The order of the words “student athletes” should probably be switched around.
Kentucky’s spring GPA was released this week: 2.18. That’s an increase from the 2.025 in the Fall, but still not stellar and far from the “amazing students” coach Calipari praised during the season. Kentucky as a whole for varsity sports was 3.04 the highest in Mitch Barnhardt’s time at Kentucky.
If the grades of Daniel Orton are removed from the GPA, the team rebounds to a 2.35 – still a far cry from straight A’s. John Wall, as previously stated on this site, announced via Twitter that he had received a 3.5 for the semester.
I’m not going to sit on a high horse and rip the Kentucky athletes for having shitty grades, simply because they aren’t there to learn or get an education in the first place. A significant portion of them, at least. John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins and Bledsoe and company aren’t there to earn chemical engineering degrees, they are there to play basketball for a year since the NBA somehow has a problem with 18-year-olds using their skills and talents to earn a living. It doesn’t matter that the classes these guys take are jokes, and it doesn’t matter that they get the actual exams as “study guides.” All that really matters is that they pass, and the last I checked, 2.18 was passing.
/end of college athlete apologist rant
