So in yesterday's column about "Who To Root For In The Sweet 16" I sort of dismissed Cornell. Partly because I'd like to keep watching Kentucky basketball, and partly because, well... Who wants to root for a bunch of Ivy Leaguers?
↵↵↵In three months, these kids will be I-bankers. Spare me your Cinderella sympathies.
↵
And that was a joke but, well, here's a story from Bloomberg news today:
↵↵↵For the Cornell University players who will try to upset No. 1 seed Kentucky tonight in the men’s national college basketball tournament, a loss would not be the end of their dreams.
↵Mark Coury, a backup forward who averages 2.5 points and 2.4 rebounds for the Big Red, landed an internship in sales and trading at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. this summer, and may try to score a full-time job there after he completes his finance degree in 2011.
↵Coury won’t be the first Cornell basketball player to spend his summer in New York at Goldman Sachs. Current teammate Louis Dale and former teammates Khaliq Gant and Jason Battle also held internships at the investment bank. Battle now is a securities analyst at Goldman Sachs.
↵
Coury, you might remember, transferred from Kentucky. Because if you want to get rich, first thing's first: get some rich friends. But more to the point, this is not a joke. Cornell basketball really feeds into Goldman Sachs, the most successful investment bank on Wall Street. What a ragtag bunch of underdogs!