I’m just curious. Do all of these college basketball players involved in March Madness just get the whole month of March off from classes, homework, etc. or how does that work?
I know at least some teams come back for a few days in between games. Georgetown has a charter plane that was to bring them back regardless if they won or lost last weekend. I only know this because a friend’s husband is one of the trainers for Georgetown. I’m going to guess that other teams are similar in nature.
Students return to class and are expected to keep up with the work. When I was teaching, I had one of our basketball players when we went to the NCAAs and he was expected to do the work and be treated as any absent student. We allowed makeups (it was a lab), and he just switched to another one.
I’m sure that’s what the official rules are, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the rules are not followed in some schools.
A lot of the athlete students have easy majors and and tutors waiting for them when they return from games. The tutor is usually able to keep the athlete at a passing grade. I’ll probably get some flack for saying this but the dollars and prestige of college sports has caused most colleges to carry some curriculum that a drunken neanderthal could sleep through and still get passing grades.
Not all student athletes are the stereotypical nimrods though and many are some of the brightest minds at their schools. These athletes who are in the tougher courses will usually load the hardest of those courses into the off-season semesters or load more courses.
Most schools have requirements of 10-12 hours of class per semester as a minimum for full time students so serious student athletes will make his sport semester lean by taking fewer classes and then make up for that by taking a much heavier load in the off season semester.
And one of the nicest things about college - Attendance is not as important as is the need to demonstrate that you have gained the knowledge.
Because it’s an elimination tournament the effect is seen at only a few colleges.
Here’s a chart of the whole division 1 NCAA men’s tournament. 68 teams are involved.
The first two rounds are a long weekend, Thursday through Sunday, March 15-18. (There were four earlier play-in games but ignore those for now: those teams don’t last anyway.) By the end of the weekend only 16 teams are left.
So for 52 teams March Madness is a single day or a weekend. That’s actually less than their burden during the regular season schedule and much less than during a conference tournament which can be four games in four days.
Another long weekend, March 22-25, removes 12 more teams. Then the final four play on March 31 and the championship game of 2 is on April 2.
The two finalists do have to play six games over the course of three weeks. Everybody else plays less. No doubt there’s lots of practices in between but these guys have been practicing since September. Oddly, the disruption of March Madness is less than the disruption leading up to it.