HERE COMES TREBLE: This week, in the third round of the NCAA Tournament (go Huskies!), current favorite Kentucky plays Cinderella darling Cornell, in a battle of basketball tradition and expectations versus Ivy League stereotypes of varying accuracy. Despite the lame jokes you will hear from an oafish minority of sportswriters over the next several days, Ivy League basketball teams don't conduct practice in Latin and don't discuss calculus on the team bus. Most of the differences between Ivy League athletes (and athletic programs) and their powerhouse counterparts are of degree, not kind.
Still, the story at the ESPN basketball blog about Mike Coury, who went from starter at Kentucky to reserve at Cornell, is interesting. It's too simplistic, I think, to suggest that Coury's future depends upon the name on his sheepskin. It strikes me that being an ex-basketball player from Kentucky might open up more doors than being a Cornell graduate (I wouldn't know, being neither). And while Cornell might have a better undergraduate business program than does Kentucky, I tend to believe that the quality of one's program is less important than the quality of the student making use of it. But going from a big-time athletic program where many of one's teammates are not expected to graduate (or even to go to class) to a school where the basketball team exerts no influence over academic expectations -- that may not be such a bad move for a guy who actually wants to crack the books and who has no expectation of playing in the NBA.
