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Wednesday, August 31, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Victory just the first step in earning title of champs
"We've lost a whole generation and a half of people who were potential lawyers, doctors and what-have-you, because they were all caught up in bouncing a basketball and running with a football . . . " Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.
The score is 83-79, and it will stand that way forever. Thousands of T-shirts, bumpers stickers and posters confirm what the nation already knows: When it counted, the Univer-
sity Kansas had the best college basketball team in the nation.
Now the athletic department, coaches and faculty of KU who worked closely with the young men to help them achieve their dream can relax and know they've produced champions, right? But consider:
- The Kansas basketball team's national title victory was an upset largely because two players, junior college transfer Joe Young and player Marvin Branch, were declared academically ineligible.
- Superstar tennis recruit Marco Cacopardo is practically signed, sealed and delivered to the red-hot Kansas tennis program, but after failing three times to meet the minimum criteria, he was invited to the NCAA's Proposition 48, and decides to turn pro.
KU appears to be as guilty as all of these schools with more high-powered sports programs. The athletic program here is quickly building a long list of athletes ineligible to play because they are not minimal college or high school academic requirements.
Illegal recruitment can cost an athletic program scholarships, and bowl game and television appearances. Bringing a high school athlete with minimal knowledge and little sense of responsibility into college simply to win games can cost him
It is not impossible for someone who barely passed high school or had low college-board scores to succeed in college. But many athletes are forced to try and do so while practicing sports a day and facing the numerous distractions of college life.
To bring an athlete into the glory world of big-time college athletics, use his athletic skills and then turn him out into the real world, knowing he severely lags behind his peers in knowledge and knowledge, is a gross waste of precious years of life.
Coach Paterno once told a heavily recruited player, who had a 2.0 grade point average in high school, that he could play at Penn State only if he read a dozen books over the spring and premier and submitted a book report on each one to Paterno's wife.
The young man read the books, did the reports, and went on to become a successful Penn State football player. Without Paterno's ultimatum, the young man probably would have left Harvard, but he became a B student in criminal justice at Penn State.
Although this may be an extreme example, it proves that interest in a recruit's athletic abilities and academic skill can go.
Opinion
No matter how talented an athlete is, if he or she has failed miserably in high school and have little chance of succeeding in college without many hours of work or junior college, he or she should be considered hands-off by KU athletics.
KU often has taken the lead in academic and athletic integrity. It now must take the lead in showing what it certainly believes, that an athlete's long-term future is much more important than his immediate athletic performance.
If any KU student is turned out into the real world without the skills and the sense of responsibility to make a contribution to society, then the University has failed that young person in its mission.
But if all students, athletes and non-athletes, are able to use their KU experience to make the world a better place, only then will that student and the University be considered a champion.
Mark Tilford for the editorial board
News staff
Todd Cohen ... Editor
Michael Horak ... Managing editor
Jule Adam ... Associate editor
Stephen Wade ... New editor
Michael Merschel ... Editorial editor
Noel Gendes ... Campus editor
Crisp Artigia ... Sports editor
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Dave Eames ... Graphics editor
Jill Kirk Features ... Artificial Intelligence
Tom Ebien ... General manager, new advisor
Business staff
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Darren Cole... Retail sales manager
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Linda Prokop... National sales manager
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Michael Lehman... Classified manager
Hannah Langer... Sales manager
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Be a freshman, in just one week
But don't let dad and gramps know just how much you're pampered
(ring-ring.)
"Hello." "Dad?"
"Son, good to learn from you. Your mother and
you wonder about your first week on Mount
Olympus."
"It's been great, Dad. The first night we . . ."
"It's been great, Dad. The first night we know, they have it easy. You know that don't you, son?"
"Sav what Dad?"
"They pamper you at KU these days. Have I ever told you the stories your great-grandfather used to tell about his days at KU back in the early years?"
"Well. Dad, actually .
"That's very interesting. Dad. You know
There was no Hawk Week or anti-hazing law in those days, son. Back then, class conflict meant more than just societal friction. Every May the freshmen, sophomores and juniors would fight each other, just to keep things straight. Once, the freshmen and sophomores rumbled during chapel hours, and sophomores rumbled in those days, you know — and ended up blinding the eyes of any faculty who tried to stop them.
"Yes, Grandfather used to tell me about his freshman days in 1904. The sophomore class published and distributed a pamphlet about freshmen. It read like this:
Ye Odorous offal of the barn yards of Kansas.
