A SAVIOR AT XAVIER

The NCAA talks endlessly and earnestly about student-athletes. All the while, it makes gobs of money it refuses to share with the people – those student-athletes – who produce it.

Xavier, which is in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and plays Arizona on Thursday night, has the true student-athlete. Meet Matt Stainbrook.

He’s a 6-foot-10 center and a graduate student. His younger brother was a walk-on – no scholarship – on the Xavier team , paying full tuition.

So Stainbrook did the math, made some arrangements with the university, and gave his scholarship to his brother.

“Grad school costs about $14,000 a year while undergrad costs about $43,000 a year. So, for me to be on scholarship and only using it for $14,000 didn’t make sense to me. So, I talked to the compliance people, and they said I’d be able to switch my scholarship with my little brother, so I ended up doing that,” Stainbrook told The Dan Patrick Show.

Now, how was he to cover his costs? He turned to Uber, the non-taxi taxi service.

“I needed a flexible job, something to do to make some money, and I saw someone Uber-ing one day, and I said, ‘Hey, you know, that’s probably something I can do. I have a car, I can drive,’” Stainbrook said.

Stainbrook said he drove a 2004 Buick Rendezvous, which he described as “the most typical old-person car you can have.”

Nothing typical about Stainbrook. You might say he’s an Ubermensch. You can certainly call him a student-athlete and mean it a whole lot more than the NCAA does.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .