January 7, 2013

Notre Dame v. Alabama

The last time the U. of Notre Dame played for the college football championship was back in 1988. Over the decades, Notre Dame has, probably more than any other school, used football to benefit academics. 

Back in 2004, the golden dome's old golden boy Paul Hornung got fired from his radio job for advocating that Notre Dame lower admissions standards for black football players after the New York Times sportswriters denounced him as racist. For those trying to keep score at home, it's simple: being for lowered admissions standards for blacks is racist, but (as in the Supreme Court's upcoming Fisher case) so is being against them.

I did some research then on Notre Dame football recruiting, which I'll share because it's full of numbers that you don't see much of in sportswriting:

From John Steigerwald in the Valley News Dispatch:

The average SAT score of an incoming Notre Dame freshman is 1,360 [out of 1600]. The average SAT score for black high school students in 2003 was 857. The average SAT score for a white high school student in 2003 was 1,026. [Actually, those scores are for college-bound seniors. For all seniors, the averages would be lower if everybody took the test ... not to mention, all the high school dropouts would drive the averages down even lower.] The average SAT score for Notre Dame football players in 1997 (I couldn't find results from more recent years) was 899. So, Notre Dame has had lower standards for all football players for quite a while.

See if you can find a perennial Top-10 Division I football program in this list: Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Virginia, Oregon State, SMU, Pacific, Wake Forest. That's the list of the programs with the 10 highest SAT scores.

Notre Dame ranked 12th on that list. The University of Miami ranked 80th with an average SAT score of 803. Ohio State was 69th at 818. Do you think Notre Dame would be adding more white players or more black players if its average SAT scores dropped 200 points and was ranked below Miami? Would the increase in wins be proportionate to the drop in SAT scores?

Paul Hornung knows that Notre Dame has a lot of black players, but he also knows that his alma mater has limited itself to taking black players whose academic records predict an ability to do Notre Dame work. Notre Dame work is a lot tougher than Miami work. According to the average SAT scores of players -- black and white -- Miami is recruiting players -- black and white -- who are below average students. Notre Dame is recruiting black players who are better than average students. Hornung would like to see Notre Dame be a little less picky because he knows that would result in better players -- black and white -- and more wins.

Isn't it striking that if you use facts and logic in writing about race in sports, you wind up at the Valley News Dispatch, but if you just make up self-contradictory bilge, you get to work for the New York Times?

Some more data, this time from Phil Arvia in the Southtown Economist (notice a pattern here?):

According to the 2003 Racial and Gender Report Card compiled by Richard E. Lapchick for the Institution for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, the NFL in 2002 was 65 percent black, 33 percent white and 2 percent other. WSCR's Doug Buffone checked the first 64 picks in the last NFL draft and said on the air Thursday that 52 of those players were black. In the last Pro Bowl, 38 of the 44 starters were black.

And Brian S. Wise in Intellectual Conservative has some inside sources on how Notre Dame won its last national championship back in 1988:

Having been born and raised in South Bend has allowed me the chance to accumulate a few sources inside Notre Dame’s football program over the years; one was unavailable for this column, another told me that the things people should know are generally those they aren’t supposed to know at all. For example, that academic exceptions have been made when it mattered most, especially under Lou Holtz between 1986 and 1990. Todd Lyght (cornerback), Tony Rice (quarterback), Raghib Ismail (wide receiver), Bryant Young (defensive lineman) and Jerome Bettis (running back) are just five examples of very good players admitted with less than stellar academic backgrounds. All but Rice played in the NFL, they all managed to graduate. The point is that if the University truly had standards set in stone – as it suggested in a press release Wednesday – none of those players, and in that I mean none of them, would have ever been admitted.

Said my source, “If Tony Rice’s transcript and SAT scores were brought into the admissions office today, they would be set on fire.”

Quarterback Rice is said to have been one of only two "Proposition 48" athletes ever admitted to Notre Dame (i.e., he had to sit out the 1986 season because he couldn't meet the Prop. 48 standards). Under Proposition 48, student athletes were required to have a minimum SAT score of 700, or an ACT score of 17, and a minimum GPA of 2.0 in at least 11 courses in core classes, according to the NCAA Web site. Rice scored a scintillating 690. According to the anti-SAT Fairtest organization:

NCAA data on student-athletes' academic performance prior to the 1986 implementation of Prop. 48 reveal the discriminatory impact of these rules. The data, reanalyzed by the McIntosh Commission on Fair Play in Student-Athlete Admissions, show that had Prop. 48 been in effect in 1984 and 1985, it would have denied full eligibility to 47% of the African American student-athletes who went on to graduate, but just 8% of the white student-athletes. More recent NCAA research shows that the test score requirement disqualifies African American student-athletes at a rate 9-10 times the rate for white students.

More good stuff on ND recruiting from Return to Glory by Alan H. Grant:

During Lou Holtz's 11-year reign, the Irish came within two games of winning two more titles after 1988. Holtz had come in and done exactly what he had been asked to do: restore the power of the football program. But for the folks up top, whose priorities were slowly shifting back to academic pursuits, that was just about enough. For Holtz, the beginning of the end came in 1995. Coming off a 6-5-1 season, Holtz tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the admissions department to embrace a fleet "precocious" kid named Randy Moss. At the time, Moss was the West Virginia high school player of the year in both football and basketball, and he had committed to come to Notre Dame. But after Moss had been in several fights at school and was arrested for kicking a student who he mistakenly believed had written racial slurs on a desk, Notre Dame withdrew its commitment to him.

Had it been 1985 rather than 1995, things may have been different. But that trophy from 1988 still maintained a pretty fresh glow, so the admissions department decided it could do without Randy Moss...  [Moss, of course, went on to be one of the greatest receiving talents of all time, but also one of the biggest jerks in the NFL.]

