Op-Ed Columns

Way to go, Joe.

You played for the Bear, won a national championship, made All-American, shocked the world in the '69 Super Bowl, had your own TV show, went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and hosted (briefly) Monday Night Football.

You also hawked panty hose and shaving cream and sat in for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. You're a man's man: football star, an unabashed Manhattan partier, a ladies' man of international acclaim, ultra-popular into your golden years.

And now, with much ado, you're graduating from college.

You deserve applause.

So, three cheers for Joe.

The "Joe," of course, is 64-year-old Joe Willie Namath, whose graduation Saturday from the University of Alabama has become both a human-interest story of note — How often does a Hall of Famer collect a sheepskin? — and a rallying cry for those who defend the character of college athletes who neither graduate nor seem to care about doing so.

Namath also isn't just another athlete; he's Joe Willie Namath, who possessed the Holy Trinity of athletic prowess/drop-dead good looks/ego to successfully mix the previous two. The modern-day Broadway Joe is Tom Brady, a three-time Super Bowl champion whose dimpled chin sets female hearts aflutter, but that's about it. In the end, he's no Joe Namath, because there was only one.

And he's graduating Saturday, 42 years after he left Tuscaloosa.

Can I get another cheer?

The elephant in the room of this discussion is that the graduation rates of college athletes are volatile, combustible subjects. Graduation statistics for athletes often are spun and mischaracterized, which furthers unfair stereotypes and dumb-jock labels. Universities often are cast as "football factories" that pour young men's athletic skills into money-making cauldrons — ticket sales, TV contracts, million-dollar bowl payouts, deep-pocketed alumni who donate Trump money in the quest for athletic success — and don't pour enough into their commitment to educate and graduate.

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Some schools graduate athletes more proficiently than others. Most athletes, I believe, want to graduate; others, sadly, have no intention of donning the robe, especially for the select few that can make a king's ransom playing games. But the statistics that often are spun into unflattering reputations now seem to carry a message of hope and improvement — in a few select areas, that is.

Recent numbers released by the NCAA say 77 percent of college athletes earned their degrees within six years, which is 14 points higher than the federal graduation rate. (Not surprisingly, the NCAA and the government use different accounting methods; the NCAA numbers are typically higher.) NCAA literature claims that "virtually every subgroup of student-athletes is exceeding the graduation success of their counterparts of the student body."

Which means, among other things, that black athletes are graduating at a rate higher than black students overall (53 percent to 46 percent), and white female athletes are earning degrees at a rate higher than white female students overall (74 percent to 66 percent).

As you research this, it becomes a numbers soup of stats and figures and demographics. Trust me; it'll give you a headache.

But this much is undeniable: The cash-cow sports of football and men's basketball — and you now must include baseball because of the earning potential of that sport's top-flight players — skew these graduation numbers. It's a fact. Take out those sports and college athletes' graduation rates are impressive. A high percentage of volleyball and golf and soccer players graduate. That's not always the case with football, baseball and men's basketball.

Why?

Lots of reasons. Some players chase the money: They're young, radically talented, and can make millions if they leave school, so some do. Others, like Namath, finish their eligibility but don't have a degree, so they chase they money, too. (Joe Willie, 15 credits shy of graduation, signed with the New York Jets for a record $400,000 in 1965.) Plus, the graduation rates of black athletes are markedly lower than that of white athletes, which is causing the NCAA to study socio-economic issues such as the quality of athletes' high school education, among other things. It's a complicated, confounding issue, and will be as long as any of us are around.

In truth, the ballyhoo of Namath's graduation is more human-interest than ground-breaking event. He's not the first former star to earn a degree decades after their playing days are complete. He's just insanely famous. I'm happy for him, nonetheless.

In the end, we must remember that college is all about choices: Do you go to college? If so, where? Is graduation a priority? Do you drop out and go to work? Despite the undeniable advantage of holding a degree, what's good for one isn't necessarily good for another.

And this: I've got two degrees, and I'm proud of both. But if someone had offered me a few million when I was a 20-year-old kid, I'd taken the money, too.

For that, I can't blame them.