Jeff Millman: Legitimacy on the hardwood

Rooting for our basketball team at the Palestra is the best non-sexual experience you can have at Penn. One reason is that our basketball team is the best in America, according to the Legitimacy Index.

The Legitimacy Index is the most legitimate ranking system in college basketball. It's also the least publicized because I just made it up, though I did not rig it to ensure Penn came out on top. The Legitimacy Index weighs three equal components: the academic fitness of the players, the degree of their exploitation by the school and the team's ability to win games.

By looking at these factors scientifically, we can whittle down the entire field of 319 contenders to one -- your Quakers!

Let's start with the basketball powerhouses, teams from the big conferences and other scholarship teams. These teams cheapen the academic enterprise of their school and are often stocked with student-athletes who have no interest in being students.

The admission standards for these basketball players are much lower than what is applied to typical students. These basketball players have abysmal graduation rates. In last year's NCAA Tournament, Stanford was the only team that graduated over 80 percent of its scholarship players (Penn, of course, has no scholarship players). The national average graduation rate of men's Division I basketball players is 43 percent.

These schools often ease the academic burden for basketball players in both overt and discreet ways. At the University of Minnesota, players submitted papers written by tutors. At Duke, William Avery matriculated with no hope of performing in the classroom and the school didn't care because it was thrilled to get one year out of a player before he entered the NBA draft as a teenager.

Penn players aren't just real students, they're good students. Penn's players fall within the league-mandated Academic Index, which means their SAT scores and class rank cannot be one standard deviation below the school's average student.

Guard Duane King was valedictorian of his 334-student high school class. All the players on the current team are on track to graduate. Forward Koko Archibong is pre-med, the most demanding regiment at this school. He was named Academic All-Ivy League last year.

Legitimacy update: basketball powerhouses eliminated; Stanford, Patriot and Ivy league teams advance.

Being a real student doesn't just mean fitting in academically. It also means that schools treat these players like normal students, denying them special status and perks. At other schools, the players are treated like stars.

These schools sell jerseys with the names of their players in their bookstores. Duke flies its team in a private jet used by the New York Knicks. The University of Oregon paid $250,000 for a 100-foot high billboard on a Manhattan skyscraper of one of its athletes. This creates a warped culture where athletes are considered demigods.

At Penn, basketball players are not looked at in awe; they are looked at as peers. They are not given a special scholarship to play their sport. Penn flies coach and you cant find anybody's jersey at the Bookstore. Penn doesn't run a Madison Avenue promotion of its players.

Compare that to the big-time teams, like Stanford, which run professional-style businesses that enrich the schools without fairly compensating the players, who provide the product. These schools have multi-million dollar television contracts and huge advertising campaigns. Their coaches go on speaking tours. Their arenas have luxury boxes auctioned to corporations.

Legitimacy update: Stanford eliminated; Patriot and Ivy league teams advance.

And it's Penn's basketball skill that separates it from the pack. As the eighth winningest program of all time, they've always known what to do with a basketball. But this year, they're so good it's scary. They're stacked at every position, they're athletic, well coached and primed to dominate. At the risk of jinxing the team, let's just say that Finals may come in earlier next semester, in late March.

But the fair-weather is not a reason to be a fan. It's to stand up at the Palestra. It's to stick up for our squad that gets no respect from the media, which uses more superficial rankings.

To be a Penn fan is to fill the niche. Without a major media outlet, we endlessly post on an Internet message board. When our team gets a sliver of recognition on a Web site, thousands of us are alerted and rush to it instantly.

Being a fan is to love the team obsessively. If you feel lucky to be here, as a basketball fan you can express your gratitude.

Jeff Millman is a senior Philosophy, Politics, and Economics major from Los Angeles, Calif.

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