Student-Athlete Academic Challenges

[phaedrus]

As a former athlete in a non-basketball, non-football way I have to say we spent a LOT of weekends on buses and in hotel rooms, and a LOT of hours on the x-country trail and in the weight room and at practice. I cannot imagine how the guys who are even more invested, for example basketball, do it.

I question your assertion that basketball players are more "invested" than other sports. They certainly get more publicity but I would never concede that they are more focused or dedicated than my (non-revenue) team was and is to our sport.

[sagegrouse]

When I was reading Dick Weiss' piece on Dawkins leaving for Stanford, he put an interesting stat in there, one that I'm not so sure is correct:

"Duke’s admission standards are more lenient than Stanford. The GPA of the average Duke player is 3.13 while the average GPA of the Stanford player is 3.46. The average SAT of the Duke player is 968 while the average SAT of the Stanford player is 1,123."

Now personally, I find it hard to believe that Duke's average SAT score for basketball players is below 1000, in fact I think this stat is just flat-out wrong. Maybe I'm wearing my royal-blue-tinted glasses but something about that just seems inaccurate.

Thoughts?

I saw this a while ago and believed it applied to the men's basketball team. The comment at the time was that awarding a couple of schollies to walk-ons with 1500 SATs does an awful lot for the team average (out of 13 schollies). Giving a couple of walk-ons in football a free ride does very little to an average of 82 scholarship players.

As a recovering statistician and economist, I used to think the way to control for outliers is to use medians (the midpoint) not means (averages).

sagegrouse

[formerdukeathlete]

I saw this a while ago and believed it applied to the men's basketball team. The comment at the time was that awarding a couple of schollies to walk-ons with 1500 SATs does an awful lot for the team average (out of 13 schollies). Giving a couple of walk-ons in football a free ride does very little to an average of 82 scholarship players.

As a recovering statistician and economist, I used to think the way to control for outliers is to use medians (the midpoint) not means (averages).

sagegrouse

About SATs - today, though there are 3 sections, schools mostly pay attention to the Math and Verbal scores, perfect for both is still 1600.

The SAT was recurved about 1993, where a 1200 pre re-curve became about/ very close to a 1400. Today, many more kids get 1400s - low 1400s or very high 1300s are around 90th percentile. (Math and Verbal, exclusive of the writing section).

Stanford's football team SAT average today is about 1220, which is about 1100 pre 93 - this is about 80th percentile.

I think 97 ws the last time team SAT averages were released by the NCAA. At the time, Stanford's basketball team average was considerably higher than Duke's basketball average. However, Stanford's football team average was about (just) 25 points higher than Duke.

Basketball averages can take some big swings, with walk-ons or the signing of a kid like zoubek who has 1490 SATs. Football team averages are also helped by walkons.

In the days of Brodie and Nan, the Duke Football team had targets or ranges in the recruiting process. About the last year of Franks and or beginning with Roof, this changed whereby Duke players needed to just meet the Duke min., and if they did not, then Duke might stretch a certain distance. Team targets were dropped. Because of this, the difference between Duke and Stanford in Football averages is greater today than it was in 97. Conversely, the basketball teams are probably closer than they were back then (the figures quoted) with zoubek, paulus, scheyer and othe players who are known to have good SATs. - IN FACT, I would even go so far as to say that Duke's current basketball team average might be higher than Stanford's.

The Ivy League has a good system for football, where football players may be admitted within ranges of standard deviations of the student population. Only 1 or 2 players a year (out of 35 I believe permissible preferred admits) may be at or just above the Ivy League minimum. Then a few more are permitted within 2.5 and 2 standard deviations, more are permitted within 2 and 1.5 standard deviations, even more within 1.5 and 1, and no restrictions on numbers within 1 standard deviations. I think Stanford employs something like this, with team targets, though not quite as onerous as the Ivies.

[Lord Ash]

I question your assertion that basketball players are more "invested" than other sports. They certainly get more publicity but I would never concede that they are more focused or dedicated than my (non-revenue) team was and is to our sport.

Sorry, I should have been more specific; more invested, time-wise. The basketball team in particular plays and travels a LOT.

[phaedrus]

Sorry, I should have been more specific; more invested, time-wise. The basketball team in particular plays and travels a LOT.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I'm not convinced that basketball players put more time in than other athletes. Baseball, for instance, plays more games than basketball. Golf teams can be out of town for 4-5 days at a single tournament, and they play up to a dozen tournaments a year. Basketball travels a lot in March (most of the time!) but so do all teams during their championship season. And while all teams must abide by an NCAA rule restricting maximum practice time and limiting summer contact from coaches, the cross country and track teams can train largely on their own (more so than basketball, at least) and thus can far exceed those limits. I'm sure other teams have their own stories too.

Point is basketball players do commit a lot of time, maybe even more than other sports, but certainly not an amount of time that's incomparable with other athletes.

[hughgs]

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I'm not convinced that basketball players put more time in than other athletes. Baseball, for instance, plays more games than basketball. Golf teams can be out of town for 4-5 days at a single tournament, and they play up to a dozen tournaments a year. Basketball travels a lot in March (most of the time!) but so do all teams during their championship season. And while all teams must abide by an NCAA rule restricting maximum practice time and limiting summer contact from coaches, the cross country and track teams can train largely on their own (more so than basketball, at least) and thus can far exceed those limits. I'm sure other teams have their own stories too.

Point is basketball players do commit a lot of time, maybe even more than other sports, but certainly not an amount of time that's incomparable with other athletes.

Having tutored students from every sport at Duke I've found that scheduling non-basketball and non-football players has been easier. Whether that relates to the amount of time invested by the different sports I leave to the reader (I've always wanted to write that part).

[Duke09]

non-revenue athetes are given more freedom with their time. Football and basketball manage their athlete's time much closer, just one instance would be mandatory study hall which some non-revenue sports do not require. There are also no photo shoots for team posters in track and xc.

[hughgs]

non-revenue athetes are given more freedom with their time. Football and basketball manage their athlete's time much closer, just one instance would be mandatory study hall which some non-revenue sports do not require. There are also no photo shoots for team posters in track and xc.

Actually most non-revenue sports have mandatory study halls. Just off the top of my head: baseball, lacrosse, wrestling and crew.