Notre Dame isn't the only university concerned with its image. There's a certain status that accompanies any scholastic university with successful sports teams. Take Duke University for instance. Some folks in Durham, North Carolina, swear that there's a vested interest in keeping the performance of the school's football team well below that of its storied basketball team. There's a reason for that. To field a good hoops team, you need just two or three excellent players. Schools like Duke, and Stanford for that matter, can dominate on the hardwood without visibly compromising their academic integrity. But football demands more than two or three bodies. It demands at least 50 guys who can compete with anyone in the country. And with 117 schools on the Division I-A level, all vying for those same players, it's just a fact that you can't routinely sign enough guys to fill your team without sacrificing some of your academic standards.

In other words, if you field a consistently dominant football team, your school's "meathead factor" is raised exponentially. Therein lay the rub for Notre Dame. They wanted it all. They desperately wanted to compare themselves to Duke and Stanford in the classroom, but they also wanted to be like Nebraska and Miami on the football field. Bob Davie had repeatedly said that what Notre Dame was asking him to do -- compete for the national championship with players who were held to a higher academic standard than their opponents -- was impossible. This was the same struggle that had plagued Notre Dame football for decades. It made the position of Notre Dame head coach one of the most demanding in college football.


It would be interesting to know what compromises Stanford has made over the last four years to become a football powerhouse.

97 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd wager that Stanford figured out that especially in the PAC 12 two or three excellent players actually an can almost the difference they make in basketball. Andrew Luck is an example of this. In an air it out league simple recruiting the white qb with an athlete dad can be the difference. Of course, Texas learned with Gilbert that this doesn't always work.

ATBOTL said...

"...Richard E. Lapchick for the Institution for Diversity and Ethics in Sport..."

People like him should be deported.

Anonymous said...

The average SAT score for black high school students in 2003 was 857. The average SAT score for a white high school student in 2003 was 1,026. [Actually, those scores are for college-bound seniors. For all seniors, the averages would be lower if everybody took the test ... not to mention, all the high school dropouts would drive the averages down even lower.]

I'm no genius, but these are low scores. I took the test a decade ago, so I remember enough from the test to know that you have to be pretty slow to have these kind of scores. It's sort of depressing that most people score or would score below this.

Steve Sailer said...

"two or three excellent players actually an can almost the difference they make in basketball"

USC tried going with just a QB and one great receiver this year (and ignoring the really good receiver). Didn't work out so hot.

Anonymous said...

I want to root Notre Dame... but

http://deadspin.com/5897809/

http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/reported-sexual-assault-notre-dame-campus-leaves-more-questions-answers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2012/12/04/why-i-wont-be-cheering-for-old-notre-dame/

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2013/01/briefly-on-footballs-culture-and-rape/

and after the incident there was this...

http://tracking.si.com/2012/08/30/allen-pinkett-notre-dame-needs-criminals/

I love football... but it amazes me that it is seen as more respectable among "conservative"(culturally rather than politically) circles than say mixed martial arts... MMA does not and could never corrupt communities like football does.

Going off on a tangent, I'd love to see a variant of football that greatly restricts substitutions and forces most of the players to play both ways.

Anonymous said...

"Don't do anything you would regret," and also, "Messing with Notre Dame football is a bad idea."

http://www.cbssports.com/columns/story/21494409/no-charges-no-name-just-unanswered-questions-in-notre-dame-tragedy

Anonymous said...

Steve, I take it you saw this WSJ interview with Holtz?

from the article:
"The typical SAT scores for the Notre Dame players was 1,300, which he says 'means that of the top 100 players you could only recruit about 15 of them.'"

It seems that Holtz (with the reporter's complicity) cavalierly drops this statistic knowing full-well that many folks would automatically equate it with the 1600 point scale.

1300 on the 2400 point-scale corresponds to 870 out of 1600. With an allowance for rounding, it's basically the same as Steigerwald's 1997 number of 899.

Anonymous said...

"your school's "meathead factor" is raised exponentially. "

the steroids and concussions make for a heady mix.

Shouting Thomas said...

Yeah, Steve, but you didn't say who you're taking in the game tonight.

Which group of scholars do you think will come out on top?

I'm going with the underdog... the baccalaureate candidates from the Golden Dome!

Anonymous said...

Going off on a tangent, I'd love to see a variant of football that greatly restricts substitutions and forces most of the players to play both ways.

Rugby.

Peter

Anonymous said...

I cannot think of any great statesmen, political philosopher, or sage who has ever advocated professional sports or over-emphasis on them. Plenty have pointed out their corrupting influence, Cicero and Theodore Roosevelt come to mind.

Irving said...

The sad part is, its not bad enough that the schools themselves show favoritism to NAMs, the testing agencies themselves weigh the SAT results in favor of NAMs- reformating the tests to get rid of questions that minorities do poorly on, adding "strivers" points- basically giving a bonus if you scored over 200 pts higher than the average for your race, etc., and they still do more poorly. The testing agencies have gotten to the point where no amount of sneaky thumbs on the scale proxies for NAMs are still enough to get them in in "representative" numbers so last year SAT takers actually had to start adding in a digital photo when taking the test.

Anonymous said...

My father played football at a well known prep school. he said one year one of the teams in the conference showed up to a game with burly, working class irish kids who obviously weren't 'students' the rest of the conference told that school get rid of them or get out of the conference.

That is what schools SHOULD be doing. Schools like Yale were able to be powerhouses and maintain academic standards - football is causing the reverse to happen, and let's not even get into title ix

jody said...

still no word on why JJ watt, who lead the NFL in sacks this year, was offered zero DI football scholarships. his SAT score must have been too low. yeah. yeah, that's it. NCAA teams do not like to recruit players with low SAT scores, as the article indicates.

Anonymous said...

