I think you can make life a lot easier on coaches without even going that far to be honest. We can still make them go to actual class at the actual University of Virginia but ease some transfer restrictions in a way that targets athletes without letting anyone get a Virginia degree after a semester.
I think coaches would be happy with that. Youâre playing with one hand tied behind your back with our current transfer situation.
JJ on Odom, via Hootie. Some interesting nuggets from AU days and giving Ryan messages from Dave
The obvious answer is that itâs a built-in excuse for mediocrity in both major revenue sports.
âRyan had great international contacts,â Jones said. âIn fact, his recruiting internationally was probably better at that time than it was recruiting kids from the U.S. At one point, we had seven or eight international kids at American. We called ourselves NATO.â
LMAO.
Whenever I see Ralph these days, all I can think about is, in 40 or 50 years where will the players of today go to follow and be a part of something they used to be a huge part of again? Are they gonna hang out and open restaurants in the town of, and be the go-to interview and unofficial face of, that one team that paid them the most money that one year? More money than those other 3 schools they played for. They didnât play as much or as well as theyâd hoped, and the team lost 19 games. Didnât really form too strong of a bond with anyone on the team, they werenât there long enough. But boy they gots paid! So, there they are, 40 years later.
Barf.
Never A Tournament Opportunity
I donât think itâs a built in excuse, itâs just our standards. Some institutions have higher standards (like Yale) and others have lower standards. But everyone has the right to set their own standard and what theyâre willing to compromise to achieve success. I donât give a damn about whatever the hell Duke, UNC, or even Stanford does for all I care
Theyll stick around after buying houses in Farmington to live in during college
Iâve never heard a Duke grad complain that their degree had somehow been devalued by their roundball excellence.
And no, Iâm not a Duke fan.
Think youâre misunderstanding my point. What Iâm trying to say is that everyone, including institutions have a right to set their own personal standards. Regardless of what other institutions who may or may not be more prestigious are doing.
If I am Ryan Odom I would spend about 5 percent of my time/ focus on keeping what Virginia players he wants to keep and VCU guys he wants to bring with him (which should be easy, the VCU guys). I obviously want all the Virginia guys to stay but he should be able to read them quick enough to make fast decisions and get going
The way I heard it, (though @dfresh11 would be a lot closer to this rumor mill than I was), UVa was definitely Daveâs dream job. In fact, Terry tried to give him the job by anointing him as the successor, but the AD at the time wouldnât bite, so Dave took the Wake job, stumbled on Tim Duncan, and the game was afoot.
I think people are greatly exaggerating the difficulty of transfers being accepted at UVa. Iâm not familiar with the details of recent admissions decisions but for 6 years some time ago I did have first-hand knowledge of the academic records of athletes, both transfers and non-transfers, at UVa. I would emphasize two things. First, ANYONEâathlete or non-athleteâapplying to UVa as a transfer student has a much higher chance of being accepted by UVa than someone applying out of high school. That has been true for a long, long time. Second, at the time I was in a position to have information, UVa was recruiting and accepting the same athletes that Clemson, Florida St., and lots of âlesserâ academic schools were pursuing. If an athlete wants to transfer to UVa but isnât accepted, itâs not because UVa has much higher standards than other schools but because the athlete has a really, really poor academic record. In short, our standards for athletes have been lower for a long time, at least 30-35 years. To give you one example, one of our most outstanding athletes a few decades ago (and Iâm not specifying itâs basketball cuz itâs not) had a total SAT score of 400 when the lowest score you could achieve was 400.
Is that the fabled âpoints for writing your name on the testâ situation?
From my pretty limited knowledge, admissions is not the issue with transfers. Itâs the lack of compatible majors for the many of them, and the rule about minimum credit hours being done at UVA in order to graduate.
Xavier Amos last year was a good exampleâŚadmissions cleared him, no problem. But he would have needed to switch majors and that would have set him back academically, needing more summer school to catch up. So he went the easier route at Wisconsin where he didnât have those problems.
Absolutely.
I was 18 or 19 then and coming into my first year so I cant speak to if it was Coach Odoms dream job but I do think Coach Holland felt he himself was important enough to dictate who his successor would be.
My guess is any ACC job would have been Coach Odoms dream so to speak and he did pretty good at Wake
A good point. Itâs also true that some schools (Michigan is an example) have a âgeneral studiesâ major, meaning you can pick and choose courses from multiple departments. I expect that allows them to find the easiest courses to pass. At UVa there are inter-disciplinary majors, but they are often tougher than a departmental major.
Why donât we just make an Echols scholarship for athletes. Call it Merkelâs then call it a day.
Honestly not a bad move⌠if you remember Echols Scholars could take any class they wanted and graduate with an interdisciplinary degree.