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From The Undefeated:
THE GENTRIFICATION OF COLLEGE HOOPS
An Undefeated analysis shows that first-generation college students are starting to disappear from NCAA sports
BY TOM FARREY
… That players like Iverson and Waters – the first members of their families to go to college – are increasingly rare in college sports, even in the big-money, high-stakes sports of basketball and football. Indeed, most athletic scholarships are going to middle-class kids with college-educated parents, not to kids from poor families who need a scholarship to get anywhere close to a university campus.
Simply put, NCAA sports have been gentrified.
THE DISAPPEARING ‘FIRST GEN’
… But here’s the stark, myth-busting truth: Fewer than 1 in 5 students playing Division 1 hoops, and 1 in 7 in all Division 1 sports, come from families in which neither parent went to college. And their numbers are declining.
Educators call such students “first gens,” …
In 2010, the NCAA began asking college athletes whether they are first gens as part of its little-known GOALS Study, which captures the background and experience of those playing sports at all three levels of competition. In 2015, it did another survey of 21,000 athletes. …
Surprisingly, the data revealed that most Division 1 sports experienced steep drops in first gen students. The falloff was dramatic even in the sports most associated with tales of uplift: In men’s basketball, the sport that used to have the highest percentage of first gens, the number plummeted by a third in just five years. Women’s basketball experienced a similar drop. Football fell by more than 10 percent. …
In men’s basketball, 28% of Div I player’s were first generation college students in 2010 versus only 19% in 2015.
Indeed, the data suggests that athletes awarded scholarships in big-time college sports are more likely to come from advantaged backgrounds than the wider student body. …
Indeed, the data suggests that athletes awarded scholarships in big-time college sports are more likely to come from advantaged backgrounds than the wider student body.
… There were about 400 fewer first gens in Division 1 men’s hoops in 2015 than in 2010, and about 300 fewer in women’s hoops. That’s the equivalent of 50 teams, enough to fill much of each NCAA tournament bracket. Across all Division 1 sports, the first gen population is down by nearly 2,000 people. …
Coppin State University represents a beacon of hope amid the rundown rowhomes of West Baltimore, where the riots erupted in response to the death of Freddie Gray. …
Coppin State is a public Historically Black College or University (HBCU).
But Grant acknowledges that no more than one-quarter of his players are first gens.
“That’s because we’re picking kids from families with collegiate backgrounds,” he said. “We are more careful now about who we take. Our jobs are on the line. It’s all about winning and losing – and APR. More about the APR.”
That would be the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate, a policy that some believe limits opportunities for educationally disadvantaged athletes. Since 2005, the NCAA has held institutions accountable for the academic progress of athletes by measuring the eligibility and retention of each athlete. Recruit one player who lacks ability or interest in classroom matters? That can hurt a program. But recruit a bunch, and draconian penalties await. Teams have been banned from the NCAA tournament for low scores, most notably the UConn men in 2013, two years after they won a national championship.
As a result, Grant said, he only recruits players with 2.5 GPAs or higher….
Just as wealth builds wealth, advantage builds advantage. Repeating sixth grade at the Greens Farms Academy while playing up with the high school team each of those years means that [Tremont] Waters is now in his eighth year of high school ball. You read that right: eight years of high school hoops. He’s finishing out at Notre Dame High School, back home in New Haven, where he can spend more time with his parents before heading to college.
So, this super-agile black kid from Baltimore started playing on his prep school’s high school basketball team as a sixth grader, but then he repeated sixth grade. So he played 7 seasons for the high school team: sixth, sixth, seventh, eighth, nineth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and new he’s going to another prep school for another twelveth grade. That’s how you get to eight years of playing high school basketball.
If he had landed at Georgetown like he originally planned, Waters would have joined a Hoya roster wholly unlike those that created a national profile for the program in the 1980s and ’90s. Long gone are the Hoya Destroyas, the hard-edged band of working-class kids that provided John Thompson Jr. with his first and only NCAA championship. Exemplifying the ethos of that team was Michael Graham, an elbow-throwing forward who grew up poor and hungry in Southeast Washington, D.C. He told me the only reason he went to school was to eat, and that he robbed people for dinner money.
I remember people at the office a third of a century ago talking about Graham’s dunk in a the 1984 NCAA final game.
He was scary. I remember people talking about him as the Future of College Basketball.
But then he got suspended by Georgetown, never made it to the NBA, and played a lot of minor league basketball in America and Europe.
“I never owned a pair of real shoes,” he said. “I wore cloth bedroom slippers, even in the snow.” He took up basketball in eighth grade mainly because, at 6-foot-7, he was the tallest kid in the school.
And then at age 50, doing shift work in Norman, OK, Graham happened to buy a lottery ticket that turned out to be worth a million dollars.
