Meet The World’s Oldest College Basketball Player

By COED Staff February 27, 2009 2:49 pm Posted in College COED Staff g+ page

genthumb In 1957, Ken Mink left his junior college basketball team after his freshman year to join the Air Force, a decision he regretted for decades. Now, 53-years later his journey as the world’s oldest college basketball player has come to an end.

The 73-year-old was deemed ineligible to play by the Tennessee Junior College Athletic Association after Roane State failed to report changes to his academic schedule.

As a penalty the school will have to forfeit a game in which the man, born in 1936 scored two points.

To put his age in perspective, here are a list of things that happened in the year of Ken Mink’s birth.

• The first building to be completely covered in glass is completed in Toledo, Ohio,
• The Green Hornet radio show debuts.
• Construction of Hoover Dam is completed.
• British luxury liner RMS Queen Mary leaves Southampton on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic.
• Joe Louis lost his boxing title at Yankee Stadium.
• Triborough Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic.
• The 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, Germany, and mark the first live television coverage of a sports event in world history.
• The last surviving Tasmanian Devil dies in Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.
• Rome-Berlin Axis is formed.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected to a second term
• The first edition of Life Magazine is published.
• The YMCA is founded in Albany, NY.
• Nat King Cole’s recording career begins
• African-American athlete Jesse Owens wins the 100-meter dash at the Berlin Olympics.

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