MAKING THE GRADE.

The Mid-American Conference just released its Women’s Basketball Academic All-MAC Team.  "To qualify, a student-athlete must have at least a 3.20 cumulative GPA and have participated in at least 50 percent of the contests for that particular sport."  They're proud at Northern Illinois, where eight players qualified.  (The list would be even longer, I suspect, but for injuries affecting playing time.)

One of the obligations of playing a sport is to be available for a photo shoot.

Unattributed photograph retrieved from Northern Illinois University.

Two seniors, and a six-choose-five combinatorial problem of possible starting lineups in that shot, with at least a hint that the season did not end the way these kids would have liked.

Seems like a cheerful human interest story, with the Mid-American being the strongest conference not regarded as Power Five, and with a goodly number of participants upholding the ideal of the student athlete.

Yes, let's enjoy that, and let's also consider that this, too, might be fleeting.  The political economy of the Mid-American is no better now than it was several years ago,  with all the sports programs still dependent on student activity fees.  At Buffalo and Eastern Michigan, athletics directors are looking for ways to spend less money, and that's being coupled with planned reductions in academic offerings at Eastern Michigan.  Then an internal audit finds more money being misallocated at Northern Illinois.  "As the accounts were reviewed, a $2.5 million net transfer from closed system resources to the public-private partnership was observed, which violated university bond law. On Feb. 2, the university returned $2.6 million from the public-private partnership accounts to the closed system funds."

Has the little tin box been opened one time too many?

Thinking more generally, how sympathetic are legislators or donors going to be to academic-side budgetary stringency at a collection of converted normal schools, when the most visible bits of higher education seem bound and determined to reinforce the enterprise's reputation as a place making the likes of Hillary Clinton comfortable with their prejudices.