Posted on 07/13/2006 5:15:45 PM PDT by Pokey78
A graphic popped up on James Gundlach’s television during an Auburn football game in the fall of 2004, and he could not believe his eyes.
One of the university’s prominent football players was being honored as a scholar athlete for his work as a sociology major. Professor Gundlach, the director of the Auburn sociology department, had never had the player in class. He asked the two other full-time sociology professors about the player, and they could not recall having had him either.
So Professor Gundlach looked at the player’s academic files, which led him to the discovery that many Auburn athletes were receiving high grades from the same professor for sociology and criminology courses that required no attendance and little work.
Eighteen members of the 2004 Auburn football team, which went undefeated and finished No. 2 in the nation, took a combined 97 hours of the courses during their careers. The offerings resemble independent study and include core subjects like statistics, theory and methods, which normally require class instruction.
The professor for those players and many other athletes was Prof. Thomas Petee, the sociology department’s highest-ranking member. The former star running back Carnell (Cadillac) Williams, who is now playing in the National Football League, said the only two classes he took during the spring semester of his senior year were one-on-one courses with Professor Petee. At one point, Professor Petee was carrying the workload of more than three and a half professors, an academic schedule that his colleagues said no one could legitimately handle.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sociology is a joke anyway, so...
Hah! Pikers I say. The OU teams of Barry Switzer made no pretense of going to class and readily committed mayhem including rape and murder. Auburn has a ways to go before they achieve OU's level of notoriety.
We had some easier than not classes for jocks at ND, but nothing like this! Very impressive.
Someone on NY Times is a Crimson Tide fan, apparently.
You are comparing 2004 to the 80's -- what a joke! OU players go to class now!
Yeah. Blame Bama. (rolling eyes)
No, that was a joke. I am not blaming a Tide fan...for this.
Nice try, but if you read the article, the legwork on this piece was done by a sociology professor FROM AU.
I know what you mean about the easier than not classes. My freshman year (not at ND), by pure dumb "luck" I took two classes (one in sociology and one in economics) that were filled by the athletic scholarship crowd... everybody gets an A - "whoohoo".
I sort of think it's better overall to let them sign up for independent study sections rather than to pull the standard down for whole sections.
So when do we get the expose on the joke 3-year sociology degree that most of the Duke basketball players are getting? Oh, that's right, I forgot - Duke is in the untouchable ACC. Gotta keep going after those SEC schools.
While there were some easier classes, if the guy was a Business Finance major, he had to do the classwork and it was not easy. ND does not have Physical Education majors or anything even remotely like that, so the players still had to do the work. By and large, most of the players were not stupid.
Surprised the NYTs would print this. By their definition isn't this just affirmative action?
Why don't they just stop the pretense and just have a degree in sports or something. Really..think about it...
Why don't they just stop the pretense and just have a degree in sports or something. Really..think about it...
Why don't they just stop the pretense and just have a degree in sports or something. Really..think about it...
Simple concepts made difficult by people with far too much time on their hands.
Folks at the Univ of Tennessee clearly have no room to point fingers on this issue not that I'm accusing you of being a Tennessee fan.
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