An issue with missed class time | Page 2 | Syracusefan.com

An issue with missed class time

On a brighter note, who reads Forbes anyway. If it shows up in the Economist, I might take notice.
 
Mr. Edelman clearly has no concept of Division 1 College Basketball. There are 351 schools in 32 Division 1 basketball conferences. Each of these schools plays the same number of games each year (28) prior to the post-season tournaments where the numbers can vary based on how well a team does. Of these schools, Syracuse plays significantly FEWER road games during the season because they hardly ever go on the road during November and December (when many other schools play MOST of their games on the road). Ironically, Syracuse gets criticized by sports reporters for playing a disproportionate number of their early season games at HOME.

Also, Mr. Edelman has no concept of how Syracuse (or several other schools) travels to away games. Due to NCAA regulations, a visiting team must arrive at an away game site the night BEFORE a game (in order to insure that weather does not preclude their being there on game day). They travel with academic support personnel and have mandatory study halls. And they always board a charter flight home immediately AFTER an away game which means they are virtually always home before midnight. They are then monitored to make sure they attend classes the next day.

In other words, they miss exactly one day of classes for an away game during midweek.

Because Syracuse uses charter flights, their players miss many fewer classes than others of the 351 schools that do not use charters.

I have no idea of why Mr. Edelman singled out Syracuse in his column. But he could not have been more off the mark. Syracuse players miss fewer classes than most other schools out there.
some of them might not miss any class for a road game. do they actually have classes 5 days a week now for most kids? i would have thought some would max out classes in the fall and take summer courses to lessen the load in the main part of the schedule.
 
Those of you getting up in arms about the author focusing on Syracuse need to read the article more closely. He is picking on Syracuse in direct response to JB's position that Division I athletes should not be paid. His decision to focus on Syracuse isn't about Syracuse or what Syracuse does or doesn't do, it's about JB's position on stipends for student athletes.

That said, as others have pointed out this a very poorly written article, surprising to see it associated with Forbes. The whole argument is overly simplistic and fails to acknowledge all of the additional supports that college athletes are given to compensate for missed class time. It doesn't even get into the fact that athletes oftentimes take a lightened load in season and make up by taking additional coursework (which I assume SU would pay for) during summer months, or that many can get 5 years of academic scholarships out of the deal. It also doesn't get into the fact that coursework can be loaded on particular days of the week to accommodate travel schedules and oftentimes totally free up other days.

It also doesn't give any credit to the position that the participation in the sport, the competition and the travel that goes along with it offers those athletes something that sitting in a class room on campus could never give them. It isn't strictly academic, but in some ways it has similarities to an internship, study abroad or classroom without walls concept.

The final point that I want to make is I played and traveled as a Division I athlete. I missed more classes because I chose to skip them and stay in the bed in my apartment than I ever missed as a result of athletic travel. In fact my attendance in the fall (offseason) was probably significantly worse than it was in the Spring, because I knew I had less margin for error in the Spring and was watched more closely in season. I still managed to graduate in 4 years with an honor roll GPA that allowed me to get into grad school.
 
Does the metric of "days" even matter? There's a required number of hours that need to be maintained, but how many "days" one has classes is irrelevant. I used to cluster my schedule to go real heavy for 3 days and then light/nothing on the other. Does not going to class those two days a week reflect on anything?

Such a weird article. His points on us don't make sense AND it doesn't tie cleanly to the paying athletes stuff.
 
It will be interesting to see if he replies to our tweets in response to his article.
 
That is a ridiculously dumb article. He equates all days of travel as missed class days. Stupid assumptions to push his own agenda.

Precisely. This Edelman appears to be a self-promoting gas bag, a parasite on the college/professional sports "industry," making a ton of money from it while providing no input of his own, worse, while hiding behind a monitor up in his ivory tower. He's little better than a common opportunist - a commoner trying to marry himself to the daughter of a noble because there's easy money in it. To wit: Why is he hopping on SU? That's easy. Because at no. 2 in the country SU is currently a "hot property" and a local one at that. In the wake of SU's hard earned success, he's jumping in front of the camera crying "Look at me! Look at me!"
 
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Does the metric of "days" even matter? There's a required number of hours that need to be maintained, but how many "days" one has classes is irrelevant. I used to cluster my schedule to go real heavy for 3 days and then light/nothing on the other. Does not going to class those two days a week reflect on anything?

Such a weird article. His points on us don't make sense AND it doesn't tie cleanly to the paying athletes stuff.

Agreed, he's invalidated his entire argument with a flawed major premise. And this guy teaches law? Yikes!
 

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