Notre Dame football: Big 10 or Bust?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Notre Dame
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You seem to be missing the point. When athletes at certain schools all major in the same thing and that thing is only open to athletes, it certainly raises questions about what is happening in that major.

Here’s a brief reference to it:
"According to the report, Alabama football spokesman Josh Maxson said “privacy laws” prevented the release of information. Nothing in federal law prevents the release of majors, so that would presumably mean a state law did. But there, in the same report, were the majors for Auburn University’s football team.

We asked about that discrepancy. Maxson said in an interview that Alabama has not reported the majors in its media guides for several years out of a concern for student privacy.

“We’ve been real careful about how much personal information we give out, just to protect our student athletes,” Maxson said.

He didn’t address whether the information was public or not, but he agreed to provide it. (He also apologized in an email to the Bleacher Report columnist, Justin Ferguson, for not providing it at his request.) Thursday, he sent a list of majors for the team. It shows the top four are Business, Exercise and Sport Science, Communications Studies and Criminal Justice, with 19, 17, 10 and 9 athletes respectively.

Why is this important? As we reported earlier, when athletes pursue the same major, something known as clustering, it raises questions whether they are taking the classes they need for an education, or being steered to easy (or in the case of UNC-Chapel Hill, fake) classes that help keep them eligible."

That does not happen at Notre Dame, There are not athlete specific classes, sections, or majors. Recently, Brian Kelly was complaining that the football players don’t have their own chef. The athletes are fully integrated into the ND community. That sets ND apart. Did I say that this only happens at ND? No. However, it does not happen at many schools with huge football programs.

And by the way, calling out facts is not being “hoity toity.” My daughter has been accepted into both UA and ND for this upcoming year, and she could end up at either. However, a degree from Notre Dame is not viewed the same as a UA degree from an athlete specific major. It’s just not.

And if you look through the course catalogs at many of the big football schools, it specifies that some classes are for athletes only. You can choose to accept that or not, but the information is readily available.

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Well, how about UCLA, Cal, Michigan, Wisconsin, Washington, or any highly ranked “football factory.” not named Alabama?

You’re throwing out a wide swath of universities and “accusing” them of having athlete only classes without any proof. The Bama-Auburn thing proves nothing.

But we do know ND’s football team is ranked low compared to those “football factories” when it comes to APR.

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These are real majors, unless you’re calling business, kinesiology (exercise and sport science, which is what I would have loved to take), communications and Criminal Justice majors for dummies. So no facts so far.

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BTW, after almost 4 years of going through the LSA course catalog for Michigan, I’ve seen zero courses marked “athletes only.”

And I’ve seen the School of Kinesiology at Michigan ranked #1 and #3 in the US, so there’s no place to hide there. The Ross business school? Not a chance.

406

Interesting story from friends of ours who are big Domers. Both parents graduated from ND and first three kids have either graduated or attend ND. Last kid is up in the air at this point but I suspect ND will be the school. Full pay family. They are a family who has drunk the green and gold koolaid as they say. Oldest kid’s freshmen year has a class with a couple of football players. So that part of your statement is true. But lo and behold, the football players are given a study guide that is not available to the other kids in the class. And come time for the test, guess whats on the exam? Its the study guide. Was a big surprise to our Domer family friends. The idea that ND has a tougher time with athletics because of academics is just BS. But it sells to alums.

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407

My D has taken a bunch of classes with athletes over the years and she’s a STEM major. Last Fall, she texted me a screen shot of two rotation type basketball players (made the Elite 8) in her class participating via Zoom.

I haven’t heard about any study guides but Michigan does have mandatory tutoring hours at a building near the Yost Hockey facility IIRC.

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408

https://nusports.com/news/2020/11/17/academic-services-student-development-top-graduation-success-rate-among-fbs-schools-for-third-straight-year.aspx

Article states that Northwestern University’s football program has ranked first or second regarding graduation rates for 10 straight years.

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Six of the Ivy League schools were tied or higher ranked than Northwestern. However, NW is in FBS which is more rigorous.

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Great find. Thank you.

Different world between Power Five Conference football and football played in the Ivy League or in the Patriot League. Interesting because Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois is an academic powerhouse similar to Ivies and alongside Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, and Rice. While Northwestern, Duke, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, & Stanford are all Power Five FBS football schools, Rice is not (Conference USA).

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and a notoriously bad football team…

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In 2018 & in 2020 Northwestern won the Big Ten Western Division, but lost to Michigan & Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship games. Also, Northwestern has a respectable bowl record.

Northwestern’s academic standards are atypical for a team playing in one of the two (SEC & Big Ten) most powerful football conferences.

Northwestern University has won its last 4 bowl games against Utah, ACC member Pittsburgh, and against two SEC member teams Auburn & Kentucky. Northwestern also beat SEC member Mississippi State in a bowl game about 6 years ago.

Recently, in one year Northwestern had 3 players selected in the NFL draft a year or two ago. Last year, Northwestern lost two key offensive players via transfer = a starting running back to UCF & a star tight end to Notre Dame who now plays in the NFL.

