College Basketball
Freshman eligibility in any sport comes with its price to pay. However, when colleges sort through the thousands of applicants each school year, they do not take into consideration the toll the students' freshman year will have; they accept students because of their prior performance and potential. Yet when athletes are given scholarships to play sports, Dean Smith wants the student-athletes to sit out their freshman year. Throughout his essay, Dean Smith appeals to logic, generalizes about student-athletes, and contradicts himself while trying to provide evidence that freshman eligibility impairs the careers of future professional players. As a result, his essay is not effective in arguing its point.
Smith's essay begins with a call to logic on the amount of time contributed by a freshman student-athlete playing a varsity sport. While he states that students are asked to "devote hours many hours of time and attention" to the "high profile" teams of football and basketball, he forgets that not all athletes play in the ACC or the Big Ten.
Gunboat Smith (LOC)
Smith Street, Warwick - no's 55 to 61 Smith Street
Bailey -- Smith -- Weeks (LOC)Some colleges are only represented by a student population of 3,000. In essence, his appeal to logic is saturated over by the fact that lower level teams cannot give their freshman players experience because their "high profile" adversaries have students who aren't ready for the big time. Not every college basketball or football team is constantly televised or replayed over and over on sport shows. Rural colleges need every year of experience they can get because their athletes cant get better without playing.
Smith also uses cause and effect in his essay to change eligibility. By sitting out a year, Smith states that it would tend to validate the institution's admission and academic-performance standards. Put very simply, Smith believes that more time for study will result in higher grades...