Playing professionally, Gustav aftermath and tennis brackets - Sep 04, 2008 | 10:37:50
posted by: Howard Smith
- You've likely heard the following phrase during an NCAA public service announcement: "There are over 380,000 NCAA student-athletes, and most of them will go pro in something other than sports." To prove this, here are the estimated calculations for how many student-athletes actually play professionally. Did you know only 1.2 percent of NCAA men's basketball student-athletes play professionally? Long odds like this are the reason why academics are so important for student-athletes.
- One former basketball student-athletes who is playing professionally is Zach Freeman, a 2007 graduate of Division III Illinois Wesleyan. Freeman currently plays in Germany, and he recently wrote a guest blog about his college experiences and how difficult the transition was to a foreign country. Freeman wrote about when he was 14 and was told he would never be any good. Now he is playing professionally. Congratulations to Zach and we hope to hear from him again in the near future.
- LSU has postponed its football game this Saturday versus Troy after Hurricane Gustav ripped through Baton Rouge. Frankly, this is probably the prudent move by the athletics department, especially since both Troy and LSU have a common off-date later in the season for the game to be rescheduled.
- Yesterday, we talked with Jim Miller, the athletics director at New Orleans. Ironically, we caught up with him as he was driving back to New Orleans for the first time since evacuating this weekend. Miller shared insight into the evacuation process and how his school - and the city in general - was much better prepared than for Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
- Hawaii has changed its campus housing policy so that same-sex couples that can prove joint responsibility are now live together in campus housing. This issue was brought to the spotlight when a same-sex couple filed a lawsuit challenging the rules that only allowed married couples to live together on campus. It would seem that this case could potentially open up the floodgates for individuals in similar situations all around the country. What do you think about Hawaii's move?
- Last night in the U.S. Open quarterfinals, fourth-seeded Serena Williams defeated her older sister, seventh-seeded Venus, in two sets, 7-6, 7-6. Here's what I have never understood about tennis draws - since it is a true bracket (and players are not reseeded each round), why aren't the quarterfinal matchups 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, and so on? Instead, tennis tournaments always hold draws before tournaments, and unfortunately for the Williams sisters, they had to meet early in the tournament. Do you agree with the way tennis tournaments have a "random draw" or would you rather see a true bracket, like the NCAA Basketball Tournament?
