1 week from tomorrow it begins- - - -NO DIALLO
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@VailHawk Or perhaps KU Compliance is dragging its feet?
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This post is deleted!
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My read on it is that we had to send other information from Africa for their decision, and that happened only recently.
I think we have a solid chance of having him gain his eligibility only because Self predicted an answer soon. That indicates to me that they have found and submitted the information the NCAA needed.
I’m reading within the tea leafs on that one.
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@drgnslayr Diallo has more than likely been denied eligibility and KU is in a rebuttal situation. IF the NCAA had everything they needed they would have already made a decision. It doesn’t look good for Diallo. I know many of you are looking for the dislike button but honestly school curriculum in Africa for a 9th grader is sub par and probably wouldn’t count in most high schools across America for actual credits that count towards a diploma. Diallo attended 1/2 of his 9th grade year in Africa.
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@Statmachine I think you are exactly right on both counts. He’s likely denied, but for a good reason. I read yesterday on Twitter where folks were whining about Caleb Swanigan and how the NCAA should consider his circumstances. It’s the same with Daillo. If Diallo took a core Algebra course in Mali from some dude milking a wildebeest, then should that count when a kid in the US wouldn’t get the same deference? Rules are rules, follow them.
Personally, I’d just rather know so we can all finally get on the Hunter Mickelson bandwagon. And it’s weird how chemistry and everything else works out. A loss in one area can mean a gain in another.
The only result I fear is no result, uncertainty, a cloud hanging there in anticipation of some supposed OAD savior. Screw that. We should have inked a non-OAD post player instead stringing out our recruiting to last possible moment, and then creating this circus that should have been reasonably anticipated (or flat out known) ahead of time. But we are where we are.
Starting at center, from Jonesboro, Arkansas, #42, Huuuuunter Mick-el-son … say it with me now.
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They milk wildebeests?
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@wissoxfan83 lol
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@HighEliteMajor I think what you meant to say was bean counting does not translate to high school Algebra. I suppose milking a wildebeest could count for an Agriculture class in the US lol.
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@Statmachine I’ve heard rumors that is a major at Silo Tech… (KSU)…
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You could be right, that KU is challenging the call.
But if he was denied, and it is a dead issue, the NCAA would let out the news. There is no benefit to them just dragging their feet.
I’m not saying I agree or disagree that Diallo has already been denied and Kansas is challenging the call. But “it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.”
I’m curious if his summer course work at KU makes a difference?
Every kid going through the qualification process has a unique situation.
Perhaps Diallo didn’t pass mustard first go around and they are looking for a better pathway to get him qualified. His summer school could be all or part of that. Or… perhaps his Mali transcripts can not be qualified. Perhaps his course work is adequate, but there is no way to qualify the transcripts as being legit and not tampered with. For example… since I lived abroad, when I had to file documents with other governments they did not accept our local notary system. I had to drive to Topeka and have everything certified with an apostille and the only way to get that was directly in Topeka.
In this case… the long time to get a ruling could mean they are actually trying to verify his records directly in Mali. Something that may take time. African countries are notorious for bad records and everyone knows how easy it is to bribe officials or doctor records.
BTW: Getting anything done in Mali is going to take a long time. There is quite a bit of violence going on there, too:
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@drgnslayr When McLemore was ruled ineligible Coach Self knew weeks before they released the info trying to challenge the NCAA. I think that is where we stand today with the Cheick Diallo situation.
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@drgnslayr I don’t think his course work at KU matters … I believe the threshold issue is whether he was eligible, or whether he’s a partial qualifier like McLemore and Traylor, upon graduation from H.S.
I was now curious … looks like someone milked a wildebeest.
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Diallo did not arrive in Lawrence until late June / early July (after Self and Team had left for the WUG)
It is my recollection that Bill Self said at the time that he was completing “paperwork” in June and that the prevailing school of thought was that he was taking additional high school course work as a preventative attempt to fulfill the required NCAA elibilty center requirements that had been raised as potential concern (note Self’s quote concerning Diallo being told after already completing 3 1/2 years at the school and nearing graduation that there could be potential problems).
If true, that summer school coursework would have bearing on the NCAA decision.