Iverson came along a decade later. He skipped nearly a third of his school days one year, got locked up for an overblown incident in a bowling alley, earned only a high school equivalency degree – and still got into Georgetown, enrolling after classes started, just in time for the ’94 season.
In his 2016 induction speech at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, he said, tearfully, “I want to thank Coach Thompson … for saving my life, for giving me the opportunity.”
Today’s Georgetown roster, by contrast, is dominated by recruits from private schools. From a review of their online biographies, most have a college-educated parent who went on to be a professional – a couple of them even pro athletes. Alonzo Mourning’s son, Trey, suits up for Georgetown, as does Gheorghe Muresan’s son, George.
Since becoming Georgetown coach in 2004, Big John Thompson’s son, John Thompson III, has recruited other children of the jockocracy – not just Mourning and Muresan but the sons of Doc Rivers (Jeremiah), Reggie Williams (Riyan), and Patrick Ewing (Patrick Jr.), among others. In September, he offered a scholarship to Shaquille O’Neal’s kid, Shareef, a top 20 prospect in the class of 2018.
Still, the backgrounds of the players being pursued concern Graham, who argues the Hoyas would be better with more kids who grew up with less. While the Golden State Warriors have done just fine with the sons of NBA pros (Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson), that’s not been the case at Georgetown. For the second straight year, the Hoyas had a losing record and missed the NCAA tournament.
“Don’t recruit the sons of NBA millionaires,” Graham said, chortling. “Why should Alonzo’s kid be there? Give the scholarship to a kid who wants it more.” …
Across Division 1 sports, first gens, regardless of race, are now less common than they are in DIII, an extraordinary development because in DIII there are no athletic scholarships – no aid to help pay for college. And while race often matters in shaping access to elite institutions in American life, the data suggests it’s less of a factor in NCAA sports than that of socioeconomic status. For instance, across all divisions, only 3 in 10 black athletes come from homes in which neither parent attended college.
Lots more interesting stuff in Farrey’s article …
So we go through cycles of Nature and Nurture in basketball. Desegregation a half century ago boosted Nature by opening up a lot of poor black Southern talent. But over time, there are diminishing marginal returns, so now there is increased emphasis on Nurture, such as playing eight years of high school basketball, which in turn has selection effects, like can you spend 8 years at expensive prep schools without getting kicked out?
You would think that the emergence of a sports-based black college-educated caste would be considered a good thing.
But that would violate the first rule of race reporting: Blacks are always the victims of whites.
Yeah and if they’re black and even marginally college capable, they will get that scholarship. For doing nothing. And usually to a school above the level they are suited to. So spare me the sob stories.
Just looked him up, kid’s only 5’9″. I wonder if he was one of those early-growth-spurt-but-ultimately-short guys. Probably thought he was going to be the next GOAT (though I suppose he’s doing alright despite his size).
We should be happy Allen Iverson’s bowling alley “incident” didn’t happen today. We never would have heard the end of it. The left would have considered him a political prisoner, assuming there was a judge willing to sentence him to jail time.
What kinds of changes did NCAA think were going to happen because of the APRs? Maybe that was part of what they wanted, a reduction in the number of student athletes who had no business being in college.
Whites in that city who have money send their kids to private schools. So the white kids I went to public school with were pretty tough dudes. I saw some blacks attack the wrong white guy on a few occasions and it was glorious to see. Blacks are not that tough when they don't have an advantage in numbers or size.
I imagine that is how the Mexicans have run them out of South Central LA.
A talented “first gen” is going to find himself up against the sons of the best of the last generation’s “first gens”… who have both the genes *and* the best possible environment (an all-star ex-player as a personal coach).
There's a reason why greatness famously skips a generation.Replies: @Young Clean Bastard
I’m sure someone must have broken down the stats on how many current pros had pro parents? I’m always shocked when it goes the other way, as when, for example, Michael Jordan’s kids don’t go pro.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000795075/article/football-family-patriarch-clay-matthews-sr-dies-at-88
When in doubt, refer to Lomardi Saying #1
Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
It’s becoming more common for big-time college and professional athletes to be the children of former big-time college and professional athletes.
American society has been selecting for athletic performance for a few generations now and since genetics is such a large component of this, we are beginning to develop a separate, hereditary caste of elite athletes who perform the sports-entertainment role in society.
Limiting the extent of this development has been the evolution of the market. As the market for a product, for example professional basketball, has expanded from multiple local and regional markets to a single national and now an international market, consumers are mostly interested in seeing the very top players perform in this single, expanded global market, resulting in exorbitant compensation for the best players in the best league but less interest in and tougher going for lower level players and leagues.
These days in sports – even in basketball – one must be able to travel; and that takes money. In addition, the poorer kids just can’t afford to go to year after year of expensive summer skills camps. The poor kids with overwhelming talent have someone to foot the bill for them.
In the old days, even the sports kids worked summer jobs – like everyone else. Nowadays you can’t take summers off like that if you want to compete at the elite level.
