<p>"For better or worse, Notre Dame has decided to play college football.</p>
<p>It means the school is recruiting and signing some players whose academic credentials wouldnt have allowed them to step foot on campus in the past.</p>
<p>In at least one case, it means the Irish are being more lenient about disciplinary matters.</p>
<p>It ultimately means they have a chance to do what they havent done in a long time: win consistently, compete regularly for a BCS bowl and, perhaps, sniff a national championship every so often.</p>
<p>Did they sell their souls? No, they decided to play the game. Is Notre Dame reduced a bit as an institution of higher learning? It is if you hold to the idea the school is supposed to be above this sort of thing ..."</p>
<p>There are only a handful of schools that can seem to have it both ways. Sure do hope that Notre Dame will be in that handful that can successfully keep winning football teams and superior academics. Sadly, it is the institutions that seem to place much more emphasis on the athletics and the money that accompanies those championships that make it difficult for the more academic institutions to survive, especially if they happen to be institutions that once had championship records. But, who knows, maybe Notre Dame can return to having it both ways…we just happened to send a kid to school there for the academics!</p>
<p>Notre Dame has the highest athlete graduation rate in higher education, most years. Hopefully this won’t change. Notre Dame has not been one to compromise academic excellence for sports, despite its iconic sports status, and I certainly hope this isn’t changing.</p>
<p>That said, I don’t see much justification for the article’s claim, other than the reinstatement of a single football player. There isn’t any evidence, that I see, of admissions criteria being lowered, the incoming sports students being academically inferior, or anything of the like. There is, however, evidence that the academic criteria for admission to the university is on the rise. Approximately a third of EA acceptances go to recruited athletes (the bulk of recruitment acceptances), and another 15% to legacies, and yet the EA accepted student stats are higher than the RD accepted student stats.</p>
<p>This should be an article about how a football player awaiting trial for a DUI should be suspended. Tacking on unsubstantiated and unclear sweeping claims of “academic standards lowering” is downright ridiculous. I agree with the fact that disciplinary standards should be enforced; little else of what this article claims is true.</p>
<p>If ND wants to compete at the highest level, Kelly has to be able to bring in top-100 recruits. The administration is definitely letting Kelly go after the guys he needs to win, but our graduation rate is still the best in the NCAA. There is a mutual understanding that Kelly is responsible for keeping that graduation rate where it is by recruiting students with the right values.</p>
<p>As long as our graduation rate stays strong, I don’t see anything wrong with lowering admission standards. Stanford is a preseason top-10 team this year; they didn’t get there by recruiting kids with 34+ ACTs.</p>
<p>“That said, I don’t see much justification for the article’s claim, other than the reinstatement of a single football player. There isn’t any evidence, that I see, of admissions criteria being lowered, the incoming sports students being academically inferior, or anything of the like.”</p>
<p>Ed, you aren’t looking very hard. According to Rivals, Notre Dame’s latest verbal commit for the Class of 2012, Sheldon Day, has an ACT score of 18. Try that score on an application that doesn’t include the designation of “recruited athlete”.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to imply that someone with that ACT score can’t be successful at ND; I imagine that they can be, with appropriate guidance and mentoring. But the admission “standard” is pretty clearly different.
IMO it must be different if ND is determined to be competitive at the top level of college football. There are only a (very) limited number of top academic students who are also top caliber football players, and ND can’t get them all … Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, UNC, and others are after them too.</p>
<p>Oh well. Whatever it takes to get us back to the glory that we, as Notre Dame football fans, deserve. We still have a long way to go, but players like Sheldon Day will help us get back.</p>
<p>I think that looser admissions for athletes is far from being a bad thing. On the contrary, our competitiveness on the football field can help us greatly in the classroom. For example, the Jordan Hall of Science was outfitted with equipment largely from the $15 million we received from playing in a BCS bowl in 2005. What’s important for our academic standards is not that these athletes compete with stellar board scores, but rather that these athletes are willing to work hard enough in the classroom compete academically with the rest of the student body. Unlike at Alabama and a lot of other schools with excellent football teams, at Notre Dame there is no such thing as a “football major.” These athletes are expected to major in subjects in which non-athlete students also major, and put in however much overtime is needed with tutors and textbooks to remain competitive. In this way, our entire student body benefits—the non-athletes with a rich set of exciting sports to watch and athletes with the opportunity to earn a highly-regarded degree despite perhaps not having the best gpa/sat score. At the end of the day, we all got to ND by working extremely hard and developing the talents we have to the best of our abilities. I know that my GPA would have taken a major hit in high school if I had to do what these athletes had to do. It is unfair to not consider this and to think that because some number attached their name is not as high as some average, that they have nothing to contribute to a great school.</p>
<p>Let’s just hope that ND does not sacrifice the graduation rates of these athletes…unlike the University of Alabama or Auburn(think Cam Newton!) for that matter. After all, I would hope that athletes come to an institution of higher learning for an education, and football may be a means to help finance that education. One can’t play football forever, and only a few actually end up in the pros making millions.</p>
<p>“It is unfair to not consider this and to think that because some number attached their name is not as high as some average, that they have nothing to contribute to a great school.”</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is trying to make the case that they don’t have anything to contribute … obviously they do. Whether that something is academic is, in some cases, debatable. </p>
<p>I think ND AL’s point is the important one. Many universities use their athletic recruits to help rake in millions of dollars, but don’t compensate them even for the full cost of attendance (per NCAA rules), and don’t even make a pretense of giving them the academic qualifications for life after college. </p>
<p>The reality is that someone who scores 18 on the ACT and spends a huge amount of time practicing and playing football is most likely going to need some academic attention to be successful at Notre Dame. Let’s hope that as they admit students with more academic need, Notre Dame does not shirk that responsibility.</p>