Editor:

Whether people like it or not, big-time intercollegiate athletics is a kind of minor league for professional sports - especially basketball and football. So it's understandable that our best athletes would have their eyes on the prize, so to speak, instead of an undergraduate degree that offers little more than moral consolation these days.

Here at the UA, our football and basketball teams are about revenue and prestige, and not the education of our athletes. If we were really interested in student-athletes, we would have no recruiting programs. We would simply make do with those athletes who are here at the UA already. That's how Harvard gets its athletes. And don't we want to be the Harvard of the West?

I like Joseph Blair. He's a good basketball player with a pleasant manner on court and a good sense of humor. And I don't really care what his GPA is. He came to the UA and saw what really matters to us, and he adjusted his priorities accordingly. Regardless of what Lute "Bank One" Olson says, what matters at the UA is money.

The real class that Joseph Blair failed was Hypocrisy 101.

Jim Fairchild-Parks
research technician
tree-ring laboratory