ESPN will both reward and enable a disgrace tomorrow night when it televises Arkansas-Tennessee, a game between SEC schools whose football graduation rates are both in single digits.

According to recently released NCAA data, Arkansas, based on the incoming class of 1995-96 – the NCAA gauges Div. I graduation rates of scholarship athletes in six-year blocks – graduated just five percent of its players, while Tennessee graduated eight percent. Neither team graduated a single African-American.

The overall graduation rate among Div. I scholarship football players, based on those same six years, was 52 percent. Vanderbilt, which also plays in the SEC – but almost always with a losing record – graduated 100 percent of its players.