It is my further understanding that after he arrived in Lawrence that he enrolled in collegiate coursework, which would not have a bearing on the NCAA decision…although it could be used to argue Cheick had met the University of Kansas’ academic admission standards and performed acceptably in collegiate course work.
As a KU fan I am biased. And I fully realize that as a prospective student athlete that it is incumbent upon that recruit to ensure his i’s are dotted and his t’s are crossed as it relates to the NCAA Eligibilty Center…
That being said I would also point out that the point of a regimented clearing process that includes the completion of specific coursework and a qualifying score on a standardized examination such as the SAT or ACT is to ensure that a student athlete has a reasonable likelihood of academic success in a course of study that allows him/her to progress toward the completion of a degree…thus preventing a university from bringing in amazingly talented athletes who lack the interest and/or the proven track record of academic success to suggest a reasonable likelihood of success in progressing toward a degree…keeps hired guns from creating an uneven playing field.
I can’t believe it is the intent of these regulations to keep kids that are too smart from competing in collegiate athletics though.
Just my $0.02 here, but I fail to see why completion of a semester of a freshman curriculum for a high school in Africa should preclude NCAA athletic eligibility… IF all other facets of the transcript and standardized testing have been fulfilled.
If he can speak four languages, successfully graduated from an accredited high school while completing the pre-requisite course work required by the NCAA, performed acceptably on his standardized college entrance exam, was approved for admission by the University of Kansas and is in good standing on completed coursework while there…then I think there are a multitude of mitigating factors in existence that certainly evidence more than a reasonable likelihood that Cheick is well suited for the rigors of a post-secondary education.
Free Cheick Diallo.
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Bravo!
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Cheick Diallo arrived in the United States on February 14, 2012 in pursuit of a basketball career. He only attended 2 and 1/2 months of his freshman year of high school. I am not saying he is NOT going to be cleared but it doesn’t look good.
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@HighEliteMajor said:
Rules are rules, follow them.
You don’t actually believe this. Rules don’t exist simply to satisfy themselves. Rules are formed with an intent, and when a rule fails to meet that intent or, worse yet, impedes it, then exceptions should be made or, depending on the scale, the rule needs to be amended or struck down. More importantly, the NCAA doesn’t believe that rules exist solely to be enforced or they wouldn’t bother having an appeals process to begin with. The NCAA Eligibility Center’s purpose is to ensure that incoming student athletes are both truly amateur and ready to take on the rigors of college academics while participating in athletics. Everything about Diallo’s situation indicates that he meets the requirements of those interests. Hell, Frank Mason, who had to take an extra year at a military academy in order to qualify (which is why he didn’t wind up at Towson), was less college ready when he signed with us than Diallo is right now.
As for your hypothetical, what if we take it at face value? Suppose, as a freshman, Diallo was taking an algebra class in Mali that wouldn’t meet American standards? So what? Education doesn’t work like those old fashioned Christmas lights where when a single bulb burnt out, the entire strand went dim. It’s a process of accumulating knowledge and skills, then building on that foundation. No matter how poor any of the classes Diallo may have taken in Mali, he still got enough of a foundation to build an education that, in this scenario, would seem to have been good enough. After all, in order for him to graduate from an accredited American high school, he’d still have to pass a higher level algebra course and therefore necessarily have the skills that this yak milker was tasked to provide. What difference, in your mind, can it possibly make if he’s already demonstrated aptitude? As for an American kid not getting that consideration, asserting it doesn’t make it so. Proof?
Now I’ll freely admit that I’m biased here. I’m a huge fan of Diallo from following his high school career, and I went through a similar situation in high school myself. Whether it was my fault or whether I was misinformed by my guidance counselor, I don’t recall, but somehow I missed a required typing course and didn’t get signed up for it by the 2nd semester of my senior year. About a month before graduation, I got called to the academic administrator’s office and informed that I missed a requirement, but would be allowed to walk if I made it up in summer school. Not in the least interested in prolonging high school, I informed the administrator that there wasn’t any point in making me take the class because I could already touch type over 65 words per minute (not incredible, but more than good enough) and that it would be equal parts a waste of time and money just to make the monkey dance. The administrator considered this, then got up, pulled out a chair in front of a computer terminal, and had me type while she dictated scripture to me (this was a private school). We printed it out, she checked for typos (it wasn’t perfect) and counted the words. In fifteen total minutes I managed to get back 15 days of my life and left the office with a typing credit and a P for a grade.
