The hometown paper ANN ARBOR NEWS won’t roll over and fluff the Michigan Wolverines, even if college counselors are that way with student-athletes by pointing many of them toward lenient general studies majors and enrolling in the classes for them.
In a four-day exposé, the newspaper compiled not exactly startling, but rather sobering information about the decisions in college courses that student-athletes either make, or are made for them. And would you believe it? Some of the former scholarship players regret not focusing more on the unique gift of free edu-ma-cation.
Some highlights of the full report:
• About 10 percent of student-athletes pursue the squishy “general studies” major. Less than 1 percent of the entire undergraduate body is a GS major.
• Somehow, former basketball player Brent Petway didn’t even know the school had a music major until his junior year.
• Four-year letterman and current Arizona Cardinals starting defensive tackle Gabe Watson never graduated, withdrew from more than a few classes, and got A’s in “nontraditional courses.”
• Know how most students have to interface with that web portal and schedule classes, or before that, register for classes by telephone, and before that, carrier pigeon? Well, UM’s student-athletes has that stuff done for them.
Again, there’s nothing scandalous or even NCAA probe-worthy here. Just reaffirming the notion that a prestigious school has no problem cutting corners for their gifted physical specimens.
But here’s the positive news: all those classes that Terrelle Pryor was predestined to enroll in? Yeah, those fall 2008 classes now have an opening.
1:01 pm on March 20th, 2008
I agree that most big time programs help to push certain student-athletes through, but I don’t think that is so wrong. I was a four year letter winner at a Big East football program so I experienced it with some of my teammates. I graduated with a degree in economics, but some of my teammates had more difficulty with classes. Just as a student with a music talent who doesn’t care about math or science, these athletes are there to play their sport, and should receive assistance where they need it. After all they are generating huge amounts of money for the universities. And we got to schedule all of our classes weeks before the student body, and our books were put aside for us. But that is because we had lifting, practice, films, and meetings we had to be at so our classes could only be at certain times. We couldn’t wake up at 11, take a bong hit, and determine whether or not we wanted to go to class, all on Daddy’s dollar. Our day started a 6:30 and ended at 10 every day of the week. For some reason most people think big time college athletes have a high school practice schedule (3-5PM). I make six figures now and I worked twice the amount of hours while I was playing college football than I do now.