[NU Sports] OSU game highlighted Randy Walker's shortcomings

[Jeff Beamsley]

You're going to have a tough time finding other institutions that take as
much pride in their tough admissions requirements as NU does AND are private
AND play competitively in a public league.  Your down to Vandy, Stanford,
Rice, and Duke.  And, yes, none of them has a very consistent record of
football bowling.  Three of them are pretty good basketball schools, though
and admissions requirements haven't seemed to hurt there.  If this proves
anything, it is that expectations have much more to do with winning than
admissions.    
 
As far as MAJOR bowls every year, I never said that, nor have I heard anyone
else say that either.  What I have heard is a winning record, which in the
BT almost always means some sort of bowl game.  Alan has been the most
aggressive, saying consistent 8-9 win seasons, which might be construed as
major bowls.
 
What your focus on prop 48 DOES suggest is the premise that the best
football players are illiterate African Americans who don't value education.
The corollary is that institutions who value football over education will
prostitute themselves in order to admit these players and will create a
special football-student status so that they can get on the field.  The
conclusion is that institutions like NU can't compete.
 
Fortunately, it's not true.
 
NU can win football games in the BT with a team of real students who go to
class, play football, and graduate.  The reason I know that it can be done
is because it HAS been done (and was done again this year).  We never have
the fastest kids, the biggest kids, or the strongest kids, but we have
always had the smartest kids.  They played as a team, never gave up, and
were able to beat teams that had way more individual talent.
 
Will our football players who play as a team always be able to beat teams
with more talented individuals?  No.  The rose bowl is a perfect example of
a talented academically ineligible Keyshawn Johnson beating our team that
didn't send anyone to the NFL.  Over the course of a season, however, our
team should be smart enough and work hard enough to win more than it loses.
In those special years where everyone is healthy and we have lots of
seniors, we should be able to compete for the BT title, and maybe more.  
 
I think that is a reasonable expectation.  I also believe that the more the
NU faithful, administration, students, faculty, and alums that have that
expectation, the better the team will do.
Jeff

  _____  

From: Hakirsch at aol.com [mailto:Hakirsch at aol.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 1:41 PM
To: jeffb at hilgraeve.com; nwu-sports at tssi.com
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] OSU game highlighted Randy Walker's shortcomings





think this is more of the bigotry of low expectations.

The fact that a school takes a prop 48 player doesn't mean that they
automatically become more competitive unless all prop 48 players are somehow
more skilled than those that don't need that help.




I was just looking to compare other programs with high academic standards to
point out that none  consistently compete for national titles,  nor go to
major bowls in most years.  (Except ND) I believe that a program that takes
prop 48 kids(if that is still the rule number--it may have changed) is not a
program i  think compares with us- That is a different set of standards- If
none of these other programs can successfully compete at the highest levels,
I think it is unrealistic for us to expect that we can except in a small
amount of years when we get a perfect storm  going our way ---(1995/1996 we
didn't play OSU in either year, we had a bunch of kids come together at the
right time, we had overachievers, etc etc.)--This just isn't going to happen
too often-

Harry