Jim Boeheim Says There's "a little racism involved" in Some of These Academic Questions

Jim Boeheim held his press conference to publicly discuss NCAA sanctions against himself and his Syracuse Basketball program today. Given that a certain tournament begins today, the presser was obviously scheduled to minimize any ripple effect. Boeheim began by reading a prepared statement, in which he seemed decently conciliatory, but when he wrapped that up and started taking questions he morphed into the defiant figure that one could surmise the NCAA wanted to make an example of. (He seemed to recognize this when he griped that the football program faced less strict discipline.)

One example of Boeheim’s defiance came in the Q&A session when he pivoted from a question about academic fraud into discussing purported “at-risk” students who have thrived at the university. “Those guys have graduated here,” he said. “We have a senior center who was a little bit of an at-risk student. So we shouldn’t have taken him? And we wouldn’t have had Rakeem Christmas here? Who graduated in three years, and has completed half of his masters program?”

“I think there’s a little racism involved when they start talking about not taking this guy or that guy. He’s from a foreign country. We shouldn’t have foreign students at Syracuse University?”

If you want a refresher course in some of what brought all this about, read about how hard Syracuse tried to keep Fab Melo eligible.