According to CBSsports.com's Jeff Goodman, Alex Oriakhi will be meeting with John Calipari, newly-crowned national championship head coach of Kentucky, today. Goodman says he's been told that Oriakhi would be able to play at the SEC school if he chooses an area of study not offered at UConn. I was told last month that Oriakhi was majoring in sociology but was thinking of switching majors to sports communications and journalism. But then, I was also told that he had no plans of transferring anywhere.Per Goodman, Oriakhi would be eligible to play right away, but that's only if UConn is barred from next year's NCAA tournament. The school is currently appealing its ban and is also hoping the NCAA Committee on Academic Performance changes its calendar on which APR scores it uses to impose postseason bans.
On a somewhat related note (bear with me for a moment), it was recently revealed that LSU football player scored a 4 on his NFL Wonderlic test. For me, the issue isn't whether this should or shouldn't have been leaked or what the test means for future players or how over-hyped and over-publicized the stupid NFL draft process is in the first place. The issue is this: how did Claiborne stay academically eligible at LSU if he obviously has a learning disability?
I mean, seriously, does the SEC even pretend it cares about educating its top-line athletes. I don't care that John Calipari utilizes the one-and-done system to his advantage and better than everyone else. My question is how his players leave school in "good academic standing" when it's obvious (and completely understandable) that they're worrying about their draft stock from now until June and will be busy with NBA tryouts, camps, etc.
Calipari said the other day that Kentucky has the highest APR score in the SEC. How is that possible? Or maybe it's not surprising, given the obvious lack of focus on education at LSU and elsewhere.
Nice post!!
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