The House Of Heat

Hey man, wanna go to a party tonight?
Coup!
I heard there'll be babes there.
Coup d'etat!

The Tucson spin machine is going apeshit tonight after wide receiver/defensive back recruit Jarrell Barbour decommitted from Arizona's 2008 recruiting class and committed to ASU. Barbour hails from Peoria (AZ) Centennial High School, the same school that produced fellow 2008 Sun Devil commit Zach Schlink. The wildcat faithful are now denouncing their once prized signee, saying that 1) he's not that good anyway, 2) he wouldn't have even gotten in to UA. Barbour is that good, having also received scholarship offers from Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Michigan, but he apparently is somewhat of an academic risk.

Barbour cited ASU's academics one of the biggest reasons for the switcheroo, noting that Sparky had a better plan for getting him into school. The UA community is flipping the fuck out right now and they fully believe this is the elusive yet concrete proof that UA is a better academic institution than ASU, even though the two schools have identical admission requirements handed down from the Arizona Board of Regents. I'd like to submit into evidence this quote from someone on Devils Digest who claims to have been CB Omar Bolden's academic advisor before he was admitted to ASU.

Dennis Erickson and company have got the very best academic people in the world at ASU. I was Omar's academic advisor last year and when ASU got involved with Omar he had a 1.85 gpa and a 710 test score. However, we had a plan and were taking classes at two (2) Southern California JC's. When we presented it to the ASU people they immediately (within hours) gave us a green light and some contingency advice. At that point, Omar had the offer from ASU and the ball was rolling. Furthermore, we presented the same plan to USC and they continuously balked at jumping the broom with the kid. Same thing with the UW. I, as an academic advisor to at-risk kids, will never send a kid to UW if he is being recruited by Trent Miles.

Bolden, you may remember, was also an academic risk.

ASU has been recognized as having one of the top academic support systems in the Scholar Baller program, which was designed to reward student-athletes who make good grades and spend extra time studying. Arizona on the other hand ranks at or near the bottom of most academic categories, and not just in the Pac-10 either. They have lost four football scholarships due to poor APR scores, the most of any school in the BCS. APR measures things like grades, graduation rates, etc. and penalizes schools that are not cutting it in the classroom. But you know they, like have a medical school or something, so like we're supposed to be, like, totally in awe of them or something. The story is ludicrous.

The term to note here is ASU's plan. While ASU has the Scholar Baller program, Arizona has hired 40 new tutors (bringing the total to 70) for their football program, but where is their organization and the incentive for their athletes to participate? When Erickson agreed to be the coach of the Sun Devils, many haters were quick to point out that during his tenure as head coach at the University of Miami players were prone to taking the field without making the required grades. He rebutted this criticism by pointing out that the rules at Da U allowed for a player to do so while his case was on appeal and that the academic programs, requirements, and procedures at ASU would not allow such a thing.

It sounds to me that these systems truly are in place in Tempe, and that the coaches are using them on the recruiting trail. This can only lead to the recruitment of a higher caliber person to Tempe, and we got that going for us, which is nice.

Even head groundskeeper Carl Spackler could get a 2.0 with ASU's academic support systems.

*Note: Big E wrote all of this much better than I did and you can read it here.

Labels: dirty icky recruiting, message board nonsense, movie references, the new era, UA morons