He ain’t heavy, he’s my felon.
Today, JamesOn Curry will accept a scholarship to play basketball for Eddie Sutton at Oklahoma State. It should come as no surprise that Curry ended up with Sutton. Now that Tark is out of the picture, Sutton and Bob Huggins at Cincinnati have taken on the roles of the hosts of unwanted players. Their rosters are constantly full of transfers, Prop 48 casualties and Juco transfers. Some will say that this willingness to reach out to players with checkered pasts is a sign of a warm and trusting heart, one that believes that everyone deserves a second chance. I’m not one of the people who says that.
With Sutton, there may be some truth to the idea that he has a soft spot for troubled characters, as he himself is a bit of redeemed coach. He is a recovering alcoholic and he resurrected his career after being run off from Kentucky. At the same time though, I’m not so sure that a leopard can really change his spots, and Sutton was involved in all sorts of shady behavior at UK. If you feel the need to cheat to succeed at Kentucky, why would you not come to that same conclusion at a school with fewer resources?
Bringing in players with shady backgrounds isn’t the same thing as cheating, but it’s in the same neighborhood. Programs that are willing to pay a full scholarship to bring in a guy with a criminal background to live among the tuition-paying students probably are willing to do anything to win.
Juco and Prop 48 players aren’t the same as felons, but they bring their own risks. In most cases, guys go to junior colleges because they can’t meet NCAA eligibility requirements, so I’m going to lump them in with the Prop 48 guys. Basically, all you need is an 820 on the SAT to be eligible to play in the NCAA. An 820! That’s not much of a score, and you can actually score lower and still be eligible if your grades are high. There are only three reasons why a high school senior couldn’t achieve minimum standards – he’s just not smart enough to go to college; he’s smart enough, but too lazy to put forth any effort; or he’s smart enough but hasn’t had good enough educational opportunities. Guys in the first category have no business in college. Guys in the second category are worse, because clearly they are some pretty poor decision makers. Only guys in the third category really are worth giving another chance in a four-year university.
At schools like Cincinnati and OK State, they have so many Jucos that I really have a hard time believing that all of their players fit into the last category. Most likely, they are getting a lot of the guys who are too lazy or dumb. Add those to a few malcontent transfers (no, not all transfers are bad guys) and felons (like Curry) and you have a pretty dangerous mix. Things may go fine for a while, but eventually you’ll get some samurai incidents.