But IQ is not correlated with success

jody said...

let's consider the case of john manziel. clearly, another player with an SAT score far too low to be worth recruiting. why else would only 1 team even bother to offer him a DI scholarship?

as manziel was running circles around the all black oklahoma defense, i was thinking to myself, he can only do that because the oklahoma players are held to such high academic standards, but this maziel guy has an unfair advantage of not needing a high SAT score.

that must have been why he easily ran past them the entire game. for 229 yards in fact. the all-time record for a quarterback in a bowl game. more yards in a bowl game than michael vick ever rushed for. more than vince young. more than cam newton. more than robert griffin.

the unfair athletic advantage he gained over all the black defenders he faced this season was so large in fact, that he set the all-time record for yards gained in a single season, racking up 4600 yards of passing and rushing combined, and breaking the previous record held by cam newton.

you see, this was due solely to the low academic standards to which texas A&M held him. the black players have to hit the books every day instead of going to practice, so it's not a fair competition. it must explain why he won the heisman this year instead of one of the other players who was being held to actual university student standards.

however, he did all that in the SEC. the SEC is the weakest conference in NCAA football and players who perform well there, cannot really be expected to play well in the NFL. it just doesn't happen. he'd have to do that stuff in a stronger conference.

oh wait. the SEC is considered the standard for level of play in NCAA football. which means the players he faced in the SEC will be exactly the same players he would face in the NFL. this perfectly explains why, in 2 years when he declares for the draft, all draft experts will be ranting and raving about why john manziel absolutely, positively cannot possibly play quarterback in the NFL, and must change positions to long snapper or water boy.

Bayoneteer said...

If the NCCA div 1 schools didn't function as a defacto minor league for the NFL and NBA none of this stuff would matter.

Anonymous said...

The competition for the smart black athletes at Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame, UMich and Northwestern is intense. Just getting 2 or 3 of them (often they can be on the basketball or football teams) can make the team successful. Their intelligence makes them better athletes. They usually have attended a college prep high school/private school.

Anonymous said...

I'm no genius, but these are low scores. I took the test a decade ago, so I remember enough from the test to know that you have to be pretty slow to have these kind of scores. It's sort of depressing that most people score or would score below this.

I doubt that anyone who posts on this board has an IQ below 120.

I've read thousands of comments here - heck, tens of thousands of comments - and you just don't ever see the middle of the bell curve [IQ 90 to IQ 110] in anything which is posted here.

Point being that in a community like iSteve [or in almost any sociological/behavioral phenomenon], you're looking at relationship clustering which is almost always going to produce self-selecting statistics.

People with IQs less than 80 don't hang out with the IQ-120 crowd because conversation topics like "The Finer Nuances of Excel Spreadsheet Programming" or "How to Restructure Your S-Corporation to Minimize Your 2013 Tax Burden" would be completely unintelligible to them [i.e. the lingo involved might as well be literally "Greek"].

And people with IQs greater than 120 don't hang with the IQ-sub-80 crowd because conversation topics like "Any winnas I got on dis here Powerball card?" or "You get yo lips on my Schlitz Malt Licka Bull and I gonna bust a cap in yo ass" would simply bore them to tears [if not send them fleeing in terror].

Finney said...

NCAA football is nearly as sick as the NFL. It's another brainwashing psyop.

Few outside of Texas can name this year's Heisman trophy winner and fewer know that he was a freshman, and an all time record breaker.

If Johnny Manziel were black he would be a media darling in New York city sports editing offices, which triggers the hype nationwide. Instead there is no big deal coverage.

Automatic_Wing said...

The Stanford academic data would be very interesting, especially considering the notably white makeup of the team. How would they compare academically with schools like Oregon and USC that field more racially typical teams?

Icepick said...

[B]eing for lowered admissions standards for blacks is racist, but (as in the Supreme Court's upcoming Fisher case) so is being against them.

The only acceptable policy is to have no standards for blacks.

Anonymous said...

As a life long time Notre Dame fan the organization I'd like to thank for ND's football resurgence is the United States Naval Academy.

Avid iSteve readers may recall blog posts from June and October of 2009 in which the entrance admission policy of the USNA was criticized by civilian Academy professor Bruce Fleming. Fleming believed that academic standards were being lowered for football glory.

Navy beat ND in '07, 09, and '10 which forced the Irish to make big changes. Changes that the USNA already made.

countenance said...

Stanford: I have heard from credible media that Stanford, too, has courses that only certain scholarship athletes know about but are strangely unavailable to the general student population.

Notre Dame: I get the feeling that they always had lower standards for black football players, all along. It's just that in the Brian Kelly era, they were diluted even further, just to get enough big fast dumb blacks on-team to have enough team speed on defense that's necessary to win championships, provided all the other teams have dumbed down their standards, (and they have.)

Anonymous said...

Anyomous, football player was alone in room with ms. Seeberg, he touched her boob. She said stop. He stopped. End scene. Player may be guilty of unwanted boob touch but I'm sorry its not worth all of this spilled ink you linked too.

Anonymous said...

http://framework.latimes.com/2013/01/04/the-week-in-pictures-113/#/19

Africa

Anonymous said...

Interesting column. The only real ethical problem with lowering standards for football players is they won't be able to graduate and therefore their college education is wasted. Of course, some go on to the Pros but how many ND football players end up in the NFL or CFL?

OTOH, even if don't graduate or go to the NFL, you have memories of being a big-time college football player and no doubt that opens doors when you try to get a job that doesn't require a college degree.

Jeffrey S. said...

Steve,

I don't have much original to say about this post other than the fact that the Chicagoland area has gone ND crazy lately because the Bears were just so-so this year and failed to make the playoffs. So this BCS championship game as the feel of the Superbowl around here this year.

Anonymous said...

Compromises? Ouch. I know you're upset because of the back-to-back losses to Stanford to end the Pac-12 season....

Here's the 2012 grad rate analysis that I've shared in the past:

Stanford graduation analysis

Anonymous said...

One more:

Stanford recruiting

Ardrian Carton de Wiart said...

This is the story of our era: Lower your standards to the point to which you might as well not even have any for the purpose of a fleeting short-term gain of nothing much in particular, and the result of which is the destruction of everything good, successful and worthy.

