Mike DiMauro: Bravo Ray Allen, college graduate

May 8—It is for further societal scrutiny to determine whether athletes are best assigned as role models or cast more elementally as gladiators and entertainers. But for now, much like French fries, role modeldom comes with the meal.

And this is why the trumpets should blare today for Walter Ray Allen, who completed his college degree this weekend at UConn. Walter Ray, the most accomplished Husky of them all — Naismith Hall of Famer, two-time NBA champion with shooting range to the concession stand — earned his Bachelor's Degree in General Studies at 47.

"When I was in school there was a couple of (resident assistants) that were in their 30s and I thought, 'Wow, they're still in school. It's never too late to learn,'" Allen told The Hartford Courant in such an uplifting story that it ought to win an award. "This day isn't about me, it's about the people that helped me along the way to finish this mission. These kids are on their individual journeys, so I was so inspired to be sitting next to them and talking to them."

Allen's story hits more good notes than Sinatra. To wit:

You're never too old.

Education is important.

With celebrity comes the role model thing, otherwise known as a responsibility to push others toward better choices.

"Student-athlete" isn't an oxymoron after all.

Most importantly, though, Allen's decision to pursue and complete his degree is about his humanity. There's an actual person in there. He's Ray Allen, human being; not Ray Allen, basketball player. Except we rarely view the athletes who play for our college teams as anything but mercenaries. They are what they do. Nobody cares whether they go to class. Just win, baby. And if you win, we'll do the requisite rationalizing and excuse making.

Example: During this school year at Alabama, a football player (Jermaine Burton) struck a Tennessee student on the field after the game; a football player (Tony Mitchell) was arrested for gun possession; a basketball player (Darius Miles) was arrested on murder charges; a basketball transfer commit (Jaykwon Walton) was arrested for gun possession; the baseball coach (Brad Bohannon) was fired amid a point shaving investigation and a deputy athletic director (Travis Self) was arrested on domestic violence charges.

But if you think Tommy and Tammy in Tuscaloosa care about that egregiousness as much as they care about "Roll Tide," you've just won the Nobel Prize for naivete.

Nobody ever said it better than the late, great Dan Jenkins, who once wrote of a successful athlete, "Yeah, he'll really miss that college degree when he's deciding which country to buy."

Allen has always been role model material. He made more 3-pointers in NBA history than anyone else except Steph Curry and rarely celebrated any of them, offending all the new cultural arbiters who bristle at "act like you've been there before" as if it's a hate crime. He was always personable, all the way back to UConn, a welcoming face in the days the locker room was open and the reporter/athlete engaged in meaningful conversation. Heck, I even saw him Christmas shopping once at Toys R Us in Waterford. He couldn't have been more gracious.

But returning to college almost 30 years after leaving early for the NBA and showing every kid (and adult) there's still value in education may be his greatest trick yet. Ray Allen showed us all that tomorrow has this sneaky way of showing up. And when it does, a college degree becomes more than a piece of paper. Education, as a wise person once said, "is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another."

Again: We feign interest in the well-being and the futures of the kids on our teams. Most of us would be happy with the Calipari thing, a perpetual regeneration of talent, benignly ignoring whether any of them ever open a book. It's why college sports, love them as we may, are our self-created cesspool.

But then there's Ray Allen. And we smile. And we think happy thoughts. Like: We ain't dead yet.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro