Has Baseball’s Graduation Gap Already Been Solved?

The College Sports Research Institute at the University of North Carolina released their most recent review of graduation rate data for student-athletes. This round included a surprising data point, especially given the common perception that academic problems are concentrated in football and men’s basketball: Division I baseball players are 17.9 percentage points less likely to […]


The Great Manipulator

If you read enough war memoirs, or if you have seen “Saving Private Ryan” or “Platoon” (and you have), then you know that soldiers on the front lines do not fight for their country. They fight for one another. They fight to survive. The University of Connecticut won the women’s national basketball championship on Tuesday […]


The Many Answers to How Much Do College Athletes Get

One of the hardest starting points in the debate over whether college athletes get enough is agreeing on what they get right now. There is not even widespread agreement on whether college athletics results in athletes getting a net positive or costing them money. Depending on how you look at it, the value of what […]


Larry Scott, Ed Rush and Their Pac of Problems

I’ve got bad news for Ed Rush: What happens in Vegas does not necessarily stay in Vegas. The Ed Rush story is more than 14 hours old as I type this sentence and the Pac-12 Director of Officiating still has a job. If he still holds that position 14 hours from now, I will be […]


Optimizing the Money Spent to Get to the Final Four

An exciting NCAA men’s basketball season is quickly coming to a close.  This past weekend, the Final Four was set, as Louisville, Michigan, Syracuse and Wichita State all won games to punch their ticket to Atlanta.  A look at these team’s finances provides an interesting glimpse at how probable or improbable each respective team’s journey […]


Admissions and Financial Aid Changes Could Rock College Sports

Proclaiming the growing disconnect between college sports and universities themselves is a popular pastime these days. Coaching salaries, facilities, per-student spending, reform efforts, and treatment of athletes all provide examples of how athletics are fundamentally different than the rest of the college to which they are attached. But outside of all but the most radical […]


Does the Best Team Win? Do You Care?

Anyone who has ever taken the bar exam, the CPA exam, or even the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) understands one axiom: Some games are bigger than others. To attend law school is to know that a semester’s worth of study can unravel in just a day or two – a few hours, really – […]


The Statistics of a One and Done Player

Throughout the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, many commentators will reference the “one and done” nature of some of the country’s top basketball programs.  Coaches, like Kentucky’s John Calipari will face the scrutiny of Americans for their players’ decisions to leave college after only one year to pursue a dream of playing in the NBA.  While […]


Syracuse Case Shows Path for Enforcement Reform

The news that Syracuse’s men’s basketball team is under NCAA investigation is not that surprising. The Orange has perfected the art of the “March Surprise”, with news of some misfortune or scandal dropping days or even hours before the NCAA tournament starts the last two years. And there had been some smoke around the Syracuse […]


I Need Dollars. Dollars Is What I Need

The dimes, they are a changin’… Earlier this week Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany told Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples that if a federal court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in the case of Ed O’Bannon vs. the NCAA, a ruling that would compel participating schools to share television revenues with student-athletes, that he could […]


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