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Friday, June 09, 2006
From the mailbag
Bill H., a 1965 grad of Lehigh writes:
It's not unusual for Billy Taylor to make mention of the incoming student-athletes' grade point averages or SAT scores in his welcoming press release. Go back in the archives and do your homework before poking fun at us. We are justifying proud of the students we bring onto the team. It would be refreshing to see all Division 1 programs make such an announcement. It makes you sit back and appreciate the play of those athletes even more. I compare it to your column a few months ago (at least I thought it was your report) that compared the graduation rate of the Bison to that of Arkansas and Memphis during the NCAA Championships. Wasn't it something like 100% to 29%?
Dear Bill:

We assume that like most of the Lehigh fans we have heard from in the past year, you think we take great delight in poking fun at your alma mater.

That is not entirely true, though. We take great delight in poking fun at any target that is easy enough for us to poke fun at. We love a good poke now and then, and as many of your fellow Lehigh alums have pointed out, we are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. That is why easy targets, like the Joe Knight situation, class presidents who rob banks, the Bucky Bison mascot, Bucknell's pep band and pseudo-television networks like CSTV always seem to get our attention.

It's the same reason we pick e-mails like yours for our occasional mailbag features.

See Bill, it is always a good idea to check the archives before telling someone else they ought to do the same.

Had you checked before suggesting we do so, you would have noticed that when Lehigh issued a release about Joe Knight joining the program, no mention was made of Joe's academic prowess.

Matter of fact, of the three players listed in that release, only Bryan White's high school GPA (3.2) was mentioned.

That is not out of the ordinary. The release announcing last season's four freshmen also only mentioned one player's high school grades (John Gourlay - 4.0). For those keeping score at home, that is two of seven, or about 29 percent, of Lehigh's recruits in those two years.
Published at 3:05 PM by Hoop Time.
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