I know and he didn't know about Marcus Camby talking to an agent, and how was he to know that Derrick Rose drove from Chicago to Detroit to take his SAT's, and he certainly would have put a stop to all these terrible things going on if only he knew.
The good news for Cal is that if these allegations do stick, he'll have a nice fall back coaching Lebron James somewhere in the NBA.
Most of our summer school kids take on-line courses. It costs the kid $170 and is available to all of them, not just star athletes. (Like we'd ever have one of those.)
For a poor school district (or one that's trying to keep a better eye on the bottom line), it's far cheaper than paying somewhere between $2500 and $5000 for a Biology teacher to come in for two or three weeks, especially when considering other kids need everything from Basic Health to Agriscience to US History (not to mention the four Englishes, four maths, and at least three other sciences).
You pay an Instructional Aide $10 an hour to watch 30 or so kids while they try to puzzle out problems on their own. If they need help on particular problems, there's always a teacher around to help (generally for free, as most teachers are easy marks willing to work with a student who truly wants help).
I'm guessing Bledsoe is like about 25% of the students in my high school (or almost any low income public high school, for that matter). He didn't listen to his teachers. His parents didn't care or see the value in an education (or wasn't all that willing to put in extra time it takes). He was lazy in the extreme (as it takes work to fail in today's educational world of quadruple redundancies, individualized learning plans, and No Child Left Behind.
So which was it?
Did they know about the story early and hold on until the UConn thing broke?
Sports Editor: DANGIT, UCONN hit with 8 violations, I can't have this, think of all the UCONN alums who read my paper? It's okay, think, think,
Wait I've got it. Thamel,Evans, don't you have a Kentucky story that I told you to put in the drawer a month ago to hold onto until a NE school got hit with bad news from the NCAA? I knew that would come in handy.
Or did the Times "discover" this story in the 10 hours after UCONN was hit?
Sports Editor: DANGIT, UCONN hit with 8 violations, I can't have this, think of all the UCONN alums who read my paper? It's okay, think, think,
Wait I've got it. THamel, Evans, I need something on Kentucky.
Evans; But what about this UCONN story, shouldn't we cover this?
Sports Editor: No, silly, we're based in New York, we can't possibly write a story on a NE team's violations. We need something to take peoples attention away from that.
Thamel: But Why Kentucky? I mean there's a lot of schools out there, Kansas, Oklahoma, USC,
Sports Editor: No no, it has to be Kentucky. The Kansas story has already been broken, and lets face it, it's not exactly news when Oklahoma or USC breaks the rules. No it has to be Kentucky. I bet they used an ineligible player. In the next ten hours I want you to find the high school transcripts for each of their players from last year, talk to the coaches and teachers at those schools find some bitter rival coaches(I'll grant this may have happened yesterday) and call Kentucky just to get their useless denial.
So, WMR, you're saying the New York Times is intentionally making up a story to keep interested eyes away from UConn?
Really?
No but I think they've had this weak-ass article on a shelf somewhere for some time now.
And I would love to tell you more about what I think about the NYT, but site rules prevent that.
Lots of articles use unnamed sources. And admittedly there are grey areas where it should and shouldn't be used. But tell me why you think its crap in this case?
Just curious why you think so little of the NY Times? Due to their editorial board? Or their reporting? Have they specifically reported something inaccurately that made you decide they weren't worthwhile? Because quite honestly if the NY Times isn't considered to be a worthwhile journalistic source, I struggle to think who would be.
So it's understandable that you think the story's weak, but obviously it had interest.
You think they would sit on it,(until a northeastern school or someone they were trying to protect) had a big violation, and risk being scooped by another site?
I mean in your opinion, there's not much to report on, so it's not inconceivable that another site could also do very little reporting and stumble upon it. I know you think the media is out to get Coach Cal so it's not like ESPN and Fox Sports and the Kentucky Herald Leader wouldn't be motivated. But you think the Times would risk being scooped and sit on the story?
WHY?
Absolutely no chance that this happened.
That's like saying the Watergate story wouldn't have broken if the Redskins hadn't lost to the Cowboys and the Post needed a bigger story to distract their audience.
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