Northwestern football does not have a strong bench so the team is heavily impacted by any season interrupting injury to a player.

Even a bad Northwestern football team would beat any Ivy League or Patriot League champion by 60 or 70 points, maybe more.

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Could you post a link to the rankings for graduation rates ? Thank you !

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https://web3.ncaa.org/aprsearch/gsrsearch
Search for football, last year and sort by GSR.

Is there any data about the entrance standards for football players? It seems many highly ranked publics (e.g., UT and Cal) have very low minimum standards for football players. Way back, I saw that Cal had the largest SAT gap between football players and the rest of the student body. Michigan may be different. Wisconsin?

For quite a few years, SMU had an average football player SAT in the top five but it hurt their on field performance so they now have lower standards and some more athlete friendly majors. Check out the first few Rice player majors. It’s not what you’d find at MIT. Williams doesn’t list its players’ majors. Colgate has a lot of liberal arts majors but of course, it’s a liberal arts college. I figure the sciences are underrepresented.

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I do not know of any such resource.

Today, Harvard announced that it is making standardized tests such as the SAT & ACT optional through 2026.

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Public school view from 2008.

  • University of Florida won the prize for biggest gap between football players and the student body, with players scoring 346 points lower than their peers.

  • Georgia Tech had the nation’s best average SAT score for football players, 1028 of a possible 1600, and best average high school GPA, 3.39 of a possible 4.0. But because its student body is apparently very smart, Tech’s football players still scored 315 SAT points lower than their classmates.

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I believe the premise above was that ND, with its tougher admission standards and its rigorous academics, is competitive for the CFP playoffs in most years, including this past season.

Pretty much every other college mentioned isn’t even close to competing for a Natty, but for Michigan, which is playing Georgia in the CFP semifinal on 12/31.

Stanford had a few good years with Andrew Luck and Jim Harbaugh and a few years with David Shaw, but the football program has completely fallen on hard times in the past several years. Northwestern has an occasionally good year, but they’ll likely always lose to the East champion because of the talent gap.

ND is consistently very good and attracts top football talent. Now, the basketball team is rarely good, but that’s another matter all together.

2021 is Michigan’s 1st Big 10 Championship in the current era . Ohio State beat NU both times, in 2018 and 2020.

P.S. There’s a reason I’m not mentioning USC, because they’ve always had issues.

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ND women’s hoops has been pretty good. :slight_smile:

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I would guess that the study guides were part of the study tables for athletes. Pretty much all of the schools with major sports programs have them. And they typically tout the benefit provided to non-athlete students who are paid to be tutors for athletes.

The Domers like to talk about that alot. Its a great excuse. We would be really good but our academics are too strong. Just not true. They really haven’t shown themselves to be competitive on the field in terms of championships in decades. Last 3 times they had the chance, they weren’t competitive (BCS and 2 playoff appearances – outscored 103-31 in those games). But for their name/history (much of it with leather helmets) they wouldn’t even be given the opportunity to lose on the national stage.

In reality though the window for winning national championships isn’t open wide. In the 7 years of the playoff, Alabama and Clemson have won 5 titles (Ohio State and LSU the other 2). And in the last 12 years, 6 different schools have won titles (with only Alabama (6) and Clemson (2) winning more than one). One of them north of the Mason Dixon Line and none west of the Mississippi. Top teams tend to get best recruits (rather than the last draft pick like in the NFL).

On this site, you are either Top x in academics or you suck. So I get the idea of the very narrow of strong academics. But I think a top 50 school has strong academics.

Way back in the day I had a basketball player in my chemistry class and chem lab. It was the engineering series class (not baby chem). He more than held his own. And never made any issue of his being an athlete (other than towering over even the tall amongst us). As the NCAA commercial notes, just about all college student athletes are going pro at something other than sports.

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420

The admissions standards for Wisconsin as it relates to any of its athletes has remained constant. It is why Bret Bielema eventually departed and why Paul Chryst is such a good fit.

Nothing has changed since this article was written. The standards remain and as a result, UW loses out on a lot of “higher rated” athletes. That is ok, because the team has a real blue collar/pail and shovel work ethic as a development program. The bigger challenge is the transfer portal and how kids in a development program may want to bail rather than put in the work to see the field.

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Andersen raved about academics when he came to Madison. Then two years later he complained they were too high to get good players in. Was he paying attention at all when he accepted the job with Wisconsin? Its like a receiver going to Navy and then complaining that they don’t throw the ball enough.

Gary complained about losing kids to Michigan State, Kansas State and Toledo. All football powerhouses in recent years. He lost 59-0 to Ohio State in the Big 10 title game (with Ohio State starting its 3rd string QB for his first start). Not sure the kids who went to MSU, KS and Toledo would have made a meaningful difference.

Ultimately, its strikes me that Andersen isn’t being truthful about his reason for heading west. Blaming it on an issue he knew or certainly should have known existed when he took the job doesn’t ring very true.

Transfer portal is definitely having a big issue. There was some thought that it would make it tougher for the top programs to stock up on 5 stars and have them ride the bench. But what is has done more is create a farm system for those top programs to fill gaps in recruiting.