Very few elite academic universities actually live up to those standards for their student athletes at the football and basketball levels. And even if their athletes are better than the average athlete at other schools they are, on average, subpar to the rest of their respective schools' academic profiles. Just the way of the world.
Oh that's true everywhere, UCLA, even Stanford.
What I'm talking about is the double standard in the media. To be fair Norlander did do a 2nd story where he pointed out many people are skeptical of how Bagley qualified,but in that article he called those people Duke haters implying it's jealousy. Again his own employers 18 months ago were speculating Bagley(and Ayton) would never qualify for D1 and they mean 18 for Bagley not 17.
Either their information then was wrong, or it's incredibly easy for athletes to get credits these days and I frankly think it's the latter.
That's the system I don't blame Bagley or Duval for abusing it but I do blame the media for not being honest and I blame the NCAA. in jan 2016 they passed a new rule specifically aimed at stopping this sort of abuse of online education to rack up credits and core classes late in the game. They estimated 8% of the incoming freshman basketball players that year were going to be impacted by that rule. And 18 months later Bagley does it and nobody bats an eye?
He literally completed his senior year of HS, online, in 2 months, all the while competing in the EYBL which meant he was on the road Fri-Mon virtually every week. I assume it's possible, child actors do it,but I kind of doubt Bagley had a team of teachers and tutors following him around like actors do.
It is the system in place I get that I just don't want to hear all year again from ESPN et al what a great academic institution Duke is, they have gone to essentially the same path Calipari has and yet there's still this perception in the national media that calipari is bad for the game and Coach K is good.