How much of this is just that college is the new high school, so that, even in the black community (especially in the black community because of all the scholarship money thrown in their direction), almost everyone short of hard core dropouts and criminals, receives some form of post-secondary education (never mind that they are still functionally illiterate).
Right now the Ball Brothers are the hot thing – 2nd generation ball players on both sides, trained to throw hoops from the moment they could walk. Kobe Bryant was also a 2nd generation ball player.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_second-generation_National_Basketball_Association_players
And baseball? You could put together an All-Star team with only 2nd-gen players.Replies: @SteveRogers42
Coming Apart II: The State of Black America?
This is interesting, watching post game interviews this year it seemed like the players were a lot less retarded and thuggish lately. I was wondering what accounted for that.
Its not surprising there are fewer “first gens” given how aggressively colleges and corporations are recruiting marginally qualified (read: unqualified) blacks to pad their diversity stats.
Why isn’t this discrimination against highly talented athletes who happen to have low academic aptitudes? What else are they supposed to do with their lives? Maybe a semi-pro league for kids of this kind?
No, Graham was right.
There’s a reason why greatness famously skips a generation.
There’s a reason elite colleges show admission statistics by race but not graduation stats.
I went to a Jesuit College, Canisius, in Buffalo, that had a decent basketball team, but we were part of the “Little Three” along with St. Bonaventure and Niagara University. Bona had Bob Lanier and Niagara had Calvin Murphy, both of whom later excelled in the pros. I remember hearing in college that we hadn’t recruited Murphy because an assistant coach said he could do anything with a basketball, except autograph it. Lanier grew up around the corner from my college, but went to Bona, but he was a very late bloomer. Not so long ago St. Bona signed a community college star to play for them. Turns out the kid had a welding certificate for a diploma. The Chairman of the Board of Directors was instrumental in recruiting him. The shit hit the fan and Bona was hit with NCAA sanctions. The Chairman, who bled Bona Brown, committed suicide. Left a wife, but no kids. He was President of a solid local bank. College sports is like crack cocaine to some alums. Oh, forgot to mention that Calvin Murphy’s super-sized image is painted on the side of Niagara’s campus sports arena. Murphy has seven or eight kids, by seven or eight different women, but Catholics aren’t suppose to practice birth control, so all is good.
Yeah, I don't get college sports at all, especially basketball. It's like my school is better than your school, because my rented Negros can beat your rented Negros.Replies: @Truth
http://roundballdaily.com/2012/08/05/physics-major-andrew-nicholson/Replies: @Buffalo Joe
Gentrification, or Duke-ification.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that many colleges are following the lead of the most enduringly successful collegiate program.
My theory on why great athletes don’t have better athletes as kids is that they tend to procreate with women who are short and petite so the kids are not as good. Jordan’s sons were mediorce college players. Patrick Ewing and Ralph Sampson’s sons were also not pro prospects. The only recent ones I can think of who were much better than their dads are Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant, Im sure there are more though.
There's a reason why greatness famously skips a generation.Replies: @Young Clean Bastard
It seems like neither Mourning or Muresan’s kid steps on the floor, but one wants to be a doctor anyway.
http://www.guhoyas.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/george_muresan_1018802.html
Mourning’s kid seems very well adjusted too and probably would have gotten in on his own merit, but they threw him a scholarship most likely as a favor for the old man, who not only being a school legend, also has a scholarship program at GU.
http://www.guhoyas.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/trey_mourning_924492.html
http://www.guhoyas.com/ot/gu-ad-scholarship-mourning.html
Update: Thompson III is now EX-coach Thompson, the Hoyas having given him his walking papers. Papa is unhappy but…so be it. Never quite figured out how an elite school like G-Town could justify calling these street warriors “STUDENT athletes”. On t’other hand it IS a Jesuit school (well, ok, on paper anyway) and as Jesus said (according to Matthew) “The poor you will always have with you ” and etc.
Actually, Murphy has 14 kids by 9 women, so apparently he couldn’t do anything with a condom either.
He actually beats Cromartie for the numerator.
Topical, just watched a Gamecocks squad with BJ McKie’s son, Justin, beat a Gators team with Rick Barry’s son Canyon. Interestingly though both were just role players.
Despite their pedigree though, players in this year’s Tournament are more heavily tattooed than I’ve ever seen. Yes, tattoos have become far more widely acceptable in the last decade, but the sheer number and variety is startling. These are not just cheap looking “jail ink” tats either – young men, 18, 19, 20 years old have most of their upper bodies covered – where are they getting the time and money for all this ink?
See, for example Gators PG Chris Chiozza:
http://photos.gatorcountry.com/20162017-Florida-Gators-Mens-B/2016-Gators-Mens-Basketball/i-VmJmz9L
Slightly OT, but sports related, Pittsburgh Pirates’ starting third baseman, Kang Jung Ho, was denied a work visa to re-enter the US. Kang was arrested in Korea on a DUI, his third in recent months. The two headlines I saw made it appear that Kang was just the victim of new US policy.
