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Arne Duncan’s Ultimate Bracket Challenge

Arne Duncan’s Ultimate Bracket Challenge
3/17/2011
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Alexis Mattera

Selection Sunday has come and gone and your brackets should be ready to go. You’re probably feeling pretty confident about your choices and talking a bit of trash to other participants in your pool (I am...I went to UConn) but if Arne Duncan has his way, those brackets could look very different in the near future.

The Secretary of Education proposed that NCAA teams failing to graduate at least 40 percent of their players are barred from post-season tournament play. The impact would be significant – based on the annual study conducted by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, men's teams from Arkansas Pine Bluff, Baylor, California, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Louisville, Maryland, Missouri, New Mexico State, Tennessee and Washington would all be ineligible this year (that’s nearly an entire region of participants wiped out) – but Duncan is confident teams will find this "low bar" relatively easy to clear and believes the rule would immediately improve academic results.

Of course, there is some pushback: An NCAA spokesman said the rule would unfairly penalize current players for graduation rates of students from previous years and the NCAA already imposes academic sanctions on schools that fail to maintain education standards under the Academic Progress Rate. Most schools offer extra assistance to student-athletesXavier’s Sister Rose Ann Fleming makes all players attend at least 10 hours of study hall every week and Maryland spends more than $1 million every year to support student-athletes' academics, a number that doesn’t reflect its 8-percent graduation rate reported by the UCF study – but it’s not enough for Duncan. "If you can't graduate two out of five of your players, I just think your priorities are out of whack," Duncan, a former Harvard basketball star, said. "What it tells me is there is a lack of institutional commitment."

In your opinion, is Duncan’s full-court press a good idea or is the current zone defense on academics working just fine? Would you invite him into your bracket pool?

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