The spring/summer is a fluid time for player movement…the staff continues to recruit players for this class, so there may be other changes to the team. If the team only has 11 players on scholarship when the fall semester starts, should we complain about the staff not doing their jobs?

Despite all the speculation and logic on this and other boards–mine included–none of us knows for certain that Diggs would have had his ship actually taken away had he refused to transfer. Personally, I like to think that he could have stayed and gotten no PT (maybe even have been excused from practicing with the team) but allowed to finish his education and graduate if that would have been acceptable to him. Would it have been? I certainly don’t know the answer. Diggs did complain publicly about not getting promised PT and of being repeatedly asked to transfer. I do know that scholarship athletes in other times and places (undoubtedly including Pitt) have stayed on ship to graduate but were excused from being on a team because they were no longer in the coach’s plans for PT. A brother of mine did that very thing at Miami of Ohio years ago and I have specific knowledge of one current instance at Pitt where that is also the case with another team. The only thing reported in the press was that Diggs was unhappy that he was asked to transfer and told he wasn’t in the coach’s plans to see any of the PT he believed he was promised when recruited. It was never explicitly stated anywhere in anything I read that his ship would have actually been taken away if he refused to transfer. If I would hear of a ship actually taken away, I would be among the first to write a nasty gram to the Chancellor and Athletic director and threaten to discontinue my support of the University. IMO, the right thing to do is to let any kid in good academic and behavioral standing stay on their athletic ship to graduate if that is what they want to do while fully accepting that their playing career is over. Irrespective of the NCAA rule that says ships are granted only for 1 year at a time, a kid who does all that is asked of him should not be made to pay for a coach’s recruiting mis-judgment of his talent or potential as an athlete.

I am a Pitt letter winner in a major sport who had a number of scholarship offers. I chose Pitt because the coaching staff and university impressed me as having character and a sincere interest in having their athletes achieve academically. At this stage of my life, this is still more important to me than success on the grid iron or on the court. A couple of posters expressed this philosophy much more eloquently than I could ever have. I am concerned when a scholarship is taken away from a young man who, apparently, is playing by the rules and is making an effort both on the court and in the classroom. It is as important to me that his scholarship be maintained as it is to discipline a star player (i.e. suspension, termination from the program, etc.) who makes a serious transgression.

Actually that’s not true. Both sports have scholly limits. Football is at 85 players. Bball I believe is 12 players.

You are correct though that there are many intangibles which are tougher to measure, things like team play. My original analogy of an academic scholarship does fail on that aspect.

There also can be political things going on that would cause some type of action like “who to cut” and “who to keep”. You may not cut a kid from a great prep school if you ever hope to recruit from there again.

There are so many aspects to this. Personally, I was only put off in the beginning that people were saying Diggs somehow got a raw deal, or that Jamie was crooked, when we don’t know what really went down.

And I doubt Jamie mis-used him. Maybe mis-evaluated him in the first place, yes. But to say that a team can’t correct a mistake would be to imply that nobody could ever be fired, dropped, cut, traded, reprimanded or anything, just because someone thought you’d do better than you actually did in the first place. If Jamie doesn’t perform, he’d be off the team as well.

At some point, when mistakes are made, it’s better to part ways. At least that’s what most of my ex-gfs tell me ;-).

I never suggested Kendall didn’t produce. I was using him — as an extreme example, which I noted — to show that in sports there is no way to quantify a player’s value to the team. Here’s a less extreme example: We read in the PG this year that Wallace is a great teammate and gets everyone pumped up. He’s never going to step on the court, but I don’t think his scholarship will be yanked (pending the severity of his injury). Oh wait, here’s a better example: Chevy once said that the toughest player he ever played against was Kendall in practice. This was at a time when Kendall was not playing regular minutes. So, it follows that a player can be of value to a team without putting up numbers — big or small — in statistical categories.

Speaking of Chevy, I did not make this point clearly, and I apologize. What I was trying to say, and I closed my argument with this, was that coach’s can mis-judge a player’s abilities both ways. When Chevy first stepped on the court for Pitt, Coach Howland wanted him to play on the wing. It didn’t work; he is a low-post player, regardless of whether or not he fits the physical model of that type of player. What would have happened, then, if Chevy had quit the team after a few games, transferred, and became a star playing on the block somewhere? Howland would have looked like a fool, and, in fact, he called himself an “idiot” for not letting Chevy play his natural position from day one. Howland initially was wrong when evaluating Chevy. It seems like Jamie was wrong in his evaluation of Diggs. Again, that’s not Diggs’ fault, and I don’t see why he should be punished. Furthermore, perhaps Jamie is still wrong. I’ll admit it’s unlikely, but there is a possibility of Coach Dixon still having a “move Chevy down low” moment with Diggs. I can hear you howling already, but anything is possible.

I never said that there is “too brief a history of athletic scholarships.” I said the environment of Division I athletics is moving at such a rapid pace that we probably won’t really be able to understand it until we look back on the time when Internet recruiting sites blew up, blogs (like this one) became popular and domain names like fireronzook.com became a part of our discussions. These things have a direct impact on the kids because the coaches are under such pressure that — as was noted earlier in an earlier post — they are going to promise the moon to every kid because they need to win. This is not the same as the ’90s, and it’s not the same as the ’80s. We can discuss the history of athletic scholarships, but this chapter is nowhere near complete.

I still wonder what is going to happen if Mike Cook is given another year. Anyone know? Is his scholarship slotted for someone already or are they holding on to it until they get word from the NCAA about the medical redshirt?

The jury is still out on Flacco IMO. Kevan Smith probably looks a lot better starting at Delaware than at Pitt. He’s got a great arm too….