Make Colleges Accountable for Graduating Athletes!

Let's call it what it is...a business with a capital "B." College sports is a business in every sense of the word.

In football they play for big payouts by the bowls. In basketball they sell jerseys with the names of their players on the back and colleges want winning teams because they believe it increases the number of students who apply.

Just look at the term "student-athlete." A student-athlete! An athlete who just happens to be a student. If we really wanted to do justice to the educational system, the term would "athlete-student" or "athletic student."

With this said, it still seems to me that a college or university—the supposed bastions of learning and knowledge, we once called them—should not be in the business of anything other than education.

How does this sound? Rutgers University Construction Company. Florida State Tanning Salons. What it sounds like is a little bit of socialism. 

Isn't that what college athletics has become? A state-run sports business!

We're not going to change it now. We've gone too far, and besides, that's what the people want.

What I'm concerned about is the fact that the so-called "student-athletes" don't even anticipate walking away with a degree in anything except the sport they play.

When one reads about the State University of Maryland, in a report released Monday, where their men's basketball program was said to graduate 10 percent of their players, it becomes apparent that the effort to get these players to go to class is, at best, weak.

When Gary Williams, Maryland's basketball coach, sloughs it aside by saying the graduation is low because many of his players leave early for the NBA or play in Europe, I think something is wrong.

By the way Gary, you're a great coach, and I know that Jay Bilas just came to your defense when you were getting attacked by the media for not recruiting well, but I don't believe anything you say about why your graduation rate is so bad!

Let's see Jay Bilas—a lawyer and a Duke grad—defend you on this.

What we, the colleges, and the NCAA (joke that it is) have to do is stop penalizing the schools who play by the rules and instead start rewarding them.

Our universities remind me of Major League baseball.  Major League Baseball never wasnted to address the problem of steroids until it became an epidemic.  Our universities, presidents on down,  don't want to address this.

It's become an epidemic!

The NCAA should initiate a system where "the fewer athletes a school graduates, the fewer scholarships they get." We need sanctions for schools who don't graduate their players!

When the Atlanta Journal-Constitution released a study about SAT score differentials between athletes and full-time students, it was pointed out the University of Florida had the largest differential of any BCS School. 

Maybe that's why they win so much. The average SAT of their football players was about 300 points lower than a regular student. 

It's time to get schools back in the business of educating everyone who walks through their doors—athletes included.

Can you really believe the basketball players at Maryland or at Cal State Northridge, where their graduation rate is even lower (eight percent), actually have any plans to study...let alone graduate!

We need to start rewarding the schools that don't steer their athletes to easy courses and the schools that have good graduation rates for their athletes. 

If a college starts to become afraid to recruit a player, who they know is going to the NBA in a year, maybe they'll offer the scholarship to someone who will use it.

I know, the basketball team will suffer and the alumni donations will be smaller...so what!

If we're going to run it like a business and are going to base these kinds of decisions on profit and loss only, then let's call it a business and stop kidding ourselves.

In the meantime, while we still claim that student-athletes are students, let's get back to the job of educating our student athletes and encourage them to graduate.