MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Sat, 15 Jul 2006

Top Grades and No Class Time for Auburn Players

Just remember, these kids got their room and board and tuition paid entirely by the taxpayers of Alabama. While at the same time the state (and the Feds) were cutting education funding and assistance for students with the academic qualifications but without the requisite muscle power.

Shows our real priorities very clearly, I think.

In 2004, many Auburn athletes received high grades from one professor for courses that required little work.

(link) [New York Times]

/Politics | 3 writebacks | permanent link

On 7/15/2006 22:09:35
Josh Centor wrote

Double-A Zone

In the vast majority of cases, student-athletes are students first, athletes a distant second. I know it’s difficult not to generalize after reading allegations like these, but it’s a common misconception that most of the 360,000+ NCAA student-athletes aren’t doing their part in the classroom. I’m a former student-athlete, and took pride in the way I performed in the classroom and on the field. It’s possible to do both, and to do them well…

On 7/15/2006 22:34:25
Dave H wrote

I can't dispute

your assertion, Josh, that most student-athletes are students first and athletes a distant second. And most NCAA athletes are never heard of by the public - the "grunts" on the teams, the linemen and the bench. Good kids, no doubt, and many quite possibly good students as well. But I'm unalterably opposed to giving my tax money to people to go play games, whether it's athletic scholarships to public universities are extra taxes levied to build stadiums for professional franchises. If the prospective athletes are good students they should have no trouble getting an academic scholarship, especially if the billions we waste every year on athletic scholarships were put to the task of developing minds instead of bodies. This is far from an isolated incident. These kinds of problems happen with amazing regularity in college sports: see http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/9-19-2003-45596.asp for a brief review of just the basketball scandals. In a nutshell, I would like to see college athletics return to being a truly amateur endeavor, and stop being a taxpayer funded farm system for professional sports. As it stands right now, most major college NCAA programs are nothing more than hidden subsidies for the NFL and NBA. As a small farmer I can't afford to buy a ticket to a Colts game, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna continue subsidizing their player development without a fuss. Thanks for the comment, and Be well, Dave H.

On 7/16/2006 03:16:20
Bjorngrímnir wrote

Gotta Agree....

....with Dave on this one. When I was at school, I encountered a football player who couldn't decide what to get for heartburn at the campus convenience store. We (myself and the other students hanging out in front of the dorm) told him to go get some Pepto. We even said 'the pink stuff'. When he came back, he was scratching his head, bewildered and thinking that he might have gotten the wrong thing because he couldn't find the word 'heart burn' anywhere on the package. What he did find was the word duh...duh...duhyra. He got something for diarrhea. Now, while I can't pretend to be able to spell that word at any given time, I can certainly read it and recognize it. I would have considered this an isolated incident, except that this same student had previously shown surprise that I actually read my own books for class, rather than having someone read them for me or to me. Incidentally, he was a lineman on the football team. Knowing that there are students who are treated this way at your school is more than just an irritant when you're cramming for class...especially when they are partying on your floor in the dorm. This is just my opinion, but I think it would be better if universities focused on education, with athletics left as a truly extra-curricular activity; and then create special schools for those athletes who wish to focus strictly on athletics that feed directly into the pro leagues.

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MacRaven
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