The most glaring example recently is the Diversity Housing Bubble. That entire debacle is proof that the Leftist elite is mentally ill. Most of our ruling elite is composed of people of higher-than-average intelligence and yet they were almost all on board for Bush's insane attempt to turn Hispanics into suburban, White Republicans. Most of them acted as if an overpriced housing market fueled by bogus loans was proof of a healthy economy.

In the middle of the Bubble the leader of the corporate parent company of our major daily newspaper thought that the Bubble was a perfect economic climate for him to acquire Knight-Ridder: a massive, failing, bankrupt string of newspapers and other properties. There were no other buyers, but that didn't give him a clue. He plunged the company into debt to buy this rotten, stinking mess.

When the Diversity Housing Bubble burst, as the fellows at the Daily Reckoning had been accurately predicting from the beginning, the corporate boffins all raised their hands in horror and wailed, "who could have foreseen such a tragedy?" as our new acquisition almost took the original corporation down with it. We have not recovered, nor will we.

Our corporate "leaders" were smart enough and had the proper information to see that the U.S. economy was being systematically destroyed by Leftist policies and that the Bubble was just another fraud. But their actions indicated that they were true believers in this lie. The only conclusion to draw from this is that our ruling elites are mentally ill. They are able to deny reality even when that reality is completely obvious. Their mental illness is caused by fear of the consequences of destroying the system of lies the Left has constructed. Even now, the government is still trying to reinflate the housing bubble. To them that utter fraud based on a lie was "the good old days."

josh said...

I am rooting for Alabama tonight. Bama ws beaten by Texas A&M & Johnny Football,the Heisman winning QB Johnny Manziel. Now it seems one night Johnny wa walking the streets of College Station,the lil town built around Texas A & M,a little drunk,with his best pal.The pal saw an African American approaching and made some inappropriate race-based comments.The young African-American took ofense and approached Johnny's friend,to discuss the issue.Johnny tried to pacify the AA,but,like the President,he was in no mood to talk. So Johnny clobbered him. Go Texas! So if Bama wins that means Texas can claim to be sort of No. 1. Go Johnny Football!

josh said...

Re "USC tried going with just a QB and one great receiver.." So did the Chicago Bears,with similarly disappointing results. (At least they finally fired Lovie.)

Anonymous said...


Interview with Lou Holtz about ND's newfound success:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323297104578177202710048068.html

from that:

"Other changes have improved the quality of its high-school recruits. It used to be, he says, that "we couldn't get kids admitted until their second semester of their senior year and we couldn't offer scholarships until they had made it through the rigorous admissions process." The Irish were losing the recruitment wars for top players, who were committing to other schools during their junior year in high school. Now Notre Dame has changed its policy and allows athletes to be signed after their junior year."

Anonymous said...

Going off on a tangent, I'd love to see a variant of football that greatly restricts substitutions and forces most of the players to play both ways.

Uh, rugby?

Anonymous said...

Some people are thick. So what else is new? Only the left wing can't see this.

Dan Kurt said...

re: "The average SAT score for black high school students in 2003 was 857"

This can't be true as I watch TV, movies and notice that nearly all of the Judges, High Ranking Police and many computer nerds are Black as seen in dramas. I also see that we have a Black President so this must be wrong or a typo. The average must be 1875, no?

Dan Kurt

Anonymous said...

"For those trying to keep score at home, it's simple: being for lowered admissions standards for blacks is racist, but (as in the Supreme Court's upcoming Fisher case) so is being against them."

Yeah, funny how AA, as approved by anyone, including the disparate impact SCOTUS or by activists = non-racist whereas AA for athletes wanting into ND as proposed by Hornung = racist.

Those progs just love things both way, don't they. They like going both ways. :)

Anonymous said...

"Isn't it striking that if you use facts and logic in writing about race in sports, you wind up at the Valley News Dispatch, but if you just make up self-contradictory bilge, you get to work for the New York Times?"

Classic Steve.

ben tillman said...

I'd wager that Stanford figured out that especially in the PAC 12 two or three excellent players actually an can almost the difference they make in basketball.

Look at Rice with Dillard, Casey, and Clement from 2006 to 2008.

Otis McWrong said...

Anonymous said..."I doubt that anyone who posts on this board has an IQ below 120."

I'd be shocked if Truth was at or above 120. Also I think you need to take with a grain of salt the IQ's people throw around on this board. Personally I would never exaggerate. My IQ is 300.

countenance said..."Stanford: I have heard from credible media that Stanford, too, has courses that only certain scholarship athletes know about but are strangely unavailable to the general student population."

The athlete track comes and goes at the better schools as the pro/cons of being good at football shift around. Duke added one a few years back as part of their deal with new coach David Cutcliffe. He sensibly saw no point in trying to compete with places like Florida State or Clemson with kids that actually belong at Duke. They've been significantly better recently. Not good, just better than they used to be.

My alma mater (Virginia) mostly did away with it in the mid 2000's after a cheating scandal disproportionately involved athletes. This has showed up in 2 ways: the graduation rate declining as football players can get by 1st and 2nd year stuff but by 3rd year start to sink; also in an awful product on the field.

For example, in 2009 of the top ten high school players in Virginia, seven were off limits to the coaching staff right out of the box due to grades or behavioral stuff. For some reason, the administration has not chosen to inform the alums of the change (how did I learn about it you ask? A friend of mine is a retired professor that used to advise the football program). So lots of Virginia football fans are under the mistaken impression that the school is trying to be competitive at football.

ben tillman said...

My father played football at a well known prep school. he said one year one of the teams in the conference showed up to a game with burly, working class irish kids who obviously weren't 'students' the rest of the conference told that school get rid of them or get out of the conference.

