UVA may have lost on Sunday to Tennessee, cancelling dreams of the Sweet Sixteen and a national championship. But Wahoo fans can sleep at night knowing that at least they made the academic Final Four.
Using data from the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, the publication Inside Higher Ed played out the tourney as if games were won based on graduation rates of teams’ players. When the dust clears for the Final Four, Holy Cross, Florida, Michigan State and Virginia are all still dancing. (Holy Cross was the ultimate winner).
Graduation figures for the Cavs put them in the top 10 among the 65 teams in the tournament. While UVA graduated 100 percent of its white players within six years based on entering men’s basketball players from 1996 to 1999, its rate for African-American players varied from 56 percent to 71 percent, depending on whether transfer students were counted as nongraduates.
Other organizations also used the occasion of the NCAA tournament to push their agenda. The Americans For Prosperity (AFP) released a ranking of the teams based on the amount of money the universities have spent on national lobbying efforts, theorizing that this correlates to “millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded pork-barrel earmarks.” In the AFP’s listing, UVA places No. 41 of 65, having spent $670,000 on national lobbying from 1998 to 2006. Were the tourney to have played out as if games were won based on lobbying, UVA would have been drubbed in the first round by the Great Danes of eventual champion Albany, which spent $9.9 million.
Maybe we’re all better off just letting basketball tournaments play out based on, well, basketball games.
C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.
