OSU coach Jerry Walsh, on limiting NCAA hockey teams to one full-time
assistant coach:
 
"But on the other side, that's what I've been dealing with for years.  I've
only had one full-time assistant and half of another assistant here for years."
 
A response, posted on this list:
 
"If for some reason OSU should decide it is not prepared to work as
hard to field a DivI hockey team as many other schools, then so be it,
but don't try to field such a team by bringing everyone else down."
 
The respondant's attitude wouldn't surprise me if it were a minority
opinion, but nobody on the list has come forward to challenge it, and
that is disturbing. Does *everybody* out there equate de-emphasizing
athletics with respect to academics with "not working hard"? Another
example of this sort of reaction came from Jack Parker last year, when
the number of hockey scholarships was cut back. Parker said (this is a
paraphrase, but one which I think is accurate) "the NCAA is forcing us
to compete with not enough players". I guess by Parker's definition
that means the non-scholarship schools have for years fielded teams and
won championships with NO players!
 
Everybody knows that the NCAA is starkly hypocritical in cutting back
the resources of other sports while allowing the big-time basketball
and football programs, whose infractions and excesses provided the
public impetus for the "academics first" movement in the first place,
to do whatever they want. But just because the NCAA can't keep its
hands out the till long enough to do the right thing with those sports
is no reason to dismiss the general attempt to reassert academic
integrity in college athletics.
 
Greg