Student Athlete

Sponsorship

Joe Copeland

Joe Copeland Feb 6, 2018

Feb 6, 2018

Republish Article

You can republish articles in print or online. Simply copy the HTML below, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline, and credit to Cascade PBS. Republishing of the photos or videos embedded in an article can occur only if the photo or video is a copyright of Cascade Public Media ("CPM") and not of a third party. Photos and videos that are a copyright of CPM are not required to appear in the republished article, but if they are used, they must be embedded where they appear in the original article and must include the attribution to the CPM photographer.

You may reprint in any medium
You may edit only for tense and timeliness
If republishing in print you can edit for length if you follow our print republishing guidelines.
You may write your own headline
Include a byline and shirttail with credit and link to Cascade PBS
Include our tracking pixel
Remove if we ask

          <article>
            <header>
              <hgroup>
                <h1>Student Athlete</h1>
                <h2><p>Just when the TV hype around a few men's college sports threatens to obliterate all perspective about the proper relationship between sports and school, somebody like Washington State University's Jason Monda comes along. The aspiring doctor is a star on the Cougars baseball team, and has</p></h2>
              </hgroup>
               <p>By <a href="/author/joe-copeland-crosscut-com/">Joe Copeland</a></p> 
              <p><time datetime="2025-02-04T05:00:00-08:00">Feb 6, 2018</time></p>
            </header>
            <p>Just when the TV hype around a few men's college sports threatens to obliterate all perspective about the proper relationship between sports and school, somebody like Washington State University's Jason Monda comes along. The aspiring doctor is a star on the Cougars baseball team, and has come back this year despite being drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies. <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/mar/03/wsu-standouts-medical-ambitions-keep-him-uniform/?ref=dev.cascadepbs.org">The Spokesman-Review says</a> Monda was a 6th round pick. At that level, almost every athlete signs up for a chance to play in the bigs. But Monday, says the paper, "values his degree" — to the tune of the $200,000 he rejected. (Ironically, <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/feb/23/murphy-outing-of-wsus-jason-monda-exposes-amateur/?ref=dev.cascadepbs.org">according to a Philadelphia report</a>  that was highly critical of the Phillies and the NCAA, the team tried and failed to get Monda in trouble with the NCAA. (Monda had the temerity to engage in the general — and prudent — draftee practice of having a financial adviser look at the proposal, which is apparently questionable under existing NCAA rules.) — J.C.</p>
          </article>

Just when the TV hype around a few men's college sports threatens to obliterate all perspective about the proper relationship between sports and school, somebody like Washington State University's Jason Monda comes along. The aspiring doctor is a star on the Cougars baseball team, and has come back this year despite being drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies. The Spokesman-Review says Monda was a 6th round pick. At that level, almost every athlete signs up for a chance to play in the bigs. But Monday, says the paper, "values his degree" — to the tune of the $200,000 he rejected. (Ironically, according to a Philadelphia report that was highly critical of the Phillies and the NCAA, the team tried and failed to get Monda in trouble with the NCAA. (Monda had the temerity to engage in the general — and prudent — draftee practice of having a financial adviser look at the proposal, which is apparently questionable under existing NCAA rules.) — J.C.

By Joe Copeland

Joe Copeland is the former senior editor&nbsp;for Crosscut, where he has been an editor since 2010. Before that, he was an editorial writer and columnist for the Seattle P-I and editorial page edi