Derek Schmidt
baffling mysteries of the Odorless Companies known
only by your vile stink and hence called
FRESHMEN
To Hell With You
Staff columnist
How came you to thus sneak and crawl on the Campus;
oul; the gall, of a lot of sniveling, wild-eye asinine and wallowing hybrid, dirty swine. Get ye back into your bottles, With your hides of many mottles, Your advent upon the campus Is against KU a crime
That's pretty potent stuff, huh, son?"
"Yeah, Dad, Today.
"But all that was good for the kids. Built character. After a time, those freshmen became daring and resourceful, not soft like the kids today. Grandfather once tipped an outhouse, gambled and made the billboard parlor all in the same night. Yes, KU made real men in those days. Don't be so
besitant son. Tell me about your week.'
"Well, Dad, I carried my carload of stuff up six flights of stairs to a cold, cramped and dirty dorm room; went looking for Hoch Auditortium and took some samples from it in the Laboratory; mixed my colors in the wash to produce pastel underwear; subscribed to four newspapers in front of the Union; stood in line for three hours to pay fees; bought the wrong books; got a ticket for driving the wrong way on a one-way road; got into a restaurant; cursed a bunch of skateboards on Wesco beach; brought a fake I.D.; got some brews at Johnny's; drank myself sick at a party in the Towers; dumped detergent in the Chi O fountain; laid papered the Gamma Phi'ts tree; lost $20 in poker; and realized I forgot to pack my shirts.
"That's a busy week son "
"That was just Monday, Dad, and there's more. We were trying to pick up some cute girls when sheefty guys with greek letters on their shirts threw us in the Chi-O fountain."
"Before or after the detergent?"
"You alright, son?"
"Sure. Dad, they pamper us here at KU remember?"
Derek Schmidt is an Independence junior major in journalism
Bush's problem with the pledge
For a long time, I've advocated a law that would require all Americans to recite the Pledge of Allegiance when they go to their jobs and begin work. And before they pick up their navvackes.
And I've supported proposals that require the pledge to be recited at any and all public gatherings.
For example, why isn't the pledge required of movie audiences before a film is shown? Or at a play or sporting event? And why aren't restaurant employees given to recite the pledge when they are given their table?
My position on this issue is well known. I was the first journalist to urge laws that prohibit a bartender from serving a drink to anyone who hasn't stood at the bar and given the oledge.
And I was also the first to demand a law making it mandatory for passengers on airplanes to recycle the pledged aluminum and expand this law to cover subway trains, buses, cabs, amusement park rides and other forms of waste.
Oh, sure. he's gone on and on about wanting children to recite the pledge in school. But that's an easy cop-out. Everybody knows that kids enjoy pledge training to delay the moment the teacher calls for it.
But I've noticed something very troubling about this presidential campaign
Besides, most kids don't even know what the pledge means. Most of them say "invisible" instead of "indivisible." Who knows how many kids grew up confused about why a teacher would
Vice President George Bush has not said one word about this issue.
Mike
Royko
Syndicated columnist
want us to be one invisible nation.
But to get back to Bush and his lack of a strong stance on the pledge. I have looked over all of his position papers and news stories going back years and years.
In other words, it seems that Bush doesn't even care if adult Americans are ever asked to do what he asks of children — to stand up and be counted, even if they think they are in favor of being
Not once have I seen anything that indicates he supports anyone but children being required to work in a factory.
"Isn't that rather odd? Consider for a moment, have you ever heard of American children selling stuff made out of plastic?"
But there has been many a secret sold by military personnel and other government employ
Yet Bush has not uttered one peep about the pledge being given every morning in all military mess halles, orderly rooms, barracks and latries and on all ships at sea. Or even those docked.
Lately, Bush has started asking audiences at the Democratic debate to pledge, as he did at the Republican convention.
That might impress the audiences and look good
on TV. But it is strictly for public consumption. It concludes a showdown omission on Rush's art
Actually, it is worse than that. If it has meetings, the senior staff never recites the pledge.
I have discovered that bush's own senior staff does not recite the Pledge of Allegiance when it happens.
Nor does Bush's junior staff, or even his in-between staff.
And they don't even try to conceal this lack of belief. They ask the judge, asked
Well, do they at least say a prayer?
How about the National Anthem. Do they sing it?
"No. Who will ask you this?"
The fact the she had to ask why she was being asked makes me ask whether they realize how grave this situation is if they don't, they should ask.
Someone might wonder why I don't put these same questions to Michael Dukakis and his staff.
Why bother? He's a Democrat, suspected of being a liberal, and we all know what they're like.
being a liberal, and we all know what they're like. But I would expect more of Bush, a Republican who doesn't support the middle class.
Incidentally, I asked Bush's old New England prep school if the students there recite the pledge
I just don't know what to believe in anymore.
Mike Royko is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Chicago Tribune
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed