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Mizzou Links, 5-25-10

By Bill Connelly

Mizzou Basketball Links

Our friends at Rock Chalk Talk are having a nice giggle over the "ha ha, Mike Anderson's not perfect" article making the rounds yesterday.

  • AP: Scholarship policy sparks ethics debate

    After scoring just 22 points all season in mop-up duty, Missouri freshman forward Tyler Stone has no illusions of bolting college for the NBA after a single year.

    Instead, the 6-foot-7 Memphis native is a different sort of one-and-done: a college athlete leaving a school sooner than his family expected as a prized recruit takes over his scholarship.

    “I can’t see how a school can love him to death one year and the next year cut him loose,” said his mother, Sharon Stone. “They had to get rid of somebody.

    ...

    Stone, meanwhile, will play for midmajor Southeast Missouri of the Ohio Valley Conference after sitting out the required year for Division I transfers. He declined an interview request, but his mother spoke with the AP at length in several interviews and made it clear that her son was pushed out.

    She described a celebratory spring break barbecue touting her son’s first year in college. Her son went back to campus afterward and, hours later, called with unexpected news. “He came back” to Columbia “Monday and said, ‘I have to transfer,’ ” she recalled. “I thought he was going to graduate from that school.”

  • ESPN.com: On runoff scholarships and college hoops

My theory all along with Stone was that he was basically given the "You probably won't ever play here; you can stay here if you want, but if you want to play, you probably have to transfer" speech.  Gotta be honest: I'm not entirely convinced that still didn't happen. If there's any sort of "angry mother" aspect to Ms. Stone's quotes (since she's the only one who said anything), then I could see that still having played out that way.

At the same time, that might not be what happened, and while I hate that Mizzou is involved in the reason why it came about, I think this is an interesting conversation to have.  The one-year scholarship has been in use for quite a while, and Stone or no Stone, I'm sure this has happened at every single D1 school by now.  Is it unethical?  Is it how things must be?  Honestly, the biggest problem I have with it is that players still have to sit out a year if/when they're forced to transfer.  I wouldn't mind seeing the wait canceled in cases where players are forced out ... though that would open up a large batch of issues regarding having to reveal who was "forced" out and who were just told they would never see the field/court.  Anyway ... touchy issue.

 

Other Basketball Links

  • Ken Pomeroy (regarding the foul trouble article from a while back): All points are not created equal

Other Mizzou Links

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