Senior sidelined: 73-year-old declared ineligible

by FOXSports.com

The feel-good story of the 73-year-old man who put a spin move on Father Time by playing basketball for a Tennessee junior college has taken another unusual turn. Apparently, Spanish isn't Ken Mink's favorite subject.

Mink, who made national headlines by making the men's basketball team at Roane State College in Harriman, Tennessee, has been ruled academically ineligible by the National Junior College Athletic Association, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. His team will be required to forfeit one game, the paper reported.

The NCJAA reportedly ruled that Mink had not maintained the minimum required number of credits an athlete must pass in a semester in order to remain eligible to participate in sports.

"I told coach (Randy Nesbit) early on that I was having trouble in Spanish," Mink told the News Sentinel.

Fearing he might fail the Spanish class, Mink said he enrolled in a Sociology class on another campus, hoping that a passing grade there would give him the credits he needed to retain his eligibility. But that class was apparently completed too late to apply to the semester in question.

Ken Mink's dream of playing college hoops took a rough turn this week. (Saul Young/Knoxville News Sentinel / Special to FOXSports.com)

"This is not an academic issue, it's an administrative issue," Mink wrote in an email to the News Sentinel on Friday. "... the NJCAA is ruling me ineligible because the NJCAA contends Roane State did not follow administrative procedures in restoring my eligibility after the NJCAA had questioned whether or not one of my courses was completed within the fall semester.

"Coach Nesbit supplied the NJCAA all the documentation proving my academic eligibility. Coach Nesbit knew I had met the requirements and restored me for play, but the NJCAA has contended the coach (or school) had not checked with the NJCAA a second time before restoring me to play."

Nesbit and Mink are appealing the ruling, but Mink said the appeal process may not be complete by the time Roane State concludes its season. Mink played in a Feb. 7 game against Hiwassee, scoring two points. That's the game the NJCAA ruled Roane State must forfeit.

Mink said his college career at Lees Junior College in Kentucky was cut short in 1956 when he was wrongly accused of spraying his coach's office with shaving cream and kicked off the team. He said he realized he could still hoop it up when he was shooting baskets in his driveway last fall.

He wrote to some coaches seeking the chance to play, and Nesbit gave him a shot. Mink spent the summer getting into shape and playing with a senior team from the area in three state tournaments.

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