cspan37421
04-01-2009, 12:24 PM
Durham, NC (Blumeberg) – Duke University’s Cameron Crazies can breathe a collective sigh of relief as an NCAA infractions committee declined to penalize the men’s basketball team for alleged violations involving excessive benefits to one of its star players during its 2000-2001 season, a season which culminated in the Blue Devils winning the national championship. Duke faced the potential sanction of having the championship vacated.
The original complaint was filed anonymously, and concerned former Duke player, and current Houston Rocket, Shane Battier. Battier, who was noted almost as much for his intellectual acumen as his play on the court, was a religion major at Duke. The complaint alleged that he received an impermissible benefit in the form of a class he took through a program offering Duke religion majors the opportunity to take certain jointly-administered classes at its nearby rival, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The complaint alleged that under NCAA regulations, only courses offered and held at the school offering the scholarship are permitted benefits to scholarship athletes. However, after careful consideration, the committee noted that courses offered at UNC were “virtually worthless anyway” and thus could not be deemed to be a benefit of any significant value.
Reached in Houston, Battier commented about the class in question (a course in epistemology): “Only a vacuous course takes seriously the ontological argument, and the concomitant favoritism of the Deity, due to Rayleigh scattering of light waves.”
It is believed, but unconfirmed, that Battier was referring to the old canard, “If God’s not a Tar Heel, why is the sky Carolina blue?”
The original complaint was filed anonymously, and concerned former Duke player, and current Houston Rocket, Shane Battier. Battier, who was noted almost as much for his intellectual acumen as his play on the court, was a religion major at Duke. The complaint alleged that he received an impermissible benefit in the form of a class he took through a program offering Duke religion majors the opportunity to take certain jointly-administered classes at its nearby rival, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The complaint alleged that under NCAA regulations, only courses offered and held at the school offering the scholarship are permitted benefits to scholarship athletes. However, after careful consideration, the committee noted that courses offered at UNC were “virtually worthless anyway” and thus could not be deemed to be a benefit of any significant value.
Reached in Houston, Battier commented about the class in question (a course in epistemology): “Only a vacuous course takes seriously the ontological argument, and the concomitant favoritism of the Deity, due to Rayleigh scattering of light waves.”
It is believed, but unconfirmed, that Battier was referring to the old canard, “If God’s not a Tar Heel, why is the sky Carolina blue?”