Quote (cdillon42 @ Jan 7 2011 09:09am)
no i won't use that excuse but what is the sec's graduation rate of its players? below 50% i think it is, well the NCAA is trying to push a min required graduation rate for sports or the whole program be placed on academic probation. college is supposed to be a place to go to higher your education not to play sports, but the sec, big 12 and a couple other conferences have it the other way around when it comes to that. the reason urban meyers quit notre dame was because he wanted to recruit ONE player with a GPA of 2.8 and Notre Dame said no we are not lowering our standards for one player. now he went to florida and recruited the same kid with ease. it just goes to show that the sec conference sucks. btw do you know who won the more important championship last year?
What do graduation rates have to do with football? Either way, you are incorrect. Over 60% of players graduate.
http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/2008/10/acc-leads-all-conferences-in-football-graduation-rate/This is from 2008 but I'm too lazy to look up stats from last year...I would imagine they are basically the same.
The only conference that really "stands out" in terms of graduation rates is the ACC, and even they only have 11.8% higher graduation rate. However, among the recent "big" football conferences, there is only a 6% graduation rate difference between them. Quite frankly, I don't find the .8% difference between the SEC and Pac10 and the 2.7% difference between us and Big 12 to be very significant.
Furthermore, I absolutely HATE the "graduation rate" argument because it doesn't take into account the players that leave school early to go play in the NFL. Since, like I mentioned before, the SEC leads the way in NFL draftees every year, OF COURSE that is going to hurt graduation rates. Should our conference be penalized and scrutinized because we have more players (many of whom WERE making adequate grades, mind you) who decide to leave early for the NFL since they are good? Of course not!
Like it or not, most of the football players who go on a football scholarship to play Div. 1 ball in a BCS conference don't give 2 craps about their communication degree...they have their eyes set on one prize: the NFL - and they would drop their academics in a hearteat to go make millions of dollars a year doing something they love.