Suni Lee Thread; latest: confirms one more season at Auburn and then Olympic bid

[navyblue]

I’m not familiar with the norms you’re referring to, if you have any passing familiarity with the most popular NCAA sports it’s super commonplace to leave college after 1 year to go pro. Obviously not as typical with a sport like gymnastics, but at the same time Suni is the single most successful athlete to enter into NCAA gymnastics at all, so equally comparable to a basketball star IMO.

I also think it’s clear you don’t understand what a rhetorical “strawman” is. We have all been using real life comparisons to other similar star athletes in college, not some invented hypothetical scenario.

 

[navyblue]

Suni’s college experience so far honestly sounds miserable to me. She has to take all online classes and had to stop attending school events because she is constantly called out, made an issue of, harassed by the people around her. She has to have a security detail.

Is there an article about this somewhere I can catch myself up on her situation? I hadn’t heard about any of this.

 

[RedBirdie]

Football is 3 years. NFL draft rules say you cannot be drafted until 3 years after you finish high school. The reality is most Power 5 football players redshirt their first year, back up their second, then finally start year 3.

Since there’s no real alternative, all eventual NFL players go NCAA. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Both the NFL and NCAA are quite happy with this arrangement.

 

[QuietColours]

It’s not in any one article–they’re things she’s talked about in various interviews over the course of the year. She’s also been pretty frank about how miserable the pressure has made her.

ETA: This article from two weeks ago talks about how she hasn’t been able to take in-person classes, has had to stop going to restaurants, and has had to stop attending basketball games.

 

[IratePanda]

I could understand issuing an ultimatum if Suni’s words and actions had a measurably negative effect on the Auburm team. The results suggest that they haven’t. She’s a key contributor to a strong corps.

 

[rlayt]

Looks like fame can be terrible. Especially when it drops on you unexpectedly. I wonder if she and Simone talk about it.

 

[blake]

Was gonna say, a sizable portion of the gymternet, myself included lol, were probably glad/thankful to see her leave NCAA.

I feel for Suni. The pressure of so many people’s huge expectations of where she could take this program must be difficult to deal with on top of the normal media circus that follows an olympic AA gold, and given that social media now dominates people’s daily lives in ways it didn’t before even Rio, I can imagine it’s a lot to deal with on top of school. No wonder she might no longer want a 4-year commitment she made when she was a pre-teen.

 

[cuuf]

I am quite familiar with the norms, which you obviously are not. Um, the most popular NCAA sport by far is college football, and NO college football plays leave after one year. Most leave after 4 a few after 3 and a few after 5. College basketball the second most popular NCAA sport, the majority are 3 years. A handful, maybe the most high profile go after a year. Baseball 3 years. I am not sure how many gymnasts you can name that leave after a year.

I am very versed on NIL and current landscape of college athletics. Bryce Young who has a multi-million dollar NIL deal, still lives on campus, attends classes and at least makes a semblance of trying to obtain a degree. And if you know anything about SEC football and Alabama SEC football, I guarantee Bryce has more attention and demands than Suni walking around campus.
And the other thing I don’t get, on one hand folks are so quick to prop her up, how “you cant tell her what to do”, “stop trying to control her”, “she can do what she wants” but then as soon as some criticism comes from her actions, its like, oh no you cant criticise her, she has just been thrust in this difficult situation, oh poor defenseless Suni. Can’t have it both ways, either she is an adult making decisions and a lot of $$ and accepting the criticism that comes with it or she isn’t. I don’t buy she was this poor naive nobody who just stumbled into fame. C’mon she was certainly high profile in the gymnastics world before the olympics and I seem to remember a certain Golden series that profiled her enough before. Sure her popularity might be higher, but hate to break to many fans, gymnastics on college campuses is not that big of a deal. Anyone see the attendance at Oklahoma or Michigan meets?

My point is Suni can do whatever she wants. But that doesn’t mean her actions are infallible. And to a degree Graba is to blame too. Yes, she is part of their success this year (although I would argue Sophia Groth is the real reason for team success, otherwise, Auburn would just be another Oregon state). But still, in the most high profile NCAA sports you have yet to see any athlete, not attend in-person class, live on campus and be coddled to the extent Suni has. Perhaps as NIL continues to play out and the lack of oversight we will reach that point but she is by far the exception currently. Again, she should be self-aware enough to realize how disrespectful it is to all the other athletes who do attend classes, do commit to the college experience. She should either respectfully say, ya college is not for me or say yes, I am doing college.

 

[makam]

Katie Ledecky only did a few years NCAA before she quit to go pro, I think. Swimming is probably a more comparable sport to gymnastics than football.

 

[IratePanda]

It’s not for you or anyone else to say.

