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Condemning all of college athletics because of one individual situation or even the collective one and dones that represent a fraction of a percentage of student athletes is completely misguided IMO.
If there is any farce here its that people want to hold onto some romanticized notion of amateurism when billions of dollars are being made off of power 5 conference football and high major/NCAA tournament basketball.
Ben Simmons is a college freshman who knows he has a 7 figure job offer coming in a few months. After meeting eligibility requirements for the first semester he's likely blowing off class- like many other non athlete college freshman btw- and not too interested in the student part of being a student-athlete at this point in time. Who is being harmed here? What is the "problem" we are trying to solve? What difference does it make to any of us if Ben Simmons has a 1.8 or a 2.0 GPA?
The APR is the NCAA's current rule to incentivize member institutions to ensure its student-athletes are indeed working toward completing their degrees. Like most things with the NCAA there is tremendous room for improvement but there are measures in place to address the supposed problem here.
As someone who worked briefly in the athletic department of a D1 school-and has several close friends who still work at various levels of athletic administration- I feel very strongly about many of the problems associated with college athletics. Worrying about a future millionaire's second semester/freshman year GPA is not one of them.
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