Who’s the Most Underachieving in NCAA Hoops?

ESPN just released a list of the most underachieving NCAA basketball teams of the past ten years. The top of the list wasn’t surprising: Michigan, Florida State, St. John’s, etc. In order to be “underachieving” you first need a reasonable expectation for success, and that is fairly subjective. Next, you need to do poorly, consistently for the past ten years. Excuses for the teams abound. One thing that schools like Michigan suffer from is NCAA punishments. Then again, schools get punished for reasons, and under performance because of punishments could just be grouped in with under performance in the rule abiding column.

Like with the overachievers yesterday, I put a lot of weight into how much money a school devotes to athletics and their academic standards. For a big, rich school such as Florida State or Michigan to not be able to put together a single good year, that’s unacceptable. ESPN admits that most of the schools on the list have been making efforts to right the ship. There is reason to believe that StubHub.com will be selling Michigan Wolverines basketball tickets like hot cakes again, though right now they don’t deserve to be.

Permalink - Posted in General on May 10, 2007 - Post a comment