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Chasing the Basketball Dream Press Review
‘Chasing the Basketball Dream’
COLUMBUS CITIZEN-JOURNAL, April 20, 1984
by Sandy Schwartz
College basketball players who have the good fortune to play for a powerhouse are showered with national television exposure.
The American public knows all about these players’ shooting percentages, rebounding statistics and defensive abilities.
What we don’t know about these basketball stars are the trials and tribulations they have faced in the classroom or how hard it was to get some of these student-athletes into school. Probably even more important, we rarely are informed how hard it is to keep some of these players eligible and of the struggles involved to ensure these players receive education while they are in college.
“Frontline,” the Public Broadcasting System’s investigative series, will answer some of those gnawing questions at 8 p.m., Monday (Channel 34) when it airs “Chasing the Basketball Dream.”
The 60-minute program isn’t a typical sports-on-television show. It is a look at two types of college players who make sports on television exciting enough so colleges can reap millions of dollars in television rights.
The program revolves around two Washington, D.C. area basketball players who played pickup games together in an area gymnasium. One, Derek Lewis, who will be a college freshman in the fall, has had enormous success on the basketball court and in the classroom. The other, Ken Simiral, is a hit on the court but a flop with the books.
The program illustrates the procedures Lewis followed in choosing the University of Maryland as his next stop on the basketball ladder. With his talents, on and off the court, the young man should have no problems and in four years - if not sooner - should be a million-dollar-a-year player in professional basketball.
Simiral is at the opposite end of the spectrum. His talents on the court are enough to write him a ticket to any college. His grades and apparent lack of direction in school have prevented him from going to a major college.
Charlie Cobb, a “Frontline” correspondent, follows Simiral from his troubled days in high school to a junior college in Texas.
There Simiral found quick success as well as quick trouble. Soon he was back on the streets of Washington. Now he’s making another go of it at a California junior college.
“Should he even be in college?” Cobb asks. “That is a question that needs to be answered…But he has to go to college if he is going to play pro basketball.”
Among people interviewed are Dr. Harry Edwards, professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley and Julius Erving, the professional basketball star better known as “Dr. J.”
The program illustrates that there are 1,000 would-be Dr. Js out there who never even make it to college and millions more who think they are the next Dr. J but never will make it to the pros.
Many good points are made during the program. For instance:
* Basketball interferes with every aspect of players’ lives in high school and college.
* Some players are allowed to play basketball in high school and college even though their grades aren’t good enough.
* Many college athletes are in school so they can play sports, and studies are secondary.
* For many athletes, the first step in college is to teach them how to learn because they haven’t attained those skills in high school. Many athletes must struggle to make up years of lost academics.
* If a player is good enough, there always will be someone out there willing to take a chance on him and somehow make him academically eligible.
“Frontline,” produced by a consortium of five television stations, does an excellent job of enlightening us on an important aspect of athletics that we rarely see.
Many universities have instituted programs to clean up the academics in their athletics. Television programs like this might well aid in the cleanup process.