"The First Book I've Ever Read"...No Comment

Ashley Thorne

Today's No Comment item, via Jason Fertig, is an excerpt from a Sports Illustrated article on Kemba Walker, a basketball player at the University of Connecticut, who, in ESPN's wording, "appears to have gone through college having only recently completed reading an entire book for the first time."

And in his travel pack is a copy of New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, a book that Crump encouraged Walker to read as part of an independent study class on racism in sports. Before the Final Four, [academic counselor Felicia] Crump suggested that Rhoden's book would be the first that Walker had ever made it through cover-to-cover. After the win over Kentucky, Walker confirmed this. "That's true," he said. "You can write that. It is the first book I've ever read."

See also: "Betrayed by Higher Ed" by David Clemens, NAS blog.

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