Cardale Jones zinged Josh Rosen on Twitter Tuesday over the UCLA quarterback’s highly-publicized comments about school and football, but unfortunately the former Ohio State QB got things wrong.
Rosen, who is entering his junior year at UCLA, made waves after Bleacher Report published an interview with the QB on Tuesday. In the interview, Rosen delved into the difficulties of trying to be a serious student while also trying to excel at a top college football program.
“Don’t get me started. I love school, but it’s hard,” Rosen said. “It’s cool because we’re learning more applicable stuff in my major (Economics)—not just the prerequisite stuff that’s designed to filter out people. But football really dents my ability to take some classes that I need. There are a bunch of classes that are only offered one time. There was a class this spring I had to take, but there was a conflict with spring football, so…
[…]
Look, football and school don’t go together. They just don’t. Trying to do both is like trying to do two full-time jobs. There are guys who have no business being in school, but they’re here because this is the path to the NFL. There’s no other way. Then there’s the other side that says raise the SAT eligibility requirements. OK, raise the SAT requirement at Alabama and see what kind of team they have. You lose athletes and then the product on the field suffers.”
Those were the most notable comments Rosen made in his interview with Matt Hayes. But Bleacher Report, and other outlets, did him no favors. Some outlets framed Rosen’s comments as if he were taking a shot at Alabama. Then even Bleacher Report boiled down his complex thoughts to a simple “Football and School don’t go together” quote.
Chill bro, play school pic.twitter.com/ZlJOhzTHcL
— Cardale Jones (@Cardale7_) August 8, 2017
Cardale posted that Bleacher Report image and added the caption, “Chill bro, play school.” That was Jones making an allusion to his past tweet in 2012 in which he wondered why athletes even have to bother with class when they’re obviously there for football. Jones later acknowledged he was wrong for having that mentality.
But there is a big difference in these cases. Rosen was never complaining about having to go to school/attend classes, he was simply pointing out the difficulties of trying to be a student while playing major D-I college football. It’s unfortunate that so many outlets framed his comments as if he was trying to say athletes shouldn’t have to go to class.
