Having grown up and spent the first 26 years of my life in Columbus, and having graduated from OSU, I must profess some level of ignorance as to the OSU bandwagon. People in Columbus would be rabid Buckeye fans whether they were going 12-0 or 0-12 every year.
I'm sure their recent success has caused some people to become Buckeye fans, but when you're a name school that churns out as many alumna as OSU does, you're pretty much going to find Buckeye fans wherever you go.
We'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
Using a graduation sample from 1996-1999 to make a point about a program having a competitive advantage over other programs in their conference today seems like a Red Herring to me. You said.
"I just think they emphasize the student part of "student/athelete" a lot less than the other schools in the Big 10 and therefore have a competitive advantage."
Your proof?
An article focusing on graduation rates on incoming basketball freshman between 1996-1999. It says,
"Just 10 percent of Ohio State's basketball players received degrees at the school, according to a study that examined the freshman classes entering from 1996 to 1999."
First of all, what does 1996-1999 have to do with Thad Matta, Gene Smith, or anything regarding the current state of OSU's basketball program today?
Secondly, what kind of a sample size are we dealing with here (1996-1999)? 10 players? My memory of OSU recruiting records is a bit limited, but I recall the '98 class consisted of Brian Brown, Boban Savovic, and Will Dudley. The '99 class consisted of Chobe Osokalich (sp) and Brent Darby. I'm pretty sure the '97 class consisted of George Reese (juco transfer) and Michael Redd and I think Ken Johnson was a member of the 1996 class. So, I'm counting 8 players. Basing the % at 10%, I must be missing 2 recruits. Assuming I am, one kid graduated out of 10. None of these kids were superstar recruits, so OSU recruiting a marginal student was giving them no competitive advantage against the rest of the Big 10 here. Of the 10, Redd went to the NBA early, so I'm not sure how that effects the rating (if he never came back and got his degree). Osokalich transferred to Weber State. This had nothing to do with academics, but rather his minimal playing time. Brown, Johnson, Savovic, Darby, Reese, and Dudley all used their eligibility and I am fairly certain that Brown, Darby, and Johnson graduated, so I'm not sure where the 10% is coming from. For this article to have an exact number like 10%, we must be talking about 1 of 10. I'm just not sure where they are getting that. Regardless, this doesn't prove that OSU today has any sort of competitive edge over other big 10 schools. The fact that they are winning now makes them an easy target. I'm sure nobody cared about graduating one in ten players from 1996-1999 when OSU was missing the tourney three straight years between 2003-2005.
The article then goes on to say,
"Taking into account players who transfer, enter from junior colleges and are graduated late, 38 percent of Buckeyes basketball players earned degrees during that period.."
So which is it? 10% or 38%? and if it is 38%, what numbers, when dealing with such limited sample size (1996-1999 incoming frosh) could be divided into one another to come up with 38%? I'm guessing 5 of 13 or 3 of 8. Ok, so we are going to indict Thad Matta and the current OSU program because Jim O'Brien and Randy Ayers recruited 8-13 kids between 1996 and 1999 and only 3-5 of them graduated. Yes, other big 10 schools should feel so cheated. What a competitive edge.
Caveat. I'm not sure how you could label just OSU as bandwagon fans. Every school, every NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB team has fans that come out of the woodwork when they are winning. To say that it only applies to OSU fans seems a bit harsh to me. Yes, we have idiot fans. Some of which I'm embarrassed to even be associated with. Yes, many of the idiot fans can be found on internet message boards. The same can be said for fans of any team. I'm embarrassed of my fellow Reds fans as well. That doesn't mean that I think all Reds fans are pathetic. If the Reds win the next 10 world championships I'm sure there will be people that will hate them and say that our fans are obnoxious bandwagon jumpers. That wouldn't be fair, would it?
Also, you are a pretty respected poster and I appreciate what you offer in term of the baseball side of the board, but I'm a tad offended by the "College of Columbus" tag.
I think we are all friends here and "O$U" and "College of Columbus" are somewhat disrespectful terms when you know that you have many fellow Reds fans on this board that also bleed Scarlet and Gray and even attended the university.
Buckeyeredleg: You asked for proof and I gave you proof. No matter how much you spin the numbers, having a graduation rate of 10%, which ranks as one of the lowest in the 65 team tournament, is pathetic. Rather than getting all defensive about this sad state of affairs, those "fellow Reds fans on this board that also bleed Scarlet and Gray and even attended the university" should put pressure on the school to change this unacceptable situation.
You're right. They should change the fact that Randy Ayers recruited some bad kids OVER A DECADE AGO. We'll get right on that.
That information has the same current relevance as the fools who used to mouth off about Cincinnati Bearcat graduation rates. Ohio State ran off one coach because he recruited players that had packing peanuts for brains, and another that was focused on grades, that had poor results and NCAA infractions, which were reported by OSU. They ran a football coach off for those same reasons (and a lack of winning big). What more do you want? Ohio State has been prioritizing academics for the last 5 years and all you have to stand on is this crap from years ago.
In 1941 FDR should have seen the attack on Pearl Harbor coming. Lets impeach him now.
Hugs, smiling, and interactive Twitter accounts, don't mean winning baseball. Until this community understands that we are cursed to relive the madness.
Hugs, smiling, and interactive Twitter accounts, don't mean winning baseball. Until this community understands that we are cursed to relive the madness.
Apparently you have chosen to ignore several of the posts on this past page where people have shown ways the situation has been addressed. Please refer to my post a few up where I mentioned some of the ways that academics have been changed since Gene Smith and Thad Matta have taken over as well as Buckeyeredleg's recent post. There's no denying some of the past academic troubles in Columbus but the facts are clear that the current leaders are making sure academic trouble is a thing of the past. Since Gene Smith has been AD the university has increased graduation rates and team GPA's. That is a fact.
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