“They did WHAT?” …… More Stoopid College Football stories…. the gift that keeps on giving.
VaTech’s “world’s greatest defensive Guru” Bud Foster “steps in it” …… meanwhile down at Auburn, they try their own version of “The Scheme” in which the AthDept simply “buys an academic department and runs it however they want….” ….
Flag this quote: “In 2-3 years all the incredible crap going on now will seem like “the good ol’ days” before it “got so bad”. i.e. You Ain’t Seen Nuthin’ Yet.
Everybody talks about “reform” but it ain’t nothing but “talk”.
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Auburn’s athletic department tried to pay for classes players could pass
By: Chris Korman | August 27, 2015 10:55 am
Wednesday was not a good day for college football, that noblest of pastimes designed to forge young men into real men while imbuing them with all the virtue they might ever need to succeed in this, the fairest of lands.
First there was Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster revealing he was considering fining players for misconduct. Because they are just flush with cash these days.
College athletes are now eligible to receive some walking around money, usually called a cost-of-attendance stipend, and at Virginia Tech that once-a-year payment equates to around $3,200 or $3,600, depending on whether you’re from inside the state or not.
Foster earned $1,369,500 last year, the most of any public school assistant football coach in the country. That’s $3,752.05 per day. As in every day. All 365 of them.
Thankfully, Virginia Tech’s athletic director immediately ended any talk of fining players money, but other coaches continue to threaten fines for academic failures and off-the-field misconduct. Which is very convenient since it might absolve those coaches from having to bench good players.
What happened at Auburn, though, revealed through some admirable reporting from the Wall Street Journal, is far more disconcerting. The short version: faculty members decided a particular major, public administration, should no longer exist because it didn’t fit the school’s academic mission. The athletic department, noticing that half of the people enrolled in the major were athletes, objected. The major stayed.
Auburn denies any wrongdoing and places the decision for retaining the major upon the new dean of the College of Liberal Arts, who arrived after the recommendation for cutting it and subsequent request from the athletic department had been made. He claims ignorance about the fact that the major had become a shelter for athletes.
It is not surprising, at all, that an athletic department the size of Auburn’s would try to exert undue influence over the workings of the university at large. What stands out is the fact that Auburn’s athletic department has apparently been funding selected academic departments and programs quietly for years now.
This includes paying for an adjunct professor to teach two classes in the journalism school. Hopefully he or she was not teaching ethics.
It’s fun to think that the Auburn football machine — or any football machine — is giving money back to the academic mission of the university, but this system is a travesty and a fraud. The department will fund those programs that are friendly to its cause by creating an atmosphere in which athletes can get by.
If Auburn athletics wants to give back, it can dump money into the general fund to be dispersed through the regular university processes.
To be clear, the athletic department cannot be trusted. An internal memo details the department’s fears that graduation rates will drop should public administration no longer be offered. Instead of saying, “If our players are congregating around one not-that-popular major and we realize it is one of the only ones they can pass, we have completely failed them,” the people in charge said, “Man, we gotta save that major.”
Then they offered money to keep it going. That money wasn’t accepted, but it should be the last reminder we need that it’s far past time to stop pretending that big-time football and academics are working in harmony.
