NFL's A Nonprofit? Author Says It's Time For Football Reform
On why schools like Virginia Tech, which has one of the best player graduation rates in the industry, don't brag about their success
You never hear that because that's bad for business. The NCAA doesn't want to talk about graduation rates. Division I football players [have an] overall graduation rate of 55 percent. That's not only below students at the comparable universities as a whole — football players should graduate at a higher rate. They get five years. They don't have to pay for college. They get special tutoring. It's never mentioned by the NCAA or any of its partner networks because it's bad for business. Three years ago, Stanford and Virginia Tech met in the Orange Bowl. That game was the highest combined graduation rate in football bowl history, and neither the network nor the NCAA said anything about it. They want the bar to be kept low.
... [Virginia Tech has] 20 consecutive winning seasons at the big-deal football level and 77 percent graduation rate ... for its football players. Very admirable track record. Most colleges don't have admirable track records. Some places, it's terrible. LSU, when they won the national championship five years ago — their football graduation rate was 44 percent. But did you hear that on ESPN? Fox? CBS? Of course not.
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