Thank you MADD. We now have to import foreigners to do crimes Americans won't do!
Can we talk about the lack of diversity in college basketball? I’m watching the UNC Kentucky game, and I can’t help but notice that 95% of both rosters are black.
College sports is like crack cocaine to a lot of people.
Yeah, I don’t get college sports at all, especially basketball. It’s like my school is better than your school, because my rented Negros can beat your rented Negros.
-Hungarian ProverbReplies: @Reg Cæsar
I love the line about Iverson’s Bowling alley incident bring overblown. He broke a metal chair over a 16 year old girls back.
I guess I have to read the entire article but I’m not seeing why having a socioeconomic diverse team is a must. Why is this even an issue?
Graham bought his lottery ticket in DC when he worked was working as a mover for Rent-A-Center in DC.
The guy is a professional screwup. He dropped out of two colleges, partied throughout NBA training camp, tested positive for cocaine, and had five children with five women. Graham got kicked off his CBA team after arguing with the coach, Phil Jackson. Because he can play ball he was given chance after chance that ordinary people never get. He even made the dumb athlete move of starting restaurants with his lottery winnings.
Fewer first gens like him on college campuses is a good thing.
>had five children with five women.
Evolution wise that's called winning
>Fewer first gens like him on college campuses is a good thing.
Agreed
OT:
The mother of this child is the gold standard, the Platonic ideal, of the Nice White Lady of the current year. This woman is the Evel Knievel of virtue signalling:
How A 7-Year-Old Trans Activist & Her Mom Are Fighting Trump In Texas
https://www.bustle.com/p/how-a-7-year-old-trans-activist-her-mom-are-fighting-trump-in-texas-45261
Booyaah! Heels on to PHX.
Likely less no college families
Poor kids don’t get coaching and parental support
Colleges are finally shying away from criminals and dummies
The poor get poorer under socialism
All college scholarships should be need based. Outside of stem and business, college is a bad joke.
Remarkable story. I enjoy watching sports, but the level of obsession you’re describing here just escapes me. I know people like this as well (all men, of course). It seems most of us men who are into sports see some flagging of interest as we age, but there is a subset for whom the glorious fire of true fan(atic)-dom, such as it is, remains undimmed.
Here’s a giant confound. The number of high school graduates who attend college is somewhere in the vicinity of 75%. The number of potential “First Gens” is dropping, and dropping fast. A vast number of the nation’s population has been to college. A smaller number has graduated, but most of these athletes won’t graduate, and if they do, they won’t use their education.
All this wailing could just be that the people we have left who come from a bloodline that hasn’t produced one talented or driven person in a hundred years of opportunity aren’t likely to produce one now.
This should not be a surprise – the racial integration of college and pro basketball over the last 40+ years means that those with the genes for athletic success at the sport are increasingly the descendants of those who were successful one or two generations earlier. HBD wins again!
A question though, since I don’t follow any pro sports except occasionally and superficially pro football: how big an influence is properly coached development in the teen years? IOW, can sheer physical skill get somebody into a good college program? The only teen sport with which I have familiarity is swimming, and belonging to a really good year-round club team with first-rate coaching is a prerequisite for getting into any significant college program. I saw a case a few years ago where a high school senior switched club teams (at significant personal and family inconvenience) to be with the area’s top coach and in the space of a year went from top 10% of the local metro area to missing the US Olympic team by a couple of hundredths of a second (finished third in the final qualifying round) and ended up with a full ride to one of the nations’ top 10 collegiate swimming programs. Swimming at the elite level is about 1/3 coaching p/training and 2/3 genetics; any idea about how the big three pro sports break down?
“Kang Jung Ho, was denied a work visa to re-enter the US. Kang was arrested in Korea on a DUI, his third in recent months”
Thank you MADD. We now have to import foreigners to do crimes Americans won’t do!
And if every kid goes to college, as some liberals would like, there can’t be any more first-generation college students.
You’re welcome, said Captain Obvious.
It’s Title IX. Colleges can’t afford unknown quantity poor boys anymore because they have to subsidize girls’ sports as per Obama’s gender feminist appointees’ diktats. That is the only thing that could explain this precipitous drop during the Obama administration. Notice that although girls were not as impacted as boys, only girls’ volleyball and tennis (and boys’ swimming for some reason — Michael Phelps hopefuls? Gay male preference for the sport? who knows…) included more first gens over the next five years. Kinda looks like wealthy people did some more WINNING! under Obama as usual.
https://www.amazon.com/Tilting-Playing-Field-Schools-Sports/dp/189355435X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490629151&sr=8-1&keywords=tilting+the+playing+field+schools+sports+sex+and+title+ix
Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.Replies: @Hibernian
Lombardi saying #2: Gentlemen, this is a football.