That is what schools SHOULD be doing. Schools like Yale were able to be powerhouses and maintain academic standards - football is causing the reverse to happen, and let's not even get into title ix


Too funny. According to the Yale Daily News, Yale not only used ringers but was in fact the first to do so:

We even pioneered corruption in the form of so-called “tramp” athletes or ringers. The 1904 Yale captain, James Hogan, received free tuition, room and board, a ten-day vacation to Cuba, and “the exclusive commission to handle the products of the American Tobacco Company on the Yale campus.” (See Benjamin Rader, American Sports, 137—what, you thought I could write this without having a footnote?) Yale-Princeton games were played on Thanksgiving Day in New York City and merited front-page coverage in the New York World. College football became big news and big business. The Yale bulldog became our trade character, the “Y” our trademark. Yale was America’s first college football dynasty. From 1872 to 1909, Yale outscored its opponents 9,814 to 545.

Moreover, the first intercollegiate sporting contest was supposedly a boat race between Harvard and Yale in 1852. It was a commercial venture sponsored by a railroad man, and a number of members of each crew were ringers. So let's not act like money and academic irregularities are anything new to college sports.

DirtyTricks said...

I've written this before, but one "solution" is for whites to self-identify as black.
That's OK in Texas. Read last sentence below.

From Wikipedia Fisher v. University of Texas, Oral Arguments section.
Chief Justice Roberts asked whether an applicant who was one quarter or one eighth Latino would be permitted by the University to check the “Latino” box. Mr Garre responded that the applicant is entitled to self-identify any race and the University did not ever question that determination.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if the relatively higher standards of ND vis a vis black athletes have to do with the traditional tribalism of Irish-Americans and their somewhat volkisch attachment to ND.

It may be that Irish- and/or Catholic-Americans have a greater desire than others to see themselves demographically represented on their favorite team. Thus the cost of lowering standards to admit more black players would not only be incurred in weakened academics, but also in the weakening of the visceral link between fans and team.

I don't know enough about the ND football program to assert this with certainty; it's just speculation. It seems plausible, though.

(I hasten to add that I don't see anything wrong with wanting a team that resembles one's own tribe rather than some mercenary squad. It seems pretty natural and reasonable to me.)

Anonymous said...

Jesus, black people are sad.

Truth said...

You're a little behind the times, Steve; Notre Dame football had a %97 graduation rate last year, #1 in America...

http://www.usnewsuniversitydirectory.com/articles/notre-dame-football-program-set-standard-on-off-field_12860.aspx#.UOtaAbY1H8A

Truth said...

"My father played football at a well known prep school. he said one year one of the teams in the conference showed up to a game with burly, working class irish kids who obviously weren't 'students' the rest of the conference told that school get rid of them or get out of the conference."

My brother is a Purdue Grad, he told me that they got the nickname Boilermakers because they literally were accused of recruiting big, beefy local boilermakers in a game against Wisconsin I believe it was.

Truth said...

"still no word on why JJ watt, who lead the NFL in sacks this year, was offered zero DI football scholarships."

There is a word, actually two words; "you're lying."


http://centralmichigan.scout.com/a.z?s=340&p=2&c=595493&ssf=1&RequestedURL=http%3a%2f%2fcentralmichigan.scout.com%2f2%2f595493.html

Truth said...

"let's consider the case of john manziel. clearly, another player with an SAT score far too low to be worth recruiting. why else would only 1 team even bother to offer him a DI scholarship?"

Lying again, are we?

He was committed to Oregon, when he pulled out to go to A&M.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/tamu/football/recruiting/player-Johnny-Manziel-89597

Truth said...

"I doubt that anyone who posts on this board has an IQ below 120."

"If Johnny Manziel were black he would be a media darling in New York city sports editing offices... Instead there is no big deal coverage."

I'd wager my HOUSE that you are wrong. Wait, I'm upside down; OK, my schlong, it's a good piece of equipment, trust me, your wife will want to renew your vows.

Anonymous said...

"Anyomous, football player was alone in room with ms. Seeberg, he touched her boob. She said stop. He stopped. End scene. Player may be guilty of unwanted boob touch but I'm sorry its not worth all of this spilled ink you linked too."

You are a complete dickhead... he didn't just "touch her breasts", he pinned her down while she was crying.

Anonymous said...

'Cultural conservatives' can ignore poor character in football players because it's such a manly game.

The players also wear so much armor that spectators can hallucinate all kinds of mock heroism in the players' identity.

Anonymous said...

I heard a piece on ESPN about the game and they said Miami is full of immigrants, but that is more American than the rest of America.

Let it be know that immigrants from Haiti, Cuba and everywhere else are the real Americans.

Typical garbage.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't think that Stanford would have to dramatically change things to go from bad to good. I attended Duke while the football team was pretty bad (THAT should narrow it down) and knew a bunch of football players. Even to be pretty bad, Duke had to reduce standards quite a bit just to be in D-I. None of the players I met were at all dumb, but a lot of them weren't up to the level of the typical Duke student (though it should be noted that were some very bright players as well who could have been admitted for non-football reasons). AND they're expected to spend 35-40 hours a week on football while being in over their heads academically. They had tutors helping them with stuff, of course, and I'm sure they got as close to the NCAA line as possible in defining the word "help".

They've turned things around under Coach Cutcliffe, but look how they've done it: terrible defense, pretty good offense. I'll leave it to someone else to systematically examine the race of the skill position players at Duke, Northwestern, Vandy, etc.

Anonymous said...

A Tide fan since childhood in the Bryant-golden era of the late 1970's here:

Notre Dame really impressed me the one time I seen them play this year (USC), and I see in them some of the same characteristics I seen in the 1992 Alabama National Championship unit. I think the talent is pretty evenly matched tonight. Both teams are very well coached.

For Jody,
Alabama's players were effusive in praise of Johnny Manziel and Texas A&M after their game with them. I wish the media would cool it on the "SEC dominance" theme. Weve have some good years lately. I hope our fans (Bama's and the SEC's) show class regardless of the outcome tonight. Bear Bryant preached over and over to his teams to "have class".

