Cold Hard Fact: Student-Athletes Are Not Students

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is demanding that college basketball programs shoot for a higher percentage in the classroom or else no NCAA Tournament.

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida released a report that stated several basketball powers graduate less than 40 percent of its student-athletes. 

Here are the numbers:

Arkansas-Pine Bluff (29%), Baylor (36%), California (20%), Clemson (37%), Georgia Tech (38%), Kentucky (31%), Louisville (38%), Maryland (8%), Missouri (36%), New Mexico State (36%), Tennessee (30%) and Washington (29%).

Duncan, a former student-athlete himself, said schools that are unable to graduate athletes consistently should be restricted from postseason play.

"That's a low bar," Duncan said. "If you can't graduate two out of five of your student-athletes, how serious are you about the academic part of your mission?"

"Why do we tolerate the bad apples … when the vast majority are doing things well?" he said. "Everybody sees it. It's out in the open. … And somehow things don't change."

That said, the problem starts well before these young men reach the collegiate level. One would think that a student-athlete who was barely recruited and is getting $500 a semester to play 20 minutes a game at Long Beach State would understand that dreams of a pro career are nothing more than just dreams.

However, we can't realistically stop kids with somewhat of a handle and a mid-range jumper to not believe they're going pro when they turn 19.

While society should never attempt to hinder those youthful lofty aspirations, this overblown sense of reality should be quelled with the idea that other goals are attainable.

These young stud athletes don't see themselves doing anything else. It's why they blow off class.

It's why they don't think about Plan B. It's why they only care about getting the minimum to be eligible and not achieving. It matters little that they can achieve in the classroom as well as on the floor.

If major college athletics no longer cultivate this pro sports-or-bust mentality, then maybe tight ends, running backs, point guards and offensive line might take their educational pursuits more seriously rather than just with a grain of salt.

Or maybe if America's schools system were not axing teachers, cutting programs, closing schools or facing million dollar budget deficits, more athletes would be prepared for higher education.

Let's be real. 

We don't live in a perfect world, and too much money and prestige is at stake for those ideas to manifest themselves in our give it to me now society.

We all have to acknowledge that student-athletes are not student-athletes. They are non-paid entertainers who happen to be enrolled in a university.

Just think about it. Thousands of employees are calling in sick to watch the first-round of the NCAA Tournament. 

Networks are signing multimillion-dollar deals to broadcast college sports. FBS programs are getting $17 million for just appearing in a bowl game. Coaches are getting paid millions a year to tutor snot-nosed 18-year-old part-time biology students.

Small school basketball programs send their units on month-long road trips to be eaten up by BCS powers with the sole purpose of increasing their athletic budgets.

I have heard the idea thrown around in some circles about pro sports leagues investing in education/athletic academies for talented young athletes when they turn 13 or 14.

Until major college sports are no longer treated as a billion dollar industy, we should not expect the student-athletes to conform and get a degree just to make ourselves feel better.

USA Today contributed to this report.