Sports Still No Ticket Out of the Ghetto

Summary

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Only a microscopic fraction of the thousands of Black male college basketball and football players will ever don a professional uniform. Even more embarrassing, the majority of them won't graduate. The NCAA report found that though 60 percent of athletes at Division 1 schools graduate in six years, only slightly more than 40 percent of Black male athletes graduate. For basketball players, the figure is a dismal 35 percent. And even more embarrassing, many of these athletes will skip through three or four years at colleges and still emerge as educational cripples.

Major colleges have a huge vested interest in keeping their well-oiled athletic assembly lines moving smoothly. It means hard dollars. Major NCAA universities bag millions in revenue from its athletics programs. In the two major revenue-generating sports, basketball and football, Blacks make up respectively 50 and 70 percent of the college players. The message in this shameful sports saga is that Black parents whose sons are involved in athletic programs, and who harbor delusions of pro sport fame and fortune, must hold coaches, teachers and school administrators accountable for their children's courses, grades and campus activities. They must make it clear that if their sons or daughters don't perform in the classroom, they don't get to perform on the field or the court.

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Extract

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Sports Still No Ticket Out of the Ghetto

NEW YORK, N.Y.--The sports world buzzed when Robert L. Johnson made history as the first African-American to become the majority owner of a professional sports organization when the NBA Board of Governors granted him the expansion Charlotte NBA franchise on Jan. ...

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