BigRedBuster
International Man of Mystery
I'm not talking about the benefit of effects. Yes, I already acknowledge in a previous post that a lot of good came from it and those players received benefit that was valuable. I'm talking about intention. You asked how it isn't noble - something being noble has to do with moral principles and ideals, not results.
When we give a scholarship to a player the most foundational primary reason for doing so is for our gain, not theirs. But different situations have different degrees of added consideration and altruism, or differing amounts of overlap between player and program desires/needs, or less of a dichotomy between athletic success and academic integrity.
Our exploitation of partial qualifiers strikes me as slightly less ethical or easy to sit with than our exploitation of other college football players (don't get triggered by the word exploitation it's not meant to be an indictment), and the argument in favor of it is a little too much like Romans supporting gladiatorial pits saying, "Well, at least those prisoners get a chance to be free or die with honor! They should be grateful" for my comfort.
And again, I'm only talking about this because you keep asking. It's a very very very little deal to me.
You're going deeper into la la land with this.
We brought partial qualifiers in for the exact same reason why we bring any scholarship player in. We give them an education and they play football for the program. With partial qualifiers, we were able to give that opportunity to a few players a year that normally would have just gone to a JUCO.
I absolutely fail to see how that's some how immoral or unethical. Every program in the conference had the ability to do that and I would be surprised if they didn't. It wasn't something we dreamed up and just did ourselves in secret to try to get around rules or to exploit the system.
These players were not eligible to play till they were fully qualified. So, it's not like we were playing a bunch of failing players for a couple years then dumping them. They came in, did the work, got qualified and played....and I would guess that many of them ended up with a college degree because of it.
You're way out in strange land on this one.