Make big-time college programs semi-pro; have the players carry only a 1/2 load; have industrial semi-pro teams, like those in the 1920s NFL and late 1940s and early 1950s NBA, for those not suited to college. Junior college programs will be in there somewhere, probably with an increased role.
The guy is a professional screwup. He dropped out of two colleges, partied throughout NBA training camp, tested positive for cocaine, and had five children with five women. Graham got kicked off his CBA team after arguing with the coach, Phil Jackson. Because he can play ball he was given chance after chance that ordinary people never get. He even made the dumb athlete move of starting restaurants with his lottery winnings.
Fewer first gens like him on college campuses is a good thing.Replies: @27 year old
>The guy is a professional screwup
>had five children with five women.
Evolution wise that’s called winning
>Fewer first gens like him on college campuses is a good thing.
Agreed
Its not surprising there are fewer "first gens" given how aggressively colleges and corporations are recruiting marginally qualified (read: unqualified) blacks to pad their diversity stats.Replies: @Marty T
I’ve noticed college basketball players seem a lot less thuggish and more well spoken than 15-20 years ago.
A lot of top athletes these days are the sons of college athlete fathers and mothers: Lonzo Ball, Christian McCaffrey, American soccer prodigy Christian Pulisic, etc.
I think there’s one very simple and obvious one they’re missing, maybe because they want to miss it for the purposes of the politics of racial agitation (this is The Undefeated, after all)
The law of diminishing marginal returns.
There are fewer and fewer “first gen” D-I scholarship college athletes, men’s basketball and otherwise, for the same reason you hardly ever hear “I’m the first in my family ever to go to college” anymore. That’s because, cue Pepe, it’s the current year, not 1939. We are now so many years into the societal expectation of near-universal tertiary education (for all but the most obvious dullards) that we’re at least two generations in that era, three depending on the demographic. So of course it would be the case that it would be hard to find a college student these days, scholarship athlete or not, who didn’t have at least one parent who went to college.
The stupid and the connected go to the "University/cathedral" these days.
Did you see this, Steve?
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/page/presents18969358/tinderization-today-nba
Norman, OK???
The linked article says it was in DC.
Is Norman your generic stand-in/placeholder for “look-up this location, later”?
The law of diminishing marginal returns.
There are fewer and fewer “first gen” D-I scholarship college athletes, men’s basketball and otherwise, for the same reason you hardly ever hear “I’m the first in my family ever to go to college” anymore. That’s because, cue Pepe, it’s the current year, not 1939. We are now so many years into the societal expectation of near-universal tertiary education (for all but the most obvious dullards) that we’re at least two generations in that era, three depending on the demographic. So of course it would be the case that it would be hard to find a college student these days, scholarship athlete or not, who didn’t have at least one parent who went to college.Replies: @newrouter
“for all but the most obvious dullards”
The stupid and the connected go to the “University/cathedral” these days.
OT:
I think the story of Thinx has a lot of iSteve content. Like Theranos, Thinx is full of feminist spin and relates to the Jan 2017 article on tiger daughters in the SJW racket (in this case South Asian)
http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/03/thinx-employee-accuses-miki-agrawal-of-sexual-harassment.html
What is Thinx:
*”period underwear” that retails for $30 vs the normal $4
*Ads so cutting edge and feminist it was apparently banned in SF subway
*Ads tried to “de-stigmatize” periods
*Miki Agrawal referred to herself as the “She-E-O”
What Agrawal did:
*Agrawal also touched an employee’s breasts and asked her to expose them,
*The complaint notes that the only two employees who had evidently successfully negotiated higher salaries were men.
*Changed outfits or trying on new Thinx products, say employees, sometimes in her glass-walled office but often out in the open in their co-working space.
*FaceTimed into a meeting from the toilet
*Regularly engaged in what another employee termed “fat-shaming,” commenting on people’s weights either directly or behind their backs.
Additional Articles on CNBC
Side note: As an Indian American myself, I am a little embarrassed at this terrible woman
NFL Third – Gen family:
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000795075/article/football-family-patriarch-clay-matthews-sr-dies-at-88
Unrelated: Steve, have you seen this story? It has Rolling Stone written all over it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/this-student-was-raped-twice-in-her-dorm-now-shes-suing-her-school_us_58d41a14e4b0f838c630a3b3?
Check the history https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=Roskin-Frazee&src=typd
What kinds of changes did NCAA think were going to happen because of the APRs? Maybe that was part of what they wanted, a reduction in the number of student athletes who had no business being in college.Replies: @Mis(ter)Anthrope
I went to a predominately black high school in Iverson’s hometown (Hampton, Virginia) and it was war every day. The blacks attacked whites anytime they had a numerical or significant size advantage. I took multiple beatings and saw two of my friends taken away in ambulances.
