Texas Struggling With Whether to Retire Kevin Durant’s Number
by edwzipper on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 08:37am
One transcendant year. Player of the year honors.
Maybe half a season of progress toward an academic degree. Retire the jersey of a guy who was pretty much at the academic institution for a sport?
Sure. Why not? Why pretend that academics is still a part of the biggest of big-time athletes. And why pretend that progress toward same is necessary to acknowledge the greatness of players who pass through on their way toward wealth?
At any rate, from the Texas AD:
“[AD] Dodds said there are “some issues” with retiring jerseys of players who haven’t yet graduated from the school. ‘You’d rather see them graduate’ before a jersey is retired, Dodds said. Texas, however, retired basketball player T.J. Ford’s jersey in 2004 before Ford got his degree. Ford, the consensus national player of the year in 2003, is enrolled in summer school as he continues to work toward graduation. ‘In this day and age, with these kids who excel so much so early, graduating is probably not going to happen as much as we’d like,’ Dodds said. ‘But Kevin left Texas in good academic standing and has promised to keep working toward his degree.’”
Oh for gawdssake. Just retire his jersey because he turned in perhaps the finest season of any player ever for the Longhorns. But don’t try and convince anyone if you do it’s because he’s going to work toward his degree.