Was that fair to the other students? Maybe not, but it wasn’t any more unfair than making me spend two hours a day typing ‘see the brown fox run’. So I say there’d hardly be anything on Diallo’s Malian transcript that you could find that would constitute a ‘good reason’ to preclude him from college athletics. And though I have my biases, I don’t think you’re inoculated from bias either.
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@konkeyDong I understand your position. I believe that rules are rules, but if they’re bad rules, then change them. Change the typing class rule. That permits equal enforcement. The enemy of rules is inequitable enforcement, or discretion. It creates chaos and discord. See the block/charge rule.
You get into discretion. Does the theoretically bad classes in Mali justify ineligibility? How about the bad classes some recruit has from Arizona? Or simply not taking a core class? Is taking a horribly deficient core class any different than not taking one at all?
Of course, the rules are in place because they set a standard for NCAA competition. They are so folks can’t necessarily blow off school and just be an athlete – all in theory. The difficulty with bending rules is that a slippery slope is created.
It’s like nudity on TV. The more it has been allowed, the more certain folks will want to press the limits. The more the “fringe” becomes the “norm.” The more the foundation of our society is chipped away. Pick your topic.
Bright line rules work.
I am biased, I admit it. I think rules work.
But I am not biased to the extent that my love for KU hoops will change my mind, nor my strong desire for a national title. If Diallo does not meet NCAA standards, he should sit.
But what ticks me off is if the rules are not applied consistently. Thus, my preference to bright line rules. That removes discretion. And discretion is the enemy of rules enforcement – just ask John Higgins and our referee friends.
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Who’s to say that he was even going to school in Mali?
not a lot of kids actually make it to the 9th grade according to this.
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@Statmachine I like hearing that type of stuff Stat. Thats stuff we wont get on the other site. Keep it coming!! RCJH
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@drgnslayr I trust in your tea leaf divination skills
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I presumed he did because Bill Self said they had requested academic information from Africa and he referenced the logistics in getting stuff to here from there.
Was that not the case?
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I’m a huge fan of Diallo as well, watched a lot of his games over the past few years. I’ve been biased about him from the beginning but not regarding this fiasco.
In all likelyhood they rejected his eligibility based on the fact that his core classes he took at Our Savior were a bunch of pastry puffs. That’s why he’s been the only one not cleared, as opposed to his teammates that took core classes at other schools which combined with SAT/ACT scores were sufficient to let them play. This would also explain the NCAA’s investigation of the school, finding that they have cut major academic corners to cater themselves as a basketball factory. Because Diallo was their 3 1/2 years, basically his whole transcript could be full of red flags to the NCAA’s concerns.
I think the NCAA wanted his full transcript from Mali, which was the flag for the incomplete info he initially sent. I have zero confidence that his half year of school in Mali is the “wildcard” to him being eligible. The only thing its going to do is give the NCAA everything for which a fair decision can be made.
The timing of this all sucks, as Diallo has been late to the party for everything, from graduating to being at KU this summer, to giving the NCAA all the information they needed. And now we stand 2 weeks from our first game still waiting and not knowing what’s going to happen.
If by chance his core classes and gpa and test scores do meet the mininum requirements & the NCAA is just being a stickler because of what was missing and wanting to verify his whole body of work then I’m completely wrong with my assumptions. I would understand that they couldn’t make a full judgement until they had the knowledge of his Mali classes or lack of them. If this was a mess up by KU & Diallo himself, then I’m sure Self will elaborate on that fact when a ruling is made.
If I’m wrong, I would gladly come on this site and say I was wrong, and I’ll give the NCAA a little more credit for all the work they do. And in the end my new favorite player would get the chance to help this team win a championship. A win win really.
