. Wasn't he a math major?

Others with serious professional careers are Spanarkel, Jay Buckley (PhD physics plus 2nd team All-ACC), Jack Marin (NBA All-Star and Duke Law). Heck, good old Kenny Dennard is apparently doing really well with his own financial public relations firm. And these days, he is certainly "well-rounded."

The late Denny Ferguson (team captain in 1965) was a professor at Cornell.

sagegrouse
'BTW I must add that when I enter "Class of Mullins" after my name, I am telling the literal truth. Others who claim Class of G. Hill, Class of Cherokee, etc. are indulging in unsupported hype. Jeff Mullins was, in fact, the President of the Class of 1964'

In addition to all the excellent nominations of Duke Basketball players with excellent academics and major off-court accomplishments already provided, I suggest Gary Melchionni. After Trinity College, he played in the NBA, returned to Duke Law, currently practices in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with Stevens and Lee, and has been a very influential Duke volunteer leader (for example, the President of the Duke Alumni Association). Two of his children are also Duke alumni.

[Mudge]

The comments below the Feistein blog are definitely worth reading. They include somewhat literate "foaming at the mouth," such as the ones by Anonymous, and intelligent defense of K and Duke. Especially read the comment that points out that there are no sociology majors on the Duke team, which would seem to be a slight flaw in Anonymous's reasoning.

The other points made by Anonymous also suggest why he adopted the posting name he did. Sociology is not a major limited to athletes. And BTW isn't Cultural Anthropology a really tough set of courses? Moreover, one's major occupies only about 25% of the courses an undergraduate takes, unless things have changed since the full decade I spent on college campuses at Duke and at Rice. Moreover, athletes are mainstreamed at Duke, taking courses along with other students.

And why, for heaven sakes, is Duke being singled out for easy majors, when it does not offer Phys Ed, unlike Wake, or Recreation, unlike UNC?

And don't get me started on the Ivy League. No way do Ivy League athletes compete for admission with regular students. And BTW, why is American Studies one of the most popular majors at Yale? Hint: it isn't because of the academic challenge offered.

sagegrouse
'I am happy to see John F. recant about Krzyzewski. It was due, and I am tired of reading anti JF comments on this Board. JF has been a hugely successful sports journalist (in terms of money earned) BECAUSE he is controversial'

... and I am tired of even ever hearing from John F., because he is a whiny, trite complainer without an original thought in his brain-- a stock NYC character from central casting, based on his NPR commentaries (I refuse to read any of his books, because I am so underwhelmed by his NPR stuff-- and I actually went to school with the bum)... all the guy has ever come up with is "Tiger Woods (Serena Williams, Roger Federer, etc.) is the favorite in this tournament" -- thanks John F, you overpaid, under-inspired hack. His admission of his wrongness about Coach K (no surprise there-- when has John F ever been correct about anything he had to say outside the obvious mainstream opinion that he usually serves up 99% of the time) is the only reason I enriched the guy's pockets by going to his own self-serving website to read his mea culpa... about time he admitted what a non-visionary he is.

[keystonedukie]

The story about Duke athletes being sheltered from the rigors of an everyday Duke education in the Sociology major comes from an ESPN article, either in the ESPN Magazine or their online site, from 5 or 6 years ago. Somewhere around 2004, maybe? If I remember correctly, the gist of it was that the major was stacked with athletes; i.e., that something like 80 or 90 percent of all Soc majors at that time were athletes, and conversely that only 2 or 3 percent of all DU students at that time were majoring in Sociology. IIRC, the way they laid it out was that the largest percentage of athletes were football players but that track, soccer, lacrosse--just about every sport--was represented including a few basketball players. Men and women. The actual representation of men's basketball players among the 300 (?) or so Soc majors was always necessarily small, given the dozen or so players on the roster at any one time.

The story did not attract broad national attention. No mention of the story was made by the network college basketball sportscasters on ESPN or elsewhere. It did, however, surface a few years later in a USA Today feature on schools diverting athletes into easy programs.

We all know that everyone does it. From Harvard (a resurgent hoops program, now, under Blue Devil Tommy Amaker) to Howard. From Stanford to Samford. It's just part of college athletics, and has been for more than 100 years.

Some recruits are great students. Some are not. There seems to be plenty of evidence that no top-tier NCAA football or basketball program has collective SAT/ACT scores for incoming freshmen reaching even the median of non-athletes. But, really, who cares? Certainly not the NCAA.

Though I do not remember any kind of response from Duke officials regarding the Sociology story, it is quite possible that there was a very quiet internal response and that if there was indeed a "problem" that it was addressed. And most likely Coach K and Coach Cutcliffe are now under strict orders to recruit only student-athletes who can hold their own in any Duke classroom.

Or, at least, that's what we'll tell ourselves!

[jimsumner]

"And most likely Coach K and Coach Cutcliffe are now under strict orders to recruit only student-athletes who can hold their own in any Duke classroom."

As opposed to when?

Have you noticed all those awards Duke football has won over the last several decades for leading the NCAA in graduation percentages? Do you think Duke was doing that with students who couldn't hold their own in any Duke classroom?

And the overall graduation rate for athletes. Track, soccer, lacrosse.

Pretty impressive.

At least that's what I tell myself.

[keystonedukie]

"And most likely Coach K and Coach Cutcliffe are now under strict orders to recruit only student-athletes who can hold their own in any Duke classroom."

As opposed to when?

Have you noticed all those awards Duke football has won over the last several decades for leading the NCAA in graduation percentages? Do you think Duke was doing that with students who couldn't hold their own in any Duke classroom?

And the overall graduation rate for athletes. Track, soccer, lacrosse.

Pretty impressive.

At least that's what I tell myself.

Jim, that's not what I said (I said "IF there was a problem"), and I certainly apologize if (there's that word, again) it was interpreted to mean that there ever was a problem. A friend had pointed this thread out to me and knew that we had discussed this article years ago, so I jumped in to clarify the tale to the best of my foggy recollection.

At the same time, I teach for a living, at a major university, and have never believed that focusing on graduation rates--whether as a measure of a university's educational value or an athletic program's dedication to academics--was legitimate. Faculty have been under subtle-but-real (never direct, and never spoken) pressure to inflate grades for ALL students ever since higher education came to be viewed as a personal benefit rather than a social benefit--a product to be purchased rather than a growth experience--and students came to be viewed as "customers." Easy grades--the automatic B--makes everybody happy, especially when each "customer" represents $50,000 a year in revenue. Easy grades lead to high graduation rates.

It was not that way at Duke when I was there, but that was 40+ years ago and tuition was around $5,000 a year. We live in a different age.

And at the risk of raining on anyone's parade, whether it is at Duke or any other institution, high graduation rates simply do not reflect academic rigor, merely whether a school has figured out how to play the game.

Keystonedukie '70