What to expect when Texas takes on West Virginia
Former Rockets star wants homeland to see how schools combine athletics, academics.
Texas basketball fans are solely focused on the Longhorns’ experience in China and whether Shaka Smart’s bunch can come home 1-0. For Chinese nationals such as Yao Ming, the Texas-Washington game means much more.
Yao, now 35 and well beyond his NBA career with the Houston Rockets, spends his days studying at Jiao Tong University in Shanghai. Like most star athletes, Yao spent his younger days working on his jumper instead of his grades.
“That’s why I’m back to school after my career,” Yao said. “I did it in
reverse.”
Whether it’s because of his superstar status, desire to give back or love for the game, Yao wants basketball to flourish in his homeland. That much was obvious during a panel discussion Friday at Jiao Tong that included fellow NBA great Bill Walton.
Saturday’s matchup, scheduled to start at 9 p.m. Friday in Austin, represents huge progress for Yao. He’s the one who pushed Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott to bring this event here. It’s the first regular-season intercollegiate game between U.S. teams in China and the coaching debut for UT’s Shaka Smart.
Yao was supportive when U.S. athletes traveled thousands of miles to play exhibitions against Chinese professional teams. He helped the Pac12 launch its Asian expansion in 2012.
“He’s the one who really said, ‘These exhibitions games are interesting, but these Chinese basketball fans have gotten pretty sophisticated,’” Scott said. “There are exhibitions, and then there’s a real game.”
A huge focus during the China-U.S. University Sports and Education Summit on Friday was how China can blend athletics and academics, something Yao wants to see.
China does not have the joint academic and athletic model used in the U.S. educational system. The education is controlled by one group, and athletics are controlled by another. There are no student-athletes, the phrase used in the U.S. To hear Yao describe it, Chinese children are either students or athletes, but not both.
“For a long time here, sports and education were parallel,” Yao said. “I think this game and show is a perfect example that the two lines can touch each other. … We can balance that well, and we can achieve both”
Scott gave a crowded lecture hall a brief history of the Pac-12, a league celebrating its 100th year. Shen Zhen, vice president of the Federation of University Sports in China,
‘If not for the educational component, I don’t believe corporations would support college athletes.’
said his association is only 40 years old. Organized Chinese athletics, at least when compared with the U.S., has a long way to go to catch up.
Shen said the FUSC is sending more than 200 coaches from various sports to France and the United Kingdom this year to learn better techniques. Chinese coaches “are limited” by a lack of health and nutritional training, Shen said.
“We call them seeds,” said Liu Jinghui, secretary-general of the China Scholarship Council. “Those 200 seeds will be spread all over China.”
Next year, that number will be bumped to 600. One hundred Chinese coaches will go to Salt Lake City to be embedded at the University of Utah, school President David Pershing said.
“We need to make improvement in the games,” Shen said through an interpreter. “If we cannot make improvement in the games, it is very hard to market.”
Texas women’s athletic director Chris Plonsky stressed to a crowd of Chinese students that U.S. collegiate athletes are held to a high standard academically.
The UT athletic department does not receive taxpayer funding. The department is wholly funded by private giving, unlike in China, where sports are funded by the government.
“If not for the educational component, I don’t believe corporations would support college athletes,” Plonsky said. “I think the educational piece of that is the most important driver in our endeavors.”