That smarts: Cornell can be game changer

Imagine if Cornell advances to the Final Four in the NCAA Tournament.

The Big Red already is in the Final Sixteen, where Thursday it will meet Kentucky.

"It's a winnable game," Cornell center Jeff Foote was quoted as saying.

You would think that somebody from an Ivy League school would be too intelligent to blurt out something so outrageous.

Then again, maybe Foote knows something we don't. He should after matriculating at such a prestigious institution as Cornell.

Foote, a 7-foot senior, probably figured out on a chalkboard straight out of "Good Will Hunting" the probabilities of beating Kentucky.

Let's say for conversation's sake that the young scholar is on to something and Cornell does beat Kentucky. The outcome could be college basketball's turning point.

Just last week United States education secretary Arne Duncan rattled higher education with a radical proposal.

(First off we'll concede that maybe we shouldn't take Duncan seriously. There was no "i" in basketball when he played for Harvard, but shouldn't he know there's an "i" in Arnie?)

Anyway, Duncan suggested that schools be banned from the NCAA Tournament if they don't graduate at least 40 percent of their players.

Duncan is just another dreamer dreaming up ways to emphasize the left side of the hyphen in student-athlete.

Eggheads everywhere continue to concoct formulas to determine whether college athletes are being educated. Meanwhile, coaches continue to ridicule them.

Like, coaches say, the results are misleading - many players leave early for professional careers - schools are penalized for players who transfer - players are penalized for their predecessors' sins - the dog ate everyone's homework but left the playbook intact -

So graduation rates for black players especially still are unacceptable and, fairly or not, the perception remains that college basketball is no college-level teaching tool.

Then along comes Cornell, the first Ivy League representative in 31 years to advance to the third round of the NCAAs.

Cornell beat Temple by 13 points and Wisconsin by 18 over the weekend. Foote will have to calculate for me how many points that means the Big Red will beat Kentucky by.

If Cornell actually wins that game - crazy, sure, but so was the concept of Ivy Leaguers trouncing teams from the Big Ten and Atlantic-10.

My goodness, if Cornell does beat Kentucky of the SEC, coaches from the Big East to the Pac-10 will have to rethink their recruiting philosophies.

The next thing you know, big-time programs will start pursuing preps whose SAT scores are higher than their shoe sizes. Maybe they'll steer players toward majors like Molecular Science instead of Barn Dancing. Maybe they'll alter high school transcripts downward so basketball brains qualify to live in athletic dorms with football grunts.

All of a sudden players would be mentoring Illinois' Bruce Weber on zone defenses, teaching Kentucky's John Calipari a course in Basic Ethics and giving tips to Duke's Mike Krzyzewski on the proper pronunciation of his name.

Really, folks, college basketball becomes a whole new ballgame if smarty-pants Cornell keeps winning this week.

mimrem@dailyherald.com