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Former UC star earns his degree 15 years later
Blount felt obligated to get it done after stressing education while speaking at basketball camps.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Corie Blount is a former University of Cincinnati star, an 11-year NBA player and a businessman who's ventured into the real-estate game in California. On Saturday, June 14, 15 years after playing his final game for the Bearcats, he finally graduated from college.
While recently relaxing at the sports bar he co-owns in Sharonville, The Garage, Blount talked about the reason he went back to school at UC. Yes, he wants to get into college coaching — he was an interim assistant for the Bearcats during the 2005-06 season after Keith LeGree had to resign — and Blount knows finally earning his bachelor's degree in criminal justice will help him find a job.
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But Blount, a vital member of the 1992 Final Four squad, also said he felt an obligation to the kids to whom he used to preach — and to his own five children as well.
"My wife graduated from the University of Cincinnati, and she was like, 'You need to go back. You're going to tell your kids that they're going to have to go to school, and you speak at these camps and you're stressing education. You don't even have your degree,' " the 39-year-old said. "She had a point. I had a lot of people pushing on me.
"It really hit me when I started doing my basketball camps in my hometown when I was in the NBA. When I saw the kids getting in trouble, and you hear people saying you need to get your degree. But you don't really feel it until you look at the kids who are out there and how the community is going now. There's got to be a better way. Education is the key."
That's why he, along with partner Ron Watson, are in the process of starting a new clothing line called, "Had 2," which Blount says brings awareness to those who are in school about the uniqueness of graduation.
"I went and looked at all the clothing lines, and there's no clothing line geared toward graduates," the Monrovia, Calif., native said. "Nothing says education. We came up with this concept. It's just to promote graduation. For those like me, who want to come back or have some kind of mission of getting it done, this is a chance to represent that. I plan on taking this to every Division I school, every D-II school, even high schools. I'm planning on trying to build a brand with this."
But through all that, when Blount finished his final report for his final class — it was on the impact of the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Ohio for his state history class — he had a tough time controlling his emotions.
"I never cried before in my life — not when I won a state championship, when I got married, when I got drafted," Blount said. "I'm just not that type. But this meant so much — because of the importance of it — that I just broke down."
Now, at this point if he needs to cry, he'll do so as a college graduate.
"It speaks a lot about Corie's character and what he's all about as a person," said Bearcats coach Mick Cronin, Blount's close friend. "Just to put a backpack on and walk around campus as a retired 11-year NBA player and set an example — not only for his own children but for our players, who he has spoken to about academics. Quite frankly, he's conveyed to them that he wishes he would have finished when he was at Cincinnati the first time. It speaks a lot to the depth of his character. He's just a great role model."
