Another Astounding Fact From NCAA Basketball News – Involving Colleges Towson State and UNC Wilmington

And Another Reminder of the Big Business Aspects of College Basketball

As exciting as the NCAA basketball tournament is, everyone needs a reminder that this is really just a very big business, a giant of the entertainment industry who goal is the same of every big business, make a lot of money.  So the colleges that play big time basketball are constantly doing just what basic economic theory says they will do, they are trying to maximize profits.

So in news that matters to no one, except fans of the D. C. area college George Mason University, that school has announced it will leave the Colonial Athletic Association (who?) and join the Atlantic 10 Conference (which of course has a lot more than 10 colleges, just as the Big 10 does not have 10 members, Big East has schools from the west and the Atlantic Coast Conference has schools far away from the ocean).

But here is the really startling part of the story.

Only seven teams competed in the CAA tournament this month. ODU and Georgia State, which is headed to the Sun Belt Conference, were ineligible because they had announced their intentions to leave the league, primarily for football reasons; and Towson and UNC Wilmington did not meet the NCAA’s minimum academic standards. (emphasis added)

Really!  How is that possible?  How is it possible for a college to have academic standards so low that they do not meet NCAA requirements?  What do these schools do, have their the Freshman year the equivalent of  Pre-K?  Do they not have classes at all?  Do their academic building exists as drawings only?  Really, we want to know.  How can a school be so deficient academically that the NCAA, an organization that grasps for every last dollar and cares nothing about the academic aspects of its student athletes won’t let them compete?