Whites in that city who have money send their kids to private schools. So the white kids I went to public school with were pretty tough dudes. I saw some blacks attack the wrong white guy on a few occasions and it was glorious to see. Blacks are not that tough when they don’t have an advantage in numbers or size.
I imagine that is how the Mexicans have run them out of South Central LA.
In the old days, even the sports kids worked summer jobs - like everyone else. Nowadays you can't take summers off like that if you want to compete at the elite level.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Those summer jobs are held by Central Americans now, so there’s no point anyway.
One more area of American life is being given over to aristocracy, sports. Hiring hoodlums to play sports sent an important message, winning is all that is important.
The linked article says it was in DC.
Is Norman your generic stand-in/placeholder for "look-up this location, later"?Replies: @cthulhu
Norman, OK (population around 60,000) is the home of the University of Oklahoma (undergraduate enrollment around 23,000) and about 20 miles south of Oklahoma City; I assumed without evidence that it was germane to the story. Maybe not…
That sounds like a partial divorce.
YCB, Thank you, I was working from memory. If they had painted Murphy’s family portrait, they would have needed a larger arena.
anonymous, Actually, after you’re done paying for your child to go to a Jesuit college, you are poor…so a self fulfilling parable.
Well, eugenics was never only about brains, was it?
Birds of a feather fluck together:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/shortcuts/2016/jul/18/rio-2016-42-condoms-per-athlete-olympic-village-sex
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/fivering_circus/2016/05/a_history_of_condoms_in_the_olympic_village_from_8_500_in_seoul_to_450_000.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_19733_5-things-they-dont-want-you-to-know-about-olympics.html
I can’t read that last one now, as I’m at a public terminal at work, and Websense blocks it under the category “Tasteless”. (Half the Internet is tasteless, dammit!) But I remember that it included condom pollution as a chronic headache for Olympic host cities.
Despite their pedigree though, players in this year's Tournament are more heavily tattooed than I've ever seen. Yes, tattoos have become far more widely acceptable in the last decade, but the sheer number and variety is startling. These are not just cheap looking "jail ink" tats either - young men, 18, 19, 20 years old have most of their upper bodies covered - where are they getting the time and money for all this ink?
See, for example Gators PG Chris Chiozza:
http://photos.gatorcountry.com/20162017-Florida-Gators-Mens-B/2016-Gators-Mens-Basketball/i-VmJmz9LReplies: @Buffalo Joe
Son, I remember a NCAA scandal involving athletes trading game shirts, etc. for tattoos. Anyone remember that?
Johnny D, NCAA hockey playoffs are on, so all the white guys are on the ice.
And that's the way it should always be: all the white guys....!Replies: @JohnnyWalker123
Buffalo Joe,
And that’s the way it should always be: all the white guys….!
Pretty much only two college sports exist in America.
1. Div 1 college foootball.
2. Div 1 college basketball, but people only care during the tournament.
Everything else is totally irrelevant to Joe Sixpack.
The reality is that something doesn't exist unless it's on teevee. Since teevee only covers div 1 football and (during March Madness) div 1 basketball, only those two sports exist.
Has anyone caught King James tweets on Twitter? They’re full of errors but few people will call him out on it.
I know he didn’t go to college but neither did Kobe and he seems pretty sharp.
Translated from the Newspeak, this reads:
Why on Earth did we ever accept the premise that just because someone is good at sports (nowadays commonly because he is a genetic freak as likely as because he is disciplined and hardworking) it makes sense for him to be bundled off to college. Just watch interviews with these guys; it is immediately clear we are not dealing with brilliant folks who are missing out on their potential absent collegiate study. Most of them are indeed well within the group of persons whose intelligence quotients suite them for shift work and the like. It is silly to pretend it’s all some tragic missed opportunity – for them or for society – just because they don’t get a gundecked degree (or, as likely, drop out to play professional ball or get expelled for unsavoury shenanigans).
Send brilliant poor kids to school on academic scholarships. The resources wasted on collegiate athletic scholarships for dimwits could easily provide education to many more bright kids on academic scholarships. If the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, and so on want a program to develop talent among the indigent but athletically gifted, let them finance it themselves – last I checked, those outfits are not hurting for money.
Be careful what you wish for!
Having worked sexurity…er…security for the Olympics in 1996, I can attest to the veracity of all the horrible things from the tasteless article you cite. The Olympics are horrible, all traffic jams, obnoxious tourists, and $15.00 hamburgers. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.
We had foreigners expecting to see us walking around with parasols and hooped skirts. I shit you negative. I’d sardonically ask them things relevant to their own nations and cities’ history (“If I go to London will I see people riding horses wearing suits of armour? Are there samurai in lamellar armour walking the streets of Tokyo?”)
One last note: The athletes – the male athletes, anyhow – are havin plenty of that rutting with gorgeous (lay?)groupies, probably even a bit more with them than with the female athletes….
