<p>That’s what I struggle with as well oldmom. </p>
<p>@Oldmom “Is the only way to get onto an NFL team to graduate as a Division 1 football player?”</p>
<p>Well, it’s the conventional way but there have been notable exceptions, historically and in the modern era. While the great Johnny Unitas did play at U of Louisville, his professional career got its real start on a semi-pro team, from there he went on to fame in the NFL. More recently, I think it was the Cardinals that used a first round draft pick on a kid who did not play college ball. And the track star Renaldo Nehemiah played four years for the NFL 49ers in the 1980s. He ran the hurdles (a world record holder) but did not suit up for football in college.</p>
<p>That being said, it will take a miracle or alternatively a disaster to see the existing college system change for the good. The stakeholders have too much money at risk; the TV networks, the athletic departments, and frankly, the “non-revenue” sports, including (sad to say) most womens’ teams.</p>
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<p>Cheat, with the connivance of corrupt officials, it seems.</p>
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<p>He can transfer to a school with less rigorous academics. There are some schools whose regular admission requirements are not higher than the NCAA minimums, so there should be some regular courses and majors suitable for such students (although it can still be tough to take a full time course load of “easy” courses while doing 45 hours per week of sports).</p>
<p>NFL teams sometimes do sign athletes who did not play college football, but those are unusual cases. Also, for those who do play college football, college graduation is not required to play in the NFL.</p>
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This would go against the vested interests of the big football powerhouses in having competitive teams.</p>
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<p>poetgrl, your assertions about the number of athletes taking these phony courses appears to be based on the previous report, the Martin report. The Martin report could not talk to Nyang’oro or Crowder. The Wainstein report interviewed both of them, and for that reason was able to identify many more phony courses. </p>
<p>Considerably more than 1% of athletes in revenue sports took the phonies. For the worst years, the numbers were more like 25%.</p>
<p>Moreover, it is disingenuous to minimize the problem by claiming that the phony classes were taken by other students than athletes. The two people who created the phonies stated clearly that the classes were meant for underprepared athletes. When students other than athletes asked advisors about the classes, or about easy classes, they were not told about the phonies. The organizers wanted to keep other students out of the sham classes, but they couldn’t, since any student could sign up for a course if they knew about it.</p>
<p>I’m not talking about athletes just who took classes. Also, I’m not defending this. Don’t mistake me for defending this. I’m not. </p>
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<p>Would the player get a free ride as a transfer student? And would he get the kind of exposure to the pros that would give him the same recruitment opportunities? If his SAT score was sub-400, would he be able to do the work at the college with less rigorous academics?</p>
<p>There are some people who do not have the preparation or even the capacity to do college-level academic work. Some of those people, however, have the capacity to play football at a professional level. What we do now is send them to college anyway. The results aren’t surprising.</p>
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<p>Would it? The current #1 ranked team in college football (Mississippi State) is one of those schools with relatively low regular admission standards – in-state applicants meeting NCAA minimums are automatically admitted, and out-of-state automatic admission standards are only slightly higher.</p>
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<p>Football players do transfer schools – presumably, if they have sufficient talent, the new schools are willing to use athletic scholarships on them. Of course, being able to do even “easy” course work while doing football full time (fall) or one third to half time (spring) may still be quite difficult for one who is just at the NCAA minimum.</p>
<p>@hunt. Exactly. And then we blame them for doing what they have to do. It’s a classic double bind. I liked your idea up thread. </p>
<p>No, we blame the schools for cynically admitting unqualified students, pretending the students are passing actual academic courses, denying that the schools are allowing the athletes to skate through without studying or learning, and defending the entire corrupt system.</p>
<p>Also-- it’s a little strange that the fraternities at UNC knew about these phony classes, but not one person in the administration knew. Not one person, in their telling, even though it was no secret that there were classes where a student didn’t have to go to class and could submit any paper at all and get an A or a B.</p>
<p>The UNC administration didn’t want to know about the phony classes. If they’d wanted to know, they would have known.</p>
<p>I think there’s plenty of blame to go around. The way I would put it is that we as a society have allowed a system to develop that includes very strong incentives for people to do the wrong thing. Yes, we punish (sometimes) the people who succumb to those incentives, but we don’t change the incentives. What else do we expect?</p>
<p>We should stop offering these incentives by making the NFL set up a minor league system, which probably could be done legislatively-- the NFL has all sorts of legal advantages, so there is considerable leverage. Then, young men who had no interest in college could play semi-professional football for money.</p>
<p>there is no question in my mind that this was an administrative issue. </p>
<p>There’s no question, either, that the fear over seeming racist by questioning the AFAM diaspora dept. also contributed to the problem. There are a lot of questions and a lot of answers.</p>
<p>The good news is that mostly everyone involved is gone or will be gone. The bad news is that, as Wainstein points out, schools, because of the way they are set up, are not in a position to really regulate these things. Changes needed to be made. Reforms were made at UNC after 2011 and a few more will be put into place. But not many, I’d imagine, as most of this has already been addressed at UNC.</p>
<p>I can’t speak to other universities. </p>
<p>I suspect the “counselors” to the football team liked the AFAM paper classes, because they could do one-stop shopping for easy (in this case, super-easy) GPA boosters for struggling team members, rather than having to find easy courses or friendly instructors in multiple departments.</p>
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<p>And yet the whole scandal empowered racists. African American history is a genuine academic field, with plenty of fine scholarly work, but now people of bad will can tar the entire field with the brush of phoniness. </p>
<p>Well, yes. And also…
<a href=“The Most Valuable Conferences In College Sports 2014”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2014/04/15/the-most-valuable-conferences-in-college-sports-2014/</a></p>
<p>and this:</p>
<p><a href=“Pay for Top 14 NCAA Executives Totaled Nearly $6-Million Last Year”>http://chronicle.com/article/Pay-for-Top-14-NCAA-Executives/124358/</a></p>
<p>and this:</p>
<p><a href=“Men's Basketball Head Coach Salaries - USA TODAY”>http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/salaries/ncaab/coach/</a></p>
<p>and this:</p>
<p><a href=“College president pay: Is it too high?”>http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/05/20/college_president_pay_is_it_too_high.html</a></p>
<p>delete</p>