(03-02-2025, 12:44 PM)BostonCard Wrote: So the men will be away from school from March 3 to March 12, at the least, and if they make the semifinals could be away from Stanford for two whole weeks, leading right up to finals (which start March 17). Explain to me where the student in student-athlete is supposed to fit in? (I know, they can watch recordings, write essays on the road, etc. but you can’t tell me that the quality of the education they are getting isn’t suffering tremendously from this ridiculous conference affiliation.
BC
You make a good point, but back in the day, long ago, most professors I had did not require attendance at class if you did the work, turned in your papers etc. Since I had no labs and was a History major, I seldom went to class if I felt the professor was a lousy teacher and I could do better on my own. Then at the end of my Junior year I got appendicitis at the start of finals week. So I spent finals week in the OLD Stanford Hospital and had to take all my exams when I cam back in the fall. That is not too much fun I must say. There are I am sure many students who go to all their classes and have nothing that impacts their passage through the system. But for many, the system is sort of a corral that keeps you within certain perameters and you muddle you way through the mess and graduate.
Could I have done better at Stanford, almost certaiinly. But I grew up at Stanford and all those decisions I had to make mostly on my own stood me in good stead when I went off as an Army Officer after graduation. We all take a different paths through this process and many, many years after I went through the process I do not regret how those four years went in any way at all.
The only group among those on athletic scholarships that have an issue are those whose major requires lots of lab time. Despite this, many of our athletes end up graduating in disciplines where lab work is a major part of their program.
As long as the University understands and supports athletics they will have to understand and deal with this problem. And we will have a lot of guys who go on to graduate despite these problems. I also am assuming our Athletic Department has a good number of people who job it is to help our student athletes through this mess. If we have a problem, then East Coast ACC teams have a problem when they come west.
Now I understand that if you are an East Coast school you can fly to SFO, get a good local hotel and be within a short bus trip of Stanford and Cal. Now we fly to Indiana to play ND, then we have to make a 4 hour drive or one hour flight down to Ky. That is certainly a bigger issue than just bussing back to your hotel after playing Cal then bussing down to Stanford for the next game.
Would we be better off as a member of a big time West Coast Conference, the answer seems to be obviously Yes. However how much better off are Oregon, Washington, USC amd UCLA? If allowed they can play each other out West for three of their games, but then they have to hit the road. Not much better of a deal.
