Another major figure in sports has written a book which means we have new inside tidbits coming out. The latest is Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim’s new book “Bleeding Orange” which he wrote with Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum. In the book he notes Carmelo Anthony’s academic struggles during his first semester of college, saying that the star forward’s grades made him ineligible for the Wooden Award during the team’s national championship season in 2003.
Boeheim notes that Anthony got four Cs and one D—or a 1.8 grade-point average—during his first term at the school.
“[A]nd if anyone wants to roll his eyes at that, plenty of freshmen who aren’t carrying a basketball team on their back do a lot worse,” Boeheim wrote about Anthony, who left the school after one year to go pro. “But we couldn’t put him in for the Wooden Award because his grades weren’t good enough. Nevertheless, this much is certain: No college basketball player in America was better than freshman Carmelo Anthony over the course of the 2002-03 season.”
Anthony and Boeheim have maintained a strong relationship since Anthony joined the professional ranks. In fact, Boeheim has been perhaps the biggest defender of Anthony’s game in recent years.
“The point I was trying to make, and maybe did not succeed in, was that I was impressed with how he did as a first-semester freshman,” Boeheim said, adding that he had previously spoken to Anthony about mentioning his grades in the book. A broad federal law, known as FERPA, protects the privacy of student-education records and requires that schools and school officials have written permission from the person in question before publicly releasing any information about a student’s record.
“We had talked about this before, but I’ll call him again to explain what I was getting at,” Boeheim said. “I wanted to try to make clear that he did do his work, and that he was engaged as a college student.”
