Actually, the article limited its commentary to upper eschelon private universities, which do not have a high number of black students. Therefore the article was correct.

Duke is also known as a university which has more white football and basketball players than other public universities.

The article does do a good job of condemning the attitudes and sense of entitlement promulgated within rich white atheletes by private schools. Of course, this is not very different than the sense of entitlement promulgated by public universities which create special rules for atheletes.

Duke is basically in the same category as Miami, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and USC.

I simply don’t understand the point of either the article or azbballfan’s comments.

Duke may have more white football and basketball players than public universities (alzbballfan use of “other” implies that Duke is a public university, an error I believe that was unintentional), however, Duke still has more black football and basketball players than it does white players. How is Duke’s athletic department, or any other university’s for that matter, an affirmative action program for whites?

Perhaps the basketball and football teams have the most media visibility and a preponderance of black athletes. Those programs, however, provide internal subsidies for a number of other sports. The essayist focused on lacrosse, a prep-school thing for rich ruffians who can’t skate. Rich ruffians who can skate play hockey (badly; he neglected the recruiting in Minnesota’s Iron Range and the mining country of Canada where the good college players come from) and in the U.S., apart from the Upper Great Lakes, hockey is a rich person’s game once one factors in the ice time, equipment, and travel. Then there’s golf, and tennis, and squash, and rowing, and yachting. (Some of the kids at the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Yacht Club consider the strenght of the sailing program as a factor in picking a college. I don’t know if any of them received scholarships to sail.) Now consider the effects of Title IX. Gymnastics, golf, tennis, rowing, yachting, lacrosse, field hockey (the latter two being dominated by Northwestern), soccer (big with eight year old suburban girls), equestrian (need I say more?)

Put it together… which the essayist failed to do… and the prima facie case is there that whitebread suburban kids receive a majority of the athletic scholarships, not all of them full rides, to participate in these upper-crust sports, while the black athletes appear on the highlight tapes (particularly in early January and again in March) while often leaving college before earning a degree.