Speaking of Bryant, if anyone wants to see a true alpha male in action leading men, this roughly 2 minute video of Bryant talking to incoming freshman is a glimpse into the man as he really probably was as a coach and leader. After watching it, you can see why his kids "would have ran through a brick wall for him":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PtIaWpysSI


Personal Notre Dame lore observation and remark: Ara Parsegian isn't mentioned enough these days. That guy was a great coach, commentator and a class act.

Whiskey said...

Unless I am mistaken, Stanford has a guy playing named Barkavious Mingo. So that pretty much answers your question Steve. On the compromises Stanford has made.

Unfortunately, Black players on average are not just the best athletes at the edge of performance and ability, but the best on average by a considerable margin. So unless a coach can combine the teaching ability, innovation, and recruiting ability of say a Bill Walsh, they must have the best athletes who will always be Black by a considerable margin. That's just the way it is, Black athletes are superior to White ones nearly every time unless they must depend mostly on skill (equal playing field) or the cold and wet (bad for Black people).

Whiskey.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
I want to root Notre Dame... but
________________________________

Well, I read one of the links, and I must say, I can't say it told me anything other than a girl is dead, that rumors suggest something bad happened to her in the room of a ND player in 2010, a guy still with the team, that she suffered from depression and took her life.

That she suffered from depression and took her life doesn't make me all that comfortable with what she may or may not have said to authorities or friends. That she suffered from depression to the degree she took her life doesn't mean she lied, but it sure doesn't make me believe she gave an accurate account of anything either.

W.out charges and testimony under oath, who the hell could tell. I recall too well the Duke travesty.

Anonymous said...

O/T: I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but the new Apple interface for this site seems to have a technical problem, manifesting as the app disconnecting from the 'keyboard'.

Now that the I'm back on Windows, the topic is football...

Gilbert P.

Anonymous said...

Would this post have been inspired by This VDare article on Alabama vs Notre Dame?

Automatic_Wing said...

Unless I am mistaken, Stanford has a guy playing named Barkavious Mingo. So that pretty much answers your question Steve. On the compromises Stanford has made.

You are very much mistaken. Barkavious Mingo plays for LSU, an institution that has never, as far as I know, been accused of having excessively high academic standards for football players.

Anonymous said...

"I heard a piece on ESPN about the game and they said Miami is full of immigrants, but that is more American than the rest of America.

"Let it be know that immigrants from Haiti, Cuba and everywhere else are the real Americans.

"Typical garbage."
_______________________________

That intro was bad, wasn't it? An ode to everything perverse in America. The writer even made sure to point out Miami was "gay or straight".

I didn't tune in to the game for that crap.

BTW, doesn't look like the BCS has come up with two fairly equal competitors, does it?

Anonymous said...

"Would this post have been inspired by This VDare article on Alabama vs Notre Dame?"

Funny that Bama has a white qb and Notre Dame a black one. Actually, there are more white players on Bama than usual, I think.

Anonymous said...

Stanford would put up a heck of a better fight against this Alabama team than is ND.

I've known several Stanford players throughout the years. They are pretty bright guys.

Anonymous said...

Whiskey: That's just the way it is, Black athletes are superior to White ones nearly every time unless they must depend mostly on skill (equal playing field) or the cold and wet (bad for Black people).

You could trump the Negro speed advantage in one fell swoop if you'd get rid of unlimited substitution.

Overnight, you'd change the game to favor both endurance and smarts [without unlimited substitution, the coaches on the sidelines couldn't send in the plays, so the players on the field would have to call their own plays], which combination pretty much excludes almost all American Negroes.

And, while I was at it, I'd go after two other items:

A) Ban assistant coaches in the sky box. Without the assistant coaches in the sky box, sending the strategery back down to the sidelines, the players on the field would have to imagine what the action looked like from on-high, and that would heavily tilt the advantage towards the players with outstanding spatio-visuals.

B) BAN ALL HEADSHOTS. No helmet tackling [the old "spearing"] and no forearm shivers to the jaw. You don't tackle with your helmet - you tackle with your shoulder pads. And you don't aim for a player's head or neck when tackling him - you aim for his torso. IQ-80 athletes have nothing to lose from suffering a concussion, but IQ-120 athletes have everything to fear from helmet/head/spinal contact.

Anonymous said...


"Here's the 2012 grad rate analysis that I've shared in the past:

"Stanford graduation analysis"

It's true, isn't it, that Stanford doesn't flunk out people like Cal does? Hard in, easy to stay.

Sawyer said...

"I'd wager my HOUSE that you are wrong. Wait, I'm upside down; OK, my schlong, it's a good piece of equipment, trust me, your wife will want to renew your vows."


-She'd better renew with an iron-clad guarantee for life after that, no one else would take her after she got VD.

Anonymous said...

"Well, I read one of the links, and I must say, I can't say it told me anything other than a girl is dead, that rumors suggest something bad happened to her in the room of a ND player in 2010, a guy still with the team, that she suffered from depression and took her life."

What isn't up for debate is that:

1. They threatened her after the incident and used the prestige of the football program to try to keep her quiet.
2. The head football coach instinct was to mock the first newspaper who first started asking questions.

Anonymous said...

B) BAN ALL HEADSHOTS. No helmet tackling [the old "spearing"] and no forearm shivers to the jaw. You don't tackle with your helmet - you tackle with your shoulder pads. And you don't aim for a player's head or neck when tackling him - you aim for his torso. IQ-80 athletes have nothing to lose from suffering a concussion, but IQ-120 athletes have everything to fear from helmet/head/spinal contact.

I'm sorry but this is just as autistic sounding as all those it's my body I do what I want posters from the weed thread.

Anonymous said...

or the cold and wet (bad for Black people).

I'd be surprised if a consistent race/climate cline existed in for example the NFL, with the Packers being whiter and Miami being blacker.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Before he coached at ND, Lou Holtz coached at William and Mary while I was there. Talked about a national championship in 2-3 years as soon as he arrived. That man was insane.

kaganovitch said...

