Bevo's Daily Roundup - April 16, 2009

I like it.

It’s simple, yet 100% accurate.

And he’s wrong here, though in an unexpected way. UT spends an average of $244,000 per athlete per year.

the number I posted was from an old Daily Texan article I read some time back, so the number may have gone up

I just remember thinking at the time that if you took some of these athletes aside and told them that if they took care of business in the classroom and on the field, the athletic department was going to spend $1.1 million on them over 5 years, a lot more of them would behave.

Kirkendoll was getting up at 5am and between workouts, classes, practice, and studying got done at 9pm. That’s a 16 hour day, even in Aggie time.

That comment was in response to the claim by swimmer Ashley Gayle, that she can’t meet people outside of her sport because the of the limited amount of time you have. From what the article said, Kirkendoll is doing everything right.

The author states that this is true in "many" cases.

I’d really like to know what these exceptions are; what are the instances where someone’s participation in college athletics is making it impossible for them to attend summer school classes?

They also are part of an athletic department that turns a profit, and pays for every dime of it with no help from state funds.

What the hell does this have to do with my point that these athletes seem upset that they have to earn their perks? Who cares if the state funds the athletic department or not, it is irrelevant to this discussion.

We’ve already established that the athletic department turns a profit, so in that sense, it is like the business world. Think of it like a financial firm or health care provider that has a compliance officer: the compliance officer doesn’t generate revenue, but it is a necessary part of the business. Substitute "volleyball" for "compliance officer", and the Texas athletic department looks remarkably like a business to me.

A better analogy would use the NCAA compliance office inside the athletic department; not profitable but necessary. Regardless, it doesn’t change the fact that if this was a business run for profit in the rea;l world, many of these non-revenue teams would not exist.

Kwame’s comment, "black athletes face difficulties because the media portrays a disproportionate number of African-Americans as athletes" is not particularly salient. The statistic cited by Leonard Moore, that "51 percent of black high school males polled believed their first job would be as a professional athlete" is a great illustration of what Kwame was trying to say.

I have seen far more Black politicians, lawyers, doctors, and businessmen on television and in the media than I have athletes. Then again, I watch other channels besides ESPN, and read the other sections of the newspaper besides the sports section, so maybe that is why I have different impressions of the media and how they portray Blacks than Kwame does.

Kwame’s inclusion on the panel bemused me, because I don’t see why you would value the opinion of someone who was thrown off the football team for continually failing drug tests. His isn’t exactly an opinion I would value or even seek.

If you really think that athletes are only judged when they themselves screw up, I really don’t know what to tell you.

You ever hear someone say “typical dumb jock” when they show the Academic Player of the Game, and a player has a 3.5 GPA in Business or Pre-Med or whatever? I think most people give athletes more credit than you think, except when they screw up. Then the questions about intelligence crop up.

we know how the actions of a few (Ramonce, Dre Jones, et al) can color the perception of many

I don’t think people thought “typical dumb jock” in the cases of Taylor or Jones, they thought “typical thug”. Of course, with Taylor, it may have been more like, “I was wondering when he was going to screw up…..”

You have the star QB of your ’05 team to blame for that stereotype, though.