Let's face it, why did you come to the U? Most everyone posting here would say 'to get an education', not play sports. The U is academics first and has been since the Malcom Moos days when the U decided to de-emphasize sports in favor of becoming a pre-eminant grant research institution, and they've been highly successful! Now they seem to be awakening to the fact that the public face of the school is, unfortunately, not academics but a national sports perspective. An example is Boise State. High profile in football success but non-existant academic cred, laughingly small grant research. They don't even have alumni to run their school, mostly Berkley grads in charge. Are BSU degrees highly thought of? Get real, I won't hire BSU grads, if you actually find any. Less than 10% of their fan base are grads (of any school).
The U's athletic problem is too many years of mediocrity and diverting 'the flow' around the state where even the best in state talent wouldn't go to the U but would rather be in Madison or elsewhere. It's going to take a while to rebuild the public face and mentality and make it a 'destination' again, like in the 30's and 40's when football was 4 deep at every position and any one who was anyone came to the U and you had a team of seniors who win a national championship, graduate and you repeat the next season. Those teams were 'Americas teams" like Dallas likes to claim, but they were. Clem made it a place to play basketball, like him or not. Tubby will do it in a different manner but will do it. Will Brewster? Don't know, but give him some time, we gave Mason plenty of time and that managed to continue 'the flow' around Minn. The flow seems to returning a bit but it needs a lot of support to continue and grow. It needs our support.
Yes, we all want 'instant gratification' but that's not going to happen, every school wants it and many are too willing to 'bend' to make it happen. Maybe the U needs two standards, one for 'revenue' athletes and one for the rest of us. Like Cal does in football. How many think Kentucky isn't eventually going to get stung for this year's basketball success, especially if they win a national championship after last year? How did they get all these all star recruits in one batch, something just doesn't smell right and that smell will hit the fan. The difference will be that the 'snitch' won't be internal like it was against Clem because academics don't rule at Kentucky, except for those getting a masters in distilling burbon. Will they lose schollies due to a bunch of one and dones? Can't do that too many years in a row or you won't have any left. Things catch up when your competitors are bringing heat. Ask USC. Heck ask Toyota, it catches up no matter how many political strings you,ve got. It's a different world. Everyone ones looks to see why you've got something they don't.
We need to realize that it's a slow upward climb and will have to continue to absorb the pain and humiliation athletically and try trumpeting acedemic success until the teams catch up. Maybe we need academic rankings in the financial section of the paper to compensate for the sports section non-rankings. Just sayin'.
Enough of that rant.
Sorry.
