Originally Posted by
johnb
Admittedly, it is very difficult to get an academic scholarship at Duke. I'm uncomfortable, however, when people simply write off the academic accomplishments of our players. For one, our basketball players are probably the most sought-after group on campus (in terms of recruitment to Duke and in terms of competition from other schools)--the development of such an elite skill set takes many hours and hence could cut back one's high school grades a bit.
Second, we've had quite a few players who would have easily been Duke admits if their main extracurricular had been chess or debate. Some were, actually, physics majors (George Burgen, who I think was Phi Beta Kappa) or math majors (Trajan Langdon) or eventual doctors (Taymon Domzalski, who was at Duke's medical school last I checked) and quite a few showed up at Duke having made straight A's in high school (including such marginal players as Grant Hill, Shane Battier, Domzalski, and Langdon, McDonald's All Americans, all). I won't even go into the players who overcame huge odds to thrive at Duke (e.g., David Henderson or Chris Carrawell, guys who may not have gone to Exeter but whose progress took more drive and intelligence than that showed by the average Duke student). If they were as good at chess or debate as they were at basketball, all of those guys would have been up for academic scholarships. Regardless, though, I don't quite get the point of casually disparaging the guys who you root for in games.