[OutsiderFan]

[quote author=OutsiderFan link=topic=17134.msg196725#msg196725 date=1502220151]
I know I'm wired differently than most people, especially on this board, but WTF is the big deal here?  Rosen speaks nothing but the unvarnished truth, so how is this even a story worth talking about?

Is it just because he isn't afraid to speak the truth?  Is this the story?  I don't get it.

I don't think Rosen is speaking truth. I think pretty much every member of the Stanford football team, as well as some of the other "smart" football schools like Duke, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt - would completely disagree with Rosen's assertion. You **CAN** do both and there are tens of thousands who do it every single year.

I think Rosen epitomizes what's wrong with a small proportion of college athletes - they forget the term STUDENT-athlete. The vast majority of scholarship athletes are "going pro in something other than sports" and playing their sport is a way to be able to obtain a college education. Rosen sees this as a pro farm system and doesn't seem to give much of a damn about academics, which is why Shaw made the right decision to not offer him a scholarship.
[/quote]

First of all, Stanford is notorious for being impossible to fail at.  I never went to Stanford, but I've heard stories from people who have, and I know this is one of the primary reasons Cal people don't like Stanford.  Its also a fact that those with fancy degrees have more opportunities than someone who has more "street smarts," didn't develop as a student on Stanford's schedule, and comes from a state school.  So it's a little presumptuous to yell from the Ivory Hoover Tower about who is the fairest of all the student athletes.

Second, not every school supports the student part of student-athlete as a priority over the athlete part.  Rosen clearly sees evidence that at UCLA the priority is the keep players eligible, not educate them.  Cal is notorious for not only offering limited support to student athletes but actually having them be targeted by anti-sports faculty.  But before you can say, "see, Stanford offers great support for athletes," and if guys cared about education they should have gone to Stanford, don't forget that all these schools when they recruit, make quite an effort to demonstrate how much they care about academics.  The truth is for the majority of programs, this is just lip service, and they really only do care about keeping guys eligible.

Be honest, winflop. If Rosen played at Stanford, you'd be lauding him as the kind of guy that speaks his mind and shows he's a real independent thinker, right?  It goes without saying that if Rosen went to Stanford, he wouldn't be pointing out the inequities of being a student athlete, because at Stanford he'd have it perfect, right?

[OutsiderFan]

[quote author=OutsiderFan link=topic=17134.msg196725#msg196725 date=1502220151]
I know I'm wired differently than most people, especially on this board, but WTF is the big deal here?  Rosen speaks nothing but the unvarnished truth, so how is this even a story worth talking about?

Is it just because he isn't afraid to speak the truth?  Is this the story?  I don't get it.

I don't think Rosen is speaking truth. I think pretty much every member of the Stanford football team, as well as some of the other "smart" football schools like Duke, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt - would completely disagree with Rosen's assertion. You **CAN** do both and there are tens of thousands who do it every single year.

I think Rosen epitomizes what's wrong with a small proportion of college athletes - they forget the term STUDENT-athlete. The vast majority of scholarship athletes are "going pro in something other than sports" and playing their sport is a way to be able to obtain a college education. Rosen sees this as a pro farm system and doesn't seem to give much of a damn about academics, which is why Shaw made the right decision to not offer him a scholarship.
[/quote]

First of all, Stanford is notorious for being impossible to fail at.  I never went to Stanford, but I've heard stories from people who have, and I know this is one of the primary reasons Cal people don't like Stanford.  Its also a fact that those with fancy degrees have more opportunities than someone who has more "street smarts," didn't develop as a student on Stanford's schedule, and comes from a state school.  So it's a little presumptuous to yell from the Ivory Hoover Tower about who is the fairest of all the student athletes.

Second, not every school supports the student part of student-athlete as a priority over the athlete part.  Rosen clearly sees evidence that at UCLA the priority is the keep players eligible, not educate them.  Cal is notorious for not only offering limited support to student athletes but actually having them be targeted by anti-sports faculty.  But before you can say, "see, Stanford offers great support for athletes," and if guys cared about education they should have gone to Stanford, don't forget that all these schools when they recruit, make quite an effort to demonstrate how much they care about academics.  The truth is for the majority of programs, this is just lip service, and they really only do care about keeping guys eligible.

Be honest, winflop. If Rosen played at Stanford, you'd be lauding him as the kind of guy that speaks his mind and shows he's a real independent thinker, right?  It goes without saying that if Rosen went to Stanford, he wouldn't be pointing out the inequities of being a student athlete, because at Stanford he'd have it perfect, right?