National Signing Day: Shaq Thompson Doesn't Choose Oregon, Cites Graduation Rate

With the blink of an eye and the refresh of a Twitter timeline, it has become official: Shaq Thompson has elected to play for the University of Washington Huskies. Perhaps the most interesting fact of the matter, however, was that he considered graduation rate to be among his biggest perks for the school.

Thompson, who was the top-rated safety and easily among the best players out of the West Coast recruiting class, decided late Monday night he would play for Washington. Thompson was Oregon’s top recruit left on its radar and caused a lot of interest among Oregon fans due to their new vacancy at the safety position with Eddie Pleasant heading to the NFL. While the Oregon Ducks will not find their safety in Thompson, they will certainly be seeing him numerous times in the next few years in the intense Pacific Northwest rivalry.

Around 10 p.m. PST on Monday night, Thompson tweeted that he had committed to the University of Washington to join the Husky Nation.

Within in a matter of minutes, it was done. No follow-up, no apologies, no mercy, just his decision.

“Phones going off,” he tweeted.

Earlier in the afternoon, he took to Twitter to complain about the nature of the media. “Why does the media always put stuff you don’t say and say you committed some where you didn’t,” he asked.

Thompson had visited Seattle this weekend for a last-minute trip and was presumably impressed with what he had seen.

What I find to be the most interesting facet to the Washington decision, however, was that Thompson elected to play for the Huskies due a noticeably academic decision.

According to Joe Davidson, Thompson chose Washington because it has the “second highest graduation rate in the Pac-12.”

If you look at the graduation rates for football players in the Pac-12, Washington is absolutely toward the top of the list as the Huskies graduate an impressive 76 percent of all football players. That number is second to only Stanford, which graduates a wildly notable 87 percent of its team.

The only school that had a graduation rate worse than California (54 percent), where Thompson initially committed to, was Arizona (with only 48 percent).

If Thompson spurned Oregon for graduation rates, I find myself confused as to where the difference between Washington and Oregon was so drastic. Oregon, which has a significantly better football program than Washington’s, also offers a strong academic program for athletes looking to receive a degree.

At a 63 percent graduation rate, Oregon ranks fourth overall in the Pac-12 and only Arizona State separates the team from Washington.

When Thompson picked LaMichael James’ brain about the school, one of the first things that James said was to highlight how impressive the academics were.

“I was academic all conference and never had under a 2.9 gpa the jaqua is a really nice place for athletes trust me” James said on Twitter.

Yet, perhaps there could be some weight to what Thompson was implicitly complaining about.

After the BCS National Championship appearance last season, ESPN Writer Roy S. Johnson pointed out the unreasonable discrepancy in the Oregon football program to graduate players by race.

According to the piece, only 41 percent of black football players at Oregon have come away with degrees. Meanwhile, 76 percent of white players at the University of Oregon have graduated.

This issue is not one unique to only the University of Oregon, as the gap between black and white graduation rates for the football teams that participated in bowl season, according to a study at the University of Central Florida, is growing at a deeply upsetting rate.

According to the study, the graduation rate for black players in a bowl game was 60 percent in 2010, while white players were at 80 percent. The 20 percent difference was 1 percent higher than it was in 2009. Twenty-four percent of the schools that made bowls graduated less than half of their black players.

The primary author of this study, Richard Lapchick, also noted that the graduation rate for black athletes (60 percent) is significantly higher than their non-athletic counterparts (38 percent), and the difference between white students and black students is a highly alarming 24 percent difference.

As Thompson addressed tonight, some things are bigger than football when you look at the grand scheme of what the games actually mean. In college, the NCAA represents student-athletes. That’s exactly what these students are: students who are receiving academic scholarships to study at a university because they offer impressive athletic ability.

While the graduation could be skewed because there are more black players than white players on teams like the University of Oregon (and thus get more playing time and NFL attention), there is an inherent issue here.

For football, that athletic ability happens to come in a “revenue sport” that generates money and tons of media attention (like here at Bleacher Report, where amateur student athletics for college football generated more than 10 million views last month).

As Arik Armstead said, there will be no hard feelings. “I wanted Shaq Thompson to come to the O just as much as y’all,” he tweeted, “but he going to be successful where ever he go.”

For Oregon fans, it just gives another reason to look forward to the heated rivalry game when Washington travels down to Autzen Stadium next season. When De’Anthony Thomas first streaks down the field to try to outrun Thompson for the first score, look for me in the stands jumping up and down as high as I humanly can reach.

I have no vendetta against Thompson, and wish him the best of luck working toward his degree at the University of Washington. Hopefully he sets an example of elite college athletes that actually get what they came there to do: Receive a college degree.

If Thompson, who according to Rivals had a 3.2 GPA in high school, is able to act as something bigger than himself, I will have absolutely no problem rooting for his success. Even if he is a Husky.

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