" I'd be surprised if a consistent race/climate cline existed in for example the NFL, with the Packers being whiter and Miami being blacker"
In point of fact they have an identical number of white players, 19 - and Miami has fewer blacks as they have a couple of samoans too

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glittering_Prizes

great glimpse into Jewish personality

PropagandistHacker said...

so much for that theory...


oh, and here is another paleocon myth exposed:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/07/obama-immigration-enforcement/1815667/


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration spent more money on immigration enforcement in the last fiscal year than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to a report on the government's enforcement efforts from a Washington think tank.
....

eah said...

Just repeat "student athlete" as often as necessary until you believe it. It's just that some athletes are somewhat more 'studenty' than others.

DaveinHackensack said...

"without unlimited substitution, the coaches on the sidelines couldn't send in the plays"

Of course they could. Do you even watch football? The last team I saw exclusively send in plays via substitution was a high school team I played on, that would sub one back on every play. In the NFL the coaches communicate with the QBs via radio, and before that, they did so via hand signals. In either case, they just need a shorthand, because the QBs often have a list of plays taped to their wrists. And, BTW, coaches calling in plays doesn't obviate the need for QBs to audible on occasion, based on how things look when they get up to the line.

"A) Ban assistant coaches in the sky box. Without the assistant coaches in the sky box, sending the strategery back down to the sidelines, the players on the field would have to imagine what the action looked like from on-high, and that would heavily tilt the advantage towards the players with outstanding spatio-visuals."

And you think this would weed out black players? This reminds me of a conversation about IQ and race years ago at a summer barbecue. A couple of the participants expressed the standard HBD view, but one moderate dissenter was the host, a psychiatrist (US Army vet of WWII, incidentally; one of his patients after the war was Rudolph Hess at Spandau Prison.). He said that basketball in particular required some obvious mental skills. Seems true, no?

"B) BAN ALL HEADSHOTS. No helmet tackling [the old "spearing"] and no forearm shivers to the jaw."

Have you watched football recently? Spearing is already illegal. And the last time I saw someone get away with a forearm shot to the face was in the movie North Dallas Forty.

"The "negro speed advantage" seems to hold up well in basketball, which usually features players running up and down the court for long stretches."

But not in soccer, which has fewer substitutions (3 per game, with 11 men on the field at one time), a much larger playing area, and more continuous action than basketball. There are star black players at the highest levels, but I don't know if there's any top tier European team with more than a few of them; soccer is much more diverse (and more Caucasian) than the NBA.

Anonymous said...

Another thread about black athletes, another thread where Whiskey's cuckold fetish shines through.

Hey Whiskey explain BYU or U of Boise, or who dominates powerlifting?

Anonymous said...

In Obama administration spent $18B on immigration enforcement we find this:


Experts have attributed the drop in arrests to a combination of factors, including record numbers of Border Patrol agents stationed along the Mexican border. Meissner said that the growth of illegal immigration in the U.S. is now at a standstill.


The claim made earlier in the piece is that they have spent more than any other administration.

It seems that the poster of the link didn't bother to read much more than the first paragraph.

1. They are spending more money but making fewer arrests? Hmmm, I wonder why.

2. Which experts did they call on to get an analysis?

Anonymous said...

The "negro speed advantage" seems to hold up well in basketball, which usually features players running up and down the court for long stretches. In any event hoops has more continuous action than you'd see in footbal
basketball has constant stops and time outs as well.
Compare, for example rugby and soccer that have limited subs and limited time outs.

josh said...

Re the poster who referred to "burly"(ha ha "burly".And your dads team was what,svelte?)ignoble Irish youths who dared step onto the playing fields of his dads school:Uhm did any of the youths catch up with dad later and administer an atomic wedgie or something? One would hope.

Anonymous said...

What white people should be called...

How about Pallastinians after Pallas Athena.

Josh said...

Finney1/7/13 8:22 AMNCAA football is nearly as sick as the NFL. It's another brainwashing psyop.Few outside of Texas can name this year's Heisman trophy winner and fewer know that he was a freshman, and an all time record breaker.If Johnny Manziel were black he would be a media darling in New York city sports editing offices, which triggers the hype nationwide. Instead there is no big deal coverage.

You're either a completely total idiot or a lying fraud.

Congratulations, you've written the dumbest thing that's been written about college football this week.

Anonymous said...

The "negro speed advantage" seems to hold up well in basketball, which usually features players running up and down the court for long stretches.

The basketball court is very SHORT and [at least when the rules are enforced] the game involves running up and down the court for very SHORT stretches, with lots of timeouts and play stoppages in between.

[Although if you had 10 NBA Superstars on the court at the same time, and if the zebras performed their standard whistle-swallowing routine for the Superstars, then, at least conceivably, you might get some slightly longer stretches of play.]

And a football field is just orders of magnitude larger:

NBA: 94ft x 50ft = 4700sq-ft

NFL: 360ft x 160ft = 57600sq-ft

Finally, with no unlimited substitution in football, you'd have lengthy stretches with no stoppage in play.

Of course they could. Do you even watch football? The last team I saw exclusively send in plays via substitution was a high school team I played on, that would sub one back on every play.

NO UNlimited is a double negative.

You're describing unlimited substitution.

I'm arguing for no unlimited subsitution - following at least the baseball tradition of "once you leave the game, you're gone for good".

[And, beyond that, no contact with the sidelines or with the sky box whatsoever - any coaches "signalling in" plays would be grounds for a forfeit.]

Have you watched football recently? Spearing is already illegal.

My problem is that I HAVE watched football recently, and this phenomenon of the Negroes accelerating up to 20+ MPH, lowering their heads, and using their helmets as battering rams, is gonna get somebody killed [dittoes with extending their forearms and delivering high-speed forearm shivers to the jaw].

Your problem is that you don't know what football looked like back in the 1950s and the 1960s and the early 1970s, when it was a game dominated by IQ 100+ Caucasians who had attended college - back then, "tackling" involved running up next to a guy, grabbing him, and throwing him to the ground.