I do believe that Self knows a lot more than he’s shared, either the fact that they are appealing a denial of eligibility, or that he’s eligible but not until his Mali stuff is verified. Self did let the birdie out that the case they had presented before, didn’t sound like he would have been eligible if that’s all they had to go on. That would confirm my earlier assumption about his school screwing him over in the academic department.
Anyways this topic has been beaten to a dead horse many times over. it needs to end, 1 way or the other
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@drgnslayr Math and science and english and or language classes. Core curriculum stuff right? Well gosh darn it, Diallo can speak 4 languages!! You would think that he would be proficient in all the other stuff too, wouldnt you? I sure would.
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@HighEliteMajor LoL! Great article on Wildebeest milking! I have not lived until I knew the differences.
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Gosh… hard to say about his general education and proficiency just based on his ability to speak 4 languages.
Liked your post. In law the terminology is “letter of the law” and “spirit of the law” and both are clearly defined for a reason, because both usually carry some weight and the determining factors are usually in the details and by situation.
I know many of us Kansas fans have an ax to grind with the NCAA. I do and for reasons dating far back into the 70s and probably before. For many reasons I am doubtful that any of us can post unbiased content here and we are mostly venting our frustrations. I know that describes me and my posts.
If you asked ol’ biased me, the NCAA practices both “letter of the law” and “spirit of the law” and they usually apply “letter of the law” to Kansas, and “spirit of the law” to schools like Duke, Kentucky, Syracuse and UNC. That is my biased opinion.
In this case, “letter of the law” is being followed and Diallo will have to come up with more than enough proof of his past education, even if it has no true merit to his case.
The NCAA practiced “spirit of the law” on the Skal case… assuming he was (is) being exploited by his handler. But by the “letter of the law” he received benefits by playing for a team in a league that was not sanctioned by the NCAA as having “amateur status.” Therefore, everything from uniforms, to shoes, to transportation to games… all illegal benefits that should have crushed his amateur status. Those expenses are deemed “actual expenses” by the NCAA when they want to apply the “spirit of the law” and are not considered benefits. But if it was on a Kansas player, my ol’ biased self thinks the NCAA will apply the “letter of the law” and count all those things as benefits.
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Diallo? Who is Diallo?
Isn’t he some guy that Calipari wanted, so that Cal could get two cleared for the price of one?
Diallo? We don’t need no stinking Diallo!!!
Ahem…
Cheick Diallo, hear me out.
You are at the University of Kansas.
You are INSIDE Allen Field House.
Amazing things happen in that building.
You are no longer in low-magic places like Africa and New York, or Planet Earth generally.
You are in Basketball Tibet.
Beauty walks a razor’s edge 94 feet long.
We are talking about a golden rectangle here.
We are talking about Big Medicine.
You are in the Temple that Indiana Jones went to that George Lucas realized he dare not tell the story of. You are in the Temple where Indy found a chamber under mid court where a knight waits by the basketball holy grail, where Indy said to his poppa, "This place, poppa, it is too perfect to disturb. We must not lead the Nazis, or the Commies here. We must not let the NeoCons and NeoLibs learn of this place. We must let the knight protect the Holy Grail of college basketball in this chamber under the Jayhawk at mid court until the second coming. And so George swapped Lucas Films and ILM and so on for a fat share of Disney precisely in order to make sure that no one ever makes the last installment of Indiana Jones. George Lucas, you see, my dear Cheick, used to drag race out in the Central Valley of California before he went off to USC to become one of the kids with beards that took over the Silver Screen for a time. And he almost killed himself on a flat open stretch outside Modesto, and that near death experience, plus a father who ran an appliance store, plus a timely exchange with Joseffa Campbell gave him uncommon vision for a hot rodder. George knows what to tamper with and what to leave intact. He decided to retire to keep himself from making the last installment and possibly destroying the beauty and goodness of the living myth that is Kansas basketball. And he did this for a reason, my dear Cheick. He did this to make sure that amazing things would continue to happen unabated in that Monarch of the Midlands called Allen Field House. You, Cheick will experience some of those amazing things. Some how, I don’t know how, you will wind up on James Naismith Court and be a part of some of the amazing things to come. Trust me. Keep practicing and getting better. It will come to pass.