(I did keep the patches from my uniform, hoping they’d be worth something someday, but I’ve never checked to see if they are.)
As are Steph Curry, Al Horford, Kevin Love, etc…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_second-generation_National_Basketball_Association_players
And baseball? You could put together an All-Star team with only 2nd-gen players.
http://www.goducks.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=5685Replies: @Njguy73
Keep posting that. Maybe after three decades of sportswriters churning out columns and books urging such a system, one book I own, your post will do the trick.
We are perforce a disenfranchised, pessimistic lot; voices in the wilderness.Replies: @Njguy73
And that's the way it should always be: all the white guys....!Replies: @JohnnyWalker123
but nobody cares about college hockey. Most people haven’t even heard of the OHL or WHL.
Pretty much only two college sports exist in America.
1. Div 1 college foootball.
2. Div 1 college basketball, but people only care during the tournament.
Everything else is totally irrelevant to Joe Sixpack.
The reality is that something doesn’t exist unless it’s on teevee. Since teevee only covers div 1 football and (during March Madness) div 1 basketball, only those two sports exist.
I know he didn't go to college but neither did Kobe and he seems pretty sharp.
https://twitter.com/kingjames/status/846160597574144000
https://twitter.com/kingjames/status/846162142000762880Replies: @Triumph104, @Truth
College isn’t where you learn to write a basic sentence. That should be accomplished in grade school. Lebron was raised by a drug addict and attended public schools with no standards. His Catholic high school was going to pass him no matter how incoherent his work was.
Kobe on the other hand had a cosmopolitan upbringing. His SAT score was slightly above average, so he could have easily played for Duke or Stanford. I know of an athlete who got into Harvard with a 1650/2400, although he did have a 4.0 GPA at a middling high school.
Well, if those of us frequenting Steve’s site – including Steve himself (notwithstanding Trump’s somewhat Salier Strategy-ish campaign) – limited ourselves to posting ideas liable to be actually implemented, ‘twould be a dearth of commentary indeed.
We are perforce a disenfranchised, pessimistic lot; voices in the wilderness.
Yep, I remember at least one – Pryor et. al. at Ohio St. – http://www.espn.com/college-football/news/story?id=5950873
Murphy and Lanier were 200 years ago…
http://roundballdaily.com/2012/08/05/physics-major-andrew-nicholson/
No, %95 of both starting units are black. Most of the guys deep on the bench, are boosters and administrators sons and local phenoms who scored 30ppg at the local, expensive private school and walked-on instead of taking a scholarship to D-II.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/03/27/the-shot-lives-christian-laettner-ribs-kentucky-fans-after-luke-mayes-game-winner/?utm_term=.21d1357e6d31
Yeah, I don't get college sports at all, especially basketball. It's like my school is better than your school, because my rented Negros can beat your rented Negros.Replies: @Truth
The girl who can’t dance says the band can’t play.
-Hungarian Proverb
I know he didn't go to college but neither did Kobe and he seems pretty sharp.
https://twitter.com/kingjames/status/846160597574144000
https://twitter.com/kingjames/status/846162142000762880Replies: @Triumph104, @Truth
I hear is counting skills are world class, though.
Scoreboard, Truth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/03/27/the-shot-lives-christian-laettner-ribs-kentucky-fans-after-luke-mayes-game-winner/?utm_term=.21d1357e6d31
We are perforce a disenfranchised, pessimistic lot; voices in the wilderness.Replies: @Njguy73
Well, I’ve been advocating NFL/NBA semipro leagues since 1989, when I read The Hundred Yard Lie by Rick Telander, an SI writer who suggested it. I’m getting tired of having it fall on deaf ears.
I’m guessing Mr. 1650 at Harvard played basketball or hockey? (Harvard’s hockey team is in the Frozen Four. I doubt many of them are taking nuclear physics.)
Title IX has been hurting mens’ sports for quite a long time.
But who is using all those condoms? I suspect the same players as out in society: ultra-promiscuous black athletes and homosexual men.
There are not a lot of homosexual Olympic athletes, Greg Louganis et al. notwithstanding. Some fifty-six of about eleven hundred were in Rio de Janiero, and more are females than males (cf. Steve's now classic piece about the differences between female and male homosexuals...).Replies: @Truth
Oh, and maybe you know. what the heck is a female condom? I don’t dare go looking on the internet.
Sadly, I do not know this because of work in Atlanta, but because of unavoidable exposure to SJW campaigns about how It's Okay To Be Gay and Promiscuous, etc.
Seems like Murphy would be a serious contender for the Cromartie Index record if the NBA used the Wonderlic: https://www.unz.com/isteve/ci-cromartie-index/
He actually beats Cromartie for the numerator.
