Doug Doughty’s local colleges notebook in today’s Roanoke Times details a conversation between Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim and Roanoke coach Page Moir regarding Syracuse’s Billy Edelin transferring to Roanoke for his senior season.
In short, Edelin was likely headed for eligibility problems at Syracuse, and if that’s the case, how is he going to transfer and be eligible at a Division III school? Forget the entire question about what such a transfer would do to the chemistry of a team — one would have to question whether someone in shaky academic standing even merits being admitted to a D-III school.
There’s nothing wrong in general with players transferring from Division I schools. It happens pretty regularly. Some pan out, some don’t, but often an athlete moves up to Division III to become a student-athlete, to concentrate more on education, to have fun playing basketball instead of it being a job.
I could name some not-in-the-spirit-of-Division-III transfers, but I think D-III veterans probably already have some idea of what those would be.
In short, Division III is not a pit stop for someone on the way up from or the way down to Division I. Don’t use us like that. If you’re here to be serious about your education, we welcome you. Otherwise… try a different division.
Amen to that, Pat. D3 has to stand for something besides excellence on the court or the field.
Is it an “R” school thing? Rowan … Roanoke … who next?
Could be … there are a number of possibilities, including OtteRbein, WittenbeRg, WoosteR, HaRdin-Simmons, McMuRRy, MacalesteR, MaRy HaRdin-BayloR — and, of course, Rice.
He can go to D3 “R” schools down the highway from Syracuse…. RPI or RIT or Rochester
More likely the R he will be dealing with is Rejected academically
Do we have a little “r”everse snobbery going on here? Not all D-III atheletes are “R”hodes scholar quality. Some of them fail academically, too.
Yes, but when they fail out of one D-III school they typically don’t have a good shot to get into another.
‘Snobbery’? I don’t think so. Rather, realism. While there are some D3 institutions that will accept warm bodies whose major academic qualification is a beating heart, the difference between most D3 venues and most of those in the lower divisions is notable.
An athlete who “wants” to flunk out can do so in any of the divisions; there’s only so much that faculty members and coaches can do.
oh man, don’t even get me started on the whole snobbery thing!
U. S. News and World Report ranks Syracuse #52 out of 248 National Universities (i.e. top 25%). They rank Roanoke in Tier 3 (bottom 50%) of 217 Liberal Arts Colleges. One could conclude from this that Syracuse is a superior academic instution to Roanoke.
Syracuse is a major research institution that essentially contracts people to showcase their athletic skills before large crowds of paying customers. Roanoke isn’t and doesn’t.
These two venues are located in altogether different academic and athletic universes.
BTW what was Edelin’s major?
This conversation dissapoints me. I attended a D-III school and believe strongly in what D-III stands for. I believe D-III atheletes are the true student atheletes of our time. But I don’t think this should be a forum for attempting to tout the superiority of D-III over other institutions that approach their athletic and academic programs differently. Nor do I think it should be used to, it seems to me, demean a young man because he struggled academically at a D-I school. All D-III schools are not superior academically to all D-I schools. And who’s to say that the young man in question cannot succeed academically at Roanoke. He may be better off there precisely because the atmosphere and emphasis on athletics are different. We should be above the kind of rhetoric that has been posted here. And, Pat Coleman, can you defend your post #7 above with facts?
I would point to the eligibility rules that state that someone who is not academically eligible at one NCAA school is not eligible at the school he/she transfers to.
One could also conclude, by the way, that Syracuse, with 10,665 full-time undergraduates, has room to hide some special admits than Roanoke, with 1,742.
Draw your own conclusion.
Given the accuracy of #13, Edelin is either eligible at Syracuse, and therefore presumably eligible at Roanoke, or ineligible at both institutions.
I think you have a terrifice website, but I think you are talking down to the rest of the higher education community in some of the things you have said here. Someone at an institution in another division, or in NAIA, reading your comments could esaily be offended and probably take issue with what you have said much more efectively than I can.
If Edelin is is academically ineligible at Syracuse — if — then he’s also ineligible at Roanoke or any other NCAA member institution. That much ought to be clear.
Question #1: In what way is Pat ‘talking down to the rest of the higher education community’? That’s a pretty sweeping assertion.
Question #2: What is ‘offensive’ in what Pat said?
This is what I find offensive and feel is talking down to the rest of the higher education community:
“In short, Division III is not a pit stop for someone on the way up from or the way down to Division I. Don’t use us like that. If you’re here to be serious about your education, we welcome you. Otherwise… try a different division.”
Obviously others hear it differently.
I guess my take on this is the same as it always is. We’re here to celebrate what’s good about Division III — among which is that the kids have to be serious about their education because, as the NCAA reminds us every March, they are “going pro in something other than sports.”
Someone else can celebrate those other divisions.
To emphasize this point, excerpts from a piece in today’s Oshkosh (Wis.) Northwestern. Emphasis mine.
