The feel-good story of the season in college football has to be Stanford star quarterback Andrew Luck, who announced Thursday that he'll pass up being the NFL's No. 1 draft pick and instead return to The Farm next fall. He wants to graduate before turning pro.
We only wish more football players and the universities they represent valued a college degree as highly. The graduation rates of Auburn and Oregon, the universities playing for the national championship Monday, are embarrassing.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the NCAA's primary measure of academic achievement dropped Auburn's football team from No. 4 to No. 85 among 120 major college programs. The sharp decline resulted not from a change in academic performance but from the Times' discovery of outrageous loopholes in Auburn's reporting, which the school has now corrected.
It's especially appalling that Auburn has the highest disparity in graduation rates between white players (100 percent) and black players (49 percent) of any bowl team. Overall, its football graduation rate in 2009 was just 59 percent.
Oregon, the pride of the Pacific-10 Conference, is worse. The Ducks' graduation rate of 49 percent is in the bottom 10 percent of all major schools. The only Pac-10 school lower is Arizona (41 percent). Stanford's football graduation rate is 89 percent, seventh in the nation.
It's a misconception that some schools' graduation rates are low becauseplayers go pro. The NCAA reports that only 2 percent of all college players wind up in the NFL.
Luck's decision is so important because he's a role model. Kids can see how much he values a degree, even with millions of dollars dangled by the NFL. And for cynics wondering how serious a scholar Luck is, the architecture major has a 3.5 grade-point average.
Of course he now can cash in, so to speak, on being the ultimate Big Man On Campus. But he's earned that for sure.
Post je objavljen 08.01.2011. u 01:49 sati.