 

[mnesiptolema]

Again, she should be self-aware enough to realize how disrespectful it is to all the other athletes who do attend classes, do commit to the college experience. She should either respectfully say, ya college is not for me or say yes, I am doing college.

You make it sound like she’s just waltzing around not bothering to try and with no commitment to the team which is giving her a free degree.

Based on the interview linked above she is actually experiencing intense anxiety which has rendered her unable to enjoy her college experience.

Not that anybody needs an ‘excuse’ to be anxious, but let’s be reminded that in the last two-ish years this young woman has:

• Had a parent experience a serious medical condition
• Accidentally become world-famous
• Been aware that she’s only world-famous because her teammate faltered
• Moved out of home to college and tried to be normal
• Been assaulted in public because of her race
• Cut off or been cut off from her family because she’s dating a black man

I mean, that would ruin me for a little while.

Could she have phrased whatever she said about NCAA more gracefully and at a better time? Yeah, probably. But I don’t think this pile-on is warranted.

 

[MaryClare]

Wow, I had not heard about that last one

 

[irichluck21]

Not to mention that she literally cannot go anywhere on campus without being accosted, sometimes heckled, most times by people wanting selfies.
My colleague’s son attends Auburn and he has seen this happen to her twice since she enrolled. Auburn has over 31,000 students and even if you aren’t a fan of gymnastics most of them would know about Suni Lee because her image is all over the place. You know if Suni is around due to the crowd and noise.

Like someone said earlier, Auburn is certainly milking the Suni Lee connection and her celebrity status.
Clearly not her fault, but it is clearly not the experience she envisioned before Tokyo.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

It might have been edited?

When I first watched the extract, it was a few hours before I got chance to post it on here and I got the link from Reddit which mentioned that she starts talking about the Olympics at 10.30. It’s not there now, and skimming through I couldn’t see it. There was a bit where one of the interviewers stood up which also seems to have gone, and also there’s a comment underneath on youtube now about it being shady to edit things about. I am fairly sure this is the right video as well.

On the subject of Suni’s decision, I cosign all the posts about how ridiculous it is to argue that she’s somehow ungrateful or in the wrong. People need to understand that NCAA is about a mutually beneficial arrangement. If it’s no longer that, so be it.

 

[arabiandoublefront]

That really sucks. I feel for her.

 

[Hatsumomo]

Relations between Black and Asian communities in the USA are pretty strained. It doesn’t help that in Minnesota, one of the cops that aided in the murder of George Floyd is from the Hmong community, aka Suni’s community (IIRC, Suni mentioned that in a pre-Olympics pandemic interview).

And in general, dating/marrying/procreating with a Black person is frowned upon in non-Black communities.

 

[KristyJ]

I feel like that “in general” is a strong generalization because I have definitely been in circles that had no issue with intermarriage and never was heckled about interracial dating, but I also know that there are many communities wherein it is an issue. I suppose greater than 50% is still an in general and it may be that. And I also know it can often be a hidden issue and stronger among specific groups.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I have read that interracial relationships where one of the couple is white are seen more as the ‘default’ and that it can be more difficult if that’s not the case. So maybe that’s part of it? Very much not an expert here though, I’ve never been in an interracial relationship myself and the friends and family that have all included a white person.

 

[RedBirdie]

The Hmong community in the US is very small, and pretty insular. They almost exclusively live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and marry within the community.

Suni is the single most accomplished and well-known Hmong American. Right or wrong, there are strong feelings among some in the Hmong community that Suni has betrayed her community and heritage.

 

[navyblue]

Ok, I’ll take the fall for my inaccurate generalization that implicated football. I was thinking of basketball specifically, and plenty of freshman stars in the program I follow closest leave after year one. As for “how many other gymnasts” do this? Well, as many of of us have pointed out, Suni Lee is in a superlative class without precedent in NCAA gymnastics, and to me she is a way bigger star than Seth or Stephen Curry

I have no qualms with your “Poor Suni” sentiments, and I’ve long maintained that criticizing gymnasts shouldn’t be off limits per se, with the minor caveat when publicly discussing the handful of stars who are literally teen girls, that perhaps a modicum of empathy is warranted. I myself almost forgot Suni is simply a 19 year-old who off-handedly expressed some ambivalence about her unique life circumstances, perhaps with less finesse than a seasoned PR professional.

So just maybe these highfalutin notions you hold about the ideals of university life or the “disrespect” she’s bestowing on her teammates, might be immaterial to Suni and her classmates and the Auburn program at large. I mean, you’re obviously allowed your critiques, but most of us think it’s a bad take.

The critique would be way more compelling if she was, like, hogging a scholarship spot without competing all-around at every single college meet, in a way that helped propel Auburn to one of their most successful seasons…