And "sacking" the quarterback involved hitting him in the torso with your shoulder pads, wrapping your arms around him, and bringing him to the ground - NOT accelerating to 20+ MPH, and deliviering a helmet shot or a forearm shiver.

BTW, the deterioration of the officiating in the NFL strongly mimics the deterioration of the officiating in the NBA, and both correlate almost perfectly with the thugificiation which the Negroes seem to bring with them to pretty much any endeavor they undertake.

Jack said...

Pretty sure that the 897 SAT score for Notre Dame is before recentering. I've seen a 1050 average a few years ago listed for Notre Dame.

I would absolutely like to see data on the current SAT scores for Notre Dame and Stanford athletes (not just football).

Truth said...

"Finally, with no unlimited substitution in football, you'd have lengthy stretches with no stoppage in play."

Not exactly, big chief; there are about 8 minutes of actual, cumulative action in an NFL football game.

Anonymous said...

Compared to football, basketball is continuous action. In football the play is whistled dead, the players trot back, huddle up, and run another play that lasts 20 seconds.

Franchise basketball players are usually in for close to the whole game, running up an down the court.

The pace of football isn't going to reveal any race-based endurance issues.

Soccer is a different sport than football. Is there any evidence of a lower black aerobic capacity, for example? What's exactly meant by "endurance?"

ben t illman said...


I guess I should have known the Irish would be manhandled last night. The last time they won the MNC their QB was a special admit from South Carolina whom the local schools wanted badly. This time their QB was again from South Carolina, but the 3* recruit wasn't offered by USC or Clemson .

Anonymous said...

the one year stanford finished #1 in the sagarin rankings, Harbough's last (orange bowl) year, they had one lockdown corner, Richard Sherman, and probably the tightest defense of any of their recent teams. I don't believe Stanford would have finished #1 without Sherman, a single lockdown corner or an immovable nose guard having a disproporionately large positive impact on a defense's effectiveness. But Sherman had only chosen Stanford over USC to prove that someone from Compton could go to Stanford. Not sure if that reflects a one-off contrarian moment or a concept that could be pitched to future recruits.

DaveinHackensack said...

The pace of football isn't going to reveal any race-based endurance issues.

Probably not. Kickoffs require the most endurance of any football plays, and it's interesting that one of the all-time greats at covering kicks, Steve Tasker, looked more like a pro soccer player than an NFL player. But that doesn't necessarily mean no black player could cover kicks as well; it could be that ones that could were too valuable as offensive or defensive players to risk using them on special teams.

ben tillman said...

Your problem is that you don't know what football looked like back in the 1950s and the 1960s and the early 1970s, when it was a game dominated by IQ 100+ Caucasians who had attended college....

Hardly. It was dominated by teams that used players who scored less than 800 on their SAT's.

ACC football programs like Maryland, Clemson, and Duke were football powers in the 1950's, but the conference fell off the map with the institution of the 800 Rule (requiring athletes to score at least 800 on the SAT) in 1960.

Anonymous said...

The average SAT score of an incoming Notre Dame freshman is 1,360 [out of 1600].

ND Freshman averafe 680 v & M? This looks way too high.Source, please?

Anonymous said...

there are about 8 minutes of actual, cumulative action in an NFL football game

I'm getting more like 11 minutes - but whatever the correct answer is - the game would be changed radically if we could get minutes of action out towards 20, or even 30.

Then football ceases to be like a series of 40-yard-dashes, and much more like a series of 400-yard dashes, or even like a 5K steeplechase.





DaveinHackensack said...

"Then football ceases to be like a series of 40-yard-dashes"

It's not a series of 40-yard dashes now, for most players on most plays (receivers on fly routes being exceptions). The 40-yard dash was probably designed as the shortest practical test of speed.

What would increase the action time of football significantly would be to shorten the play clock, say, down to 20 seconds. But even if you didn't change the play clock, limiting substitutions would demand a lot more aerobic capacity than the game does now. When I was a sophomore in high school, our freshman team was short-handed, so another sophomore and I filled in. Since there were only 11 of us, we all played every play on offense, defense, and special teams, and we were constantly winded. And since it was a freshman game, the refs were probably using a running clock most of the time, so we probably didn't play that long really.

Anon87 said...

desert lady:

"No nation anywhere in the world has been as determined, has made as deep and expensive a commitment to or has had as deep a reach in its enforcement efforts as the U.S. has had,"

So are just ignoring Israel?

And spending more money on a government program doesn't equate to results. Very often the opposite. If enforcement has been such a priority since the 1986 amnesty, where did all these 11-20 million illegals come from?

Ian said...

Anonymous said: "ND Freshman averafe 680 v & M? This looks way too high.Source, please?"

You realize that guy wasn't referring to just football players, correct? Either way, it's wrong (too low), unless he was talking about the pre-1995 SAT -- Notre Dame's 25%/75% range is 1380/1510 out of 1600. A 1360 wouldn't even make the 25th percentile.

Anonymous said...

He said that basketball in particular required some obvious mental skills. Seems true, no?

Right, hence the large number of black commercial/military pilots in the USA...

Anonymous said...

I don't know if Stanford did lower standards, when Jim Harbaugh was there he got in hot water with his fellow Michigan alumni for stating that Michigan's academic standards for athletes were massively lower than for regular students. He contrasted this with Stanford, where he implied they did not do such things. Andrew Luck I believe, graduated with a degree in Architectural Engineering, if memory serves. Andrew Luck is probably the real deal both athletically and academically which is rare in big time college football, no doubt the reason he was the runner-up two years running for the Heisman.

Wagz said...

OK, what about the association of football with head injuries? Is it possible that the more brain damaged players are also the ones who'll play like obsessed madmen impervious to pain or the distractions of a mental life.

All we can really infer from the results of statistical analysis is that the most brain damaged make the best players. Furthermore, society needs to do something to make it up to these young males who were encouraged to risk all in the pursuit of gridiron glory. Sadly or happily, they do remain blissfully unaware of the damage that has been done.