Spring Break
Miles looks to shift academic culture
Adam Bohlmeyer
Issue date: 3/13/09 Section: Sports
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From the minute Miles, coach of CSU men's basketball team, arrived in Fort Collins two years ago, he committed to trying to change the university's basketball culture, including the way athletes view academics. Now, at the end of his second season with the Rams, Miles said he is still trying to change the way the team sees being student athletes, even at the cost of temporarily handicapping the program. He explained that his players will be better for it in the end.
"We've sent a loud and clear message," he said. "We've suspended guys academically, we've not taken guys on trips, we've held guys out of practice and added study table sessions. I don't see the progress in wins and losses; I see the progress in what it takes to be a complete person versus a complete player. That's in your personal life, your academic life and certainly your basketball skills."
Athletic Director Paul Kowalczyk said the basketball team and CSU athletics as a whole have made recent progress academically, but there's still plenty of room for improvement."In general, yes, we are improving," he said. "We are definitely making strides. We aren't where we should be or where we want to be, but generally we are improving."
Kowalczyk added that Miles was the perfect choice to help bring change and said that he hired him based on his previous record of success on and off the court.
"Tim (Miles) gets it," Kowalczyk said. "He had a very good track record at North Dakota State, which is one reason I hired him. There is no question he understands having academic success is critical to building a program."
Miles is trying to live up to his past reputation for success by any means necessary. Most recently, the 13-year coach showed how committed he is to academics by suspending the Rams leading scorer Marcus Walker and key defender Harvey Perry for three weeks at the beginning of the conference season. Both Walker and Perry had academic issues Miles insisted on fixing before he let the players return to the court.
Walker explained that the temporary suspension was mentally hard because he felt he was letting his teammates down. The former Ram guard added that he learned his lesson and that he can already see CSU's attitude about academics changing.
"It is going to change, and it has changed," Walker, a junior college transfer, said. "We got a lot of academic programs that people go to now, including myself. People are going to class more and not taking days off where they think they don't have to go to class. It'll be a whole lot different in the next couple of years."
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