Extended article at http://bleacherreport.com/articles/719411-scandal-at-ohio-state-part-1-of-5-the-tattooed-five-tressels-cover-up
S O S , Thank you, Tressel lost his job.
http://roundballdaily.com/2012/08/05/physics-major-andrew-nicholson/Replies: @Buffalo Joe
Truth, Thank you for the article about Andrew Nicholson. Lanier and Murphy were my contemporaries, was it really 200 years ago?
God Bless America! Where if you make enough money, no one will care that you struggle to write in complete sentences.
Imagine an inverted (conventional) condom; it’s sort if like a glorified diaphragm.
Sadly, I do not know this because of work in Atlanta, but because of unavoidable exposure to SJW campaigns about how It’s Okay To Be Gay and Promiscuous, etc.
Douchebag playboy jocks are douchebag playboy jocks. I’d say the typical white one has a much more black personality, as it were, than most of us.
There are not a lot of homosexual Olympic athletes, Greg Louganis et al. notwithstanding. Some fifty-six of about eleven hundred were in Rio de Janiero, and more are females than males (cf. Steve’s now classic piece about the differences between female and male homosexuals…).
-Hungarian ProverbReplies: @Autochthon
Our great universities were founded by preachers, and after a few generations of that, run by several generations of jocks. It was only when the “meritocracy” took over that they started going to pot. Big time.
Be careful what you wish for!
-Hungarian ProverbReplies: @Reg Cæsar
And often she’s right.
Well, there are some gay swimmers, Ethan Thorpe of Aussie land where swimming is much more popular sport. In the 1970’s swimming was mainly an LA/Orange County sport with Shirley Bashshoff, Bruce and Steve Furness, Brian Goodell and Tim Shaw. None of these guys were gay. When LA and OC got a lot of minorities and housing become expensive, there was no longer the Shirley Bashashoff, blue collar success anymore from LA or OC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_second-generation_National_Basketball_Association_players
And baseball? You could put together an All-Star team with only 2nd-gen players.Replies: @SteveRogers42
Only 6-5, but she makes up for it by having a dad who played in the NFL and an uncle named Mark McGuire:
http://www.goducks.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=5685
notice how the outdoor basketball courts in your area are either empty or filled with weekend warrior types?
The days when the best ballers emerged from a darwinian struggle in inner city playgrounds is long gone.
The best current basketball players play on travel teams, are going to camps, and have trainers.
$$ AND genetics are more or less necessary conditions. A good rule of thumb is basketball dad married a sexy coed from the volleyball or track team, as opposed to a 5’3 hourglass shaped groupie later on, the kid is on his way.
There have always been father son NBA dynamics but it’s actually shocking the % of the current NBA that fits this description.
There might me 25 current 2nd gen players at the moment. This is out of around 450 total.
I thought everyone knows that wrestling is fake, therefore Iverson should’ve been let off with a warning.
http://www.goducks.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=5685Replies: @Njguy73
I’ll see your Mallory McGwire and raise you Jennifer Lacy (daughter of Lee) and Candice Wiggins (daughter of Alan.) One beaten up by her fellow WNBAer and lesbian lover, the other bullied in the WNBA for not being lesbian.
And BTW, sorry about the Rick Monday thing.
Young, handsome, athletic white guys don’t like no-strings only-sex with beautiful women who lust after them?
If he were the world’s best welder, who would give a shit?
There are not a lot of homosexual Olympic athletes, Greg Louganis et al. notwithstanding. Some fifty-six of about eleven hundred were in Rio de Janiero, and more are females than males (cf. Steve's now classic piece about the differences between female and male homosexuals...).Replies: @Truth
The girl who can’t dance says the band can’t play.
-Hungarian Proverb
-Hungarian ProverbReplies: @Autochthon
I’d enumerate my athletic awards (the most recent earned last year, at 38) if they wouldn’t definitively identify me to those who would seek to Eich me; being a successful athlete and being a stand-up guy are not mutually exclusive traits.
Thanks for writing, Peyton.
ROTFL & Touché!
(I’ve no delusions; successful is a relative term!)
Ha! Had to look it up.
I’m not him, but a flag-savin’ patriot like Rick.
Nah, I’m going with Tim Duncan. Who knows what thoughts are behind that stoic face!
But no one laughs at the explanation of a joke, ao I'll shuffle off to Buffalo....
I’m now convinced there is a layer to the joke in this one has to follow professional football to understand.
But no one laughs at the explanation of a joke, ao I’ll shuffle off to Buffalo….
The best h.s. bball player in iowa this year is the son of u of iowa head coach fran mccaffrey. Coach m himself was a good player back in his day. It is tough to compete w kids who have a huge head start
Fran McCaffery makes a base salary of $2 million but his son Connor won’t officially commit to play for his father until a scholarship opens up. LOL. Talk about Moneyball.
http://www.hawkcentral.com/story/sports/college/iowa/basketball-men/2016/11/09/fran-mccafferys-son-bides-time-before-joining-iowa-hawkeyes/93551458/