Andrew Gebel, a two-sport star in football and baseball at Oshkosh West, was also on the radar of several Division II schools, including Minnesota-Crookston, the school of choice for West football teammate Theo Powell.
While Division II schools were offering partial athletic scholarships, Gebel passed on the money for tradition and excellence. He will play football at UW-La Crosse …
“You know that (everybody around you) wants to be there,” Gebel said. “You know that they want to work, you know that they are there because they want to. It’s not because of a scholarship, it’s because they love the sport.”
…
“I talked to a lot of D3 athletes and they couldn’t be happier where they are,” Gebel said. “For D2 athletes, it’s more of a job. D3 athletes want to be there and compete.”
I concur completely with your last two posts. And I concur that we should be celebrating what is good about D3. I am acquainted with the mother of a young man who transferred from a D2 school to play his final 3 semesters at a D3 school. He was much happier after the transfer.
I know nothing about Billy Edelin, but shouldn’t he be allowed the same opportunity? The implication of your original post is that he isn’t serious about his education. Is it possible that might change if he is allowed to have the D3 experience?
I’m not going to comment on what you think I implied — that doesn’t seem like it can get me anywhere. 🙂
Handled like a seasoned politician!!
I’m also wondering if Jim Boeheim sees Mr. Edelin as someone who is out of place at Syracuse, but believes he has the necessary ingredients to succeed in a different college environment and contribute to another school’s basketball program. Given that I am an alum of another ODAC school, you’d think I would be against a D1 player transferring to a competing school. I say, give the kid a chance.
“Handled like a seasoned politician!!”?
If I didn’t know better, I’d take that as a gratuitous shot at Pat Coleman. Surely you didn’t mean it to be, right?
While we don’t know all the details of the situation with Edelin, we do have to wonder why Boeheim was shopping him around to a D3 venue such as Roanoke.
The “kid” does deserve a chance — he’s a human being, after all. At the same time, one might argue that he had his [athletic and academic] “chance” at Syracuse and blew it.
Not meant as a gratuitous shot at Pat at all. I just didn’t put a smiley face at the end of the sentence.
So you’re saying Edelin only deserves one chance?
Here’s my point boiled down in a nutshell:
If he leaves Syracuse, he can’t play at another D-I school because his eligibility will expire. I don’t think a D-III school should take him in under those circumstances.
Robooh, I don’t know if you were a D-III fan at the time when another rule loophole made it possible to use your fourth year of eligibility at the D-III level even if you lost a year at D-I because of Prop 48. That was not within the spirit of Division III at all. (The D-III membership closed the loophole after it was exploited to the tune of a national title.) While this isn’t as grave a spiritual violation, it’s still something we should guard against, in my opinion, which is why I praised Roanoke’s stance.
I’ve only been actively following D3 for 4 years.
I can’t find where you explained Roanoke’s stance, much less praised it. What was Roanoke’s stance? Help me out and point me to that.
I cited a Roanoke Times column in my original post. Roanoke’s stance is quite clear if you read it.
I think this is going to have to be my last response to you on this. If you didn’t read the column cited in the original post then I am wasting my time trying to explain myself.
If Edelin is struggling academically at Syracuse, I thnk he’ll find Roanoke easier. Roanoke is on par with Lynchburg in terms of academics from all these different rankings I’ve seen, and other than the workload, LC is no Syracuse by any means (depending on what your major is you would wish you went to Syracuse instead, example: Nursing major). So I’d assume, based on the rankings, that Roanoke and Lynchburg would be about the same.
I did read the column cited in your original post. The article makes Roanoke’s stance clear. However, I cannot find anything you wrote in the original post which explicitly explains or praises that stance. Perhaps it is my failure for not putting the two things together.
Hopefully Billy Edelin can go to college somewhere and get a degree, whether or not he plays basketball.
I agree that this has gone on long enough. I appreciate your responsiveness. I presume you view your website as a form of journalism and that the things you say may result in reactions from readers which might not always agree with you, just as with news items in other media. You said previously, in response to something I posted on another subject, that the important thing about this feature of your website is that people get to talk. We have certainly done that!
To “scottie2hottieLC” I say thanks for your post #28. I presume the LC means Lynchburg College.
In perhaps the last word on this subject, it was announced today that Billy Edelin has enrolled at Mountain State University, an NAIA school in West Virginia.
I am not posting because I want to have the last word. I just want to say that I think the outcome in this situation is a very good one for everyone — Edelin, the NCAA, Division 3, and potentially for the Mountain State University basketball team.
Mountain State University is considered by U. S. News and World Report to be a Comprehensive College-Bachelor’s (South Region) and is ranked in Tier 4 of the 105 colleges of its type in that region.
The article cited in post #30 is informative regarding at least some of the reasons why Edelin was likely headed for eligibility problems at Syracuse. Unfortunately, it is not clear from either that article or the Roanoke Times article if Edelin was getting satisfactory grades or not. In any case I hope he can succeed both academically and athletically at Mountain State.