Late last week I got a call from a sports reporter at USA Today who was writing about Binghamton University’s deeply embarrassing men’s basketball team. The amazingly-still-employed coach, Kevin Broadus, a man who thought this would be a really good week to commit new recruiting violations, was formerly an assistant to Georgetown University coach John Thompson III, son of legendary Georgetown coach John Thompson. The article quotes the senior Thompson supporting Broadus’ decision to recruit a host of players who have since been kicked off the team amid accusations of crack dealing and academic misconduct:
Thompson says Broadus was only doing what Thompson did in 27 seasons at Georgetown, which included a national title in 1984: extending opportunities to African-Americans who haven’t seen many. “I respect the fact that he’s willing to go out on a limb and try to give kids an opportunity,” Thompson says. “The risk is always ‘if it goes wrong.’ He probably thinks he made some mistakes, and he’s got to deal with that. But I cannot under any circumstances blame him. I’m proud of the fact he tried.”
Look, I’m all in favor of going out on a limb and extending opportunity. Binghamton enrolls about 2,500 new undergraduates every year, so there’s certainly room in the freshman class for minority students who, due to various circumstances, wouldn’t otherwise have been able to attend.
But if a university is going to admit students who don’t arrive with same level of social capital and academic preparation as their peers, it has commensurate obligations to help them succeed. In part, that means support in terms of counseling, tutoring, and orientation. But it also means not putting them in a situation that will make the challenges of college more challenging still. Like, for example, forcing them to spend huge amounts of time on non-academic activities, traveling away from campus for days on end, and working on nights and weekends, i.e. playing on a Division I basketball team.
College isn’t easy for the students John Thompson says he wants to help. Graduation rates for those who enroll with numerous risk factors are often below 50 percent. Yet Thompson and Broadus make it that much harder by requiring those students to spend countless hours playing for the amusement of students, alumni, and fans. What kind of “opportunity” is that? For every unusually tall disadvantaged student brought in to play power forward, there are dozens from similar circumstances who are at least — or more — deserving. Why not help them instead?
One Response to Basketball and ‘Opportunity’
goxewu - October 16, 2009 at 9:03 am
There are probably few enterprises as nominally all-for-one/one-for-all but substantially cutthroat and greedy as college “revenue sports”, i.e., Division I football and men’s basketball. Nominally, coaches who give players with dubious reputations as students or citizens “second chances” are acting out of noble motives concerning the rehabilitative aspects of team sports. Actually–at schools where men’s basketball is a big deal and a moneymaker–those coaches are simply trying to overcome recruiting disadvantages by welcoming really good basketball players nobody else will take in order to win games. And winning games is, of course, the ne plus ultra of what the coaches and their schools are about. Everything else, such as the education of players, is simply means (e.g., keeping them minimally eligible to play by having them meet minimal matriculation/graduation requirements in minimally demanding majors) to the end of winning games.*For a dissenting view on the benevolence of The Thompsons at Georgetown, try this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032401177.html* With the National Basketball Association’s new-ish rule that a high-school player must wait out at least a year before seeking employment in the NBA (never mind that its three best players–LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard–came into the league directly from high school), we now have the openly “one and done” player. That’s a player–e.g., O.J. Mayo at USC or Derrick Rose at Memphis–who’s acknowledged publicly, by the coach, too, to be in school only as a nominal student, to fulfilling the NBA’s one-year wait requirement while helping the coach to win games and keep his job. Mssrs Mayo and Rose had, however, legitimate shots at “making it” in the NBA. To those deludedly hopeful players a little farther down the basketball=player food chain, the coaches offer “second chances.”