Come for the athletics, stay for the academics

Shane Wade
Opinion Editor

I like basketball. I support both our men’s and women’s basketball teams. I go to games, riot and ridicule our crosstown, private-school rivals. I’m a good American and a good Ram.

But I’m guilty of not romanticizing and promoting our basketball program, as many of us have done in recent weeks.

Deviating from the standard response of expressing appraisal for our basketball teams, when asked about VCU, it’s nice to tell prospective families about our nationally ranked programs, graduation rate and post-graduation success. It’s nice to talk about the academic quantitative benchmarks of success. It’s nice to talk about VCU’s reinvestment within the community.

As someone who’s spent a good portion of his life being associated with inner-city schools, I don’t want my degree and the name “VCU” to be primarily associated with basketball; there are too many stereotypes fulfilled by that path for my liking.

Athletic success can only take us so far within public perception. Families can and will want to visit, but they must also be given reason to send their kids here. There must be academic meriting to support and co-sponsor our success.

While that substance is already apparent to us, it is not so apparent to the rest of the world. Therefore, our duty must be to make it so.

When searching for post-graduation employment or graduate school options, potential employers and admission officers should look at those three letters, “V-C-U,” and reflect upon our high academic success, award-winning research and community outreach successes.

Having a successful basketball program should be secondary to our success as an academic institution. While we may all recognize and agree upon that fact, our actions don’t always match the message.

Success in the NCAA for our men’s basketball team means free publicity for the university and hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise profit. That success isn’t directly associated with the rest of the school, but it must translate into improvements for the rest of the university, beyond the proximity award and knowledge so that our admissions will be more competitive.

It must also be done in a transparent manner so that our students can readily identify. The monetary rewards of success, although earned exclusively by our basketball team, should be made available to the rest of the university to avoid accusations of elitism and unfairness.

While our athletic success has brought national acclaim to our otherwise slighted university, we have to ensure we’re incentivizing the right prospective students by properly framing our success.

There’s a story being told and we must be the ones to shape and construct the narrative; if we don’t, our reality will be susceptible to a co-opted, distorted and unrepresentative message.

It’s one matter to be proud of our athletic success and another to tout it as both the university and student body repeatedly has. There’s no value in sunshine soldiers and summertime patriots. There’s no meaningfulness in having school pride only during March. The bragging rights earned and praise bestowed upon us by ESPN’s talking heads during our time in the NCAA Tournament bracket shouldn’t be the only time VCU’s name graces national headlines.

There’s plenty of reasons to attend VCU; let’s not promote athletics as the be-all, end-all deciding factor.

Our sports teams’ successes speak for themselves. The academic side of VCU, however, could use more of the prestige and promotion that a national spotlight provides.