They can still claim the DMV championship, if we overlook Houston, and the way this wacky tournament has started, I now know nothing.

has been stinking it up in the NIT also. i think 2-3 so far while vt, unc, ncst are all still in it. get the acc the credit everyone overlooked all season.

all of this so-called ‘journalism’ being done on the issue of graduation rates is disgusting. the fact that it just so happens to become an issue again right before the tournament starts is bad enough, but all of the articles i’ve read about it are just awful. none of them take the time to explain how terrible graduation rate is as a statistic; it counts players who graduate in more than four years as failures, it counts players who transfer as failures, it counts players who leave early as failures, it doesnt count players who transfer in and graduate as successes. also, none of the articles explain that the numbers being used are almost a decade old.

all of these people need to get off their high horses about education. stop pretending that if you were put in the shoes of a carmelo anthony or greg oden, that you wouldnt choose to leave school and go to the nba. when someone like mark zuckerburg drops out of school and creates facebook, he gets praised for his entrepreneurial spirit, but when chris wilcox leaves school early to earn millions of dollars in the nba, he gets demonized.

for some clarity on the 8% number, i did a little research on maryland’s national title team. i found that of the 12 players on the team, 9 went on to play basketball professionally (baxter, dixon, blake, wilcox, mouton, nicholas, collins, holden and randle). most of those guys were probably counted as failures on our graduation rate, but thats not fair at all. like i said before, normally when someone can find success in their chosen field without a college degree its a success story, or merely an example of someone who chooses a different path. when its an athlete, why is it such a bad thing?

besides, punishing the school or the coach for low graduation rates is asinine. these players are grown men, they can make their own decisions. yes, a coach should encourage his players to dedicate themselves to their studies, but if a player chooses not to its their problem. the university isnt going out of its way to make sure i graduate, why should athletes be held to a higher standard?

finally, the thing that bugs me the most is that all of these articles seem to be accompanied by a big picture of greivis. thats just not fair to him. he returned to school for his senior year and is set to graduate in four years. he doesnt deserve this.

sorry about the rant, just wanted to get it off my chest