The big news out of Texas is that Southern Methodist University’s admissions committee has apparently begun reviewing the applications of football players. Two recruits have been turned down.
[Jeremy] Hall, who signed a football scholarship with the Mustangs in February, was informed by SMU Thursday that he would not be admitted to the university despite being an NCAA qualifier.
The Dallas Morning News reported online Tuesday that another SMU commit, offensive lineman Darryl Jackson from Long Beach, Calif., had also been denied admission despite being an NCAA qualifier.
See, they’re recruited and they sign and they show up and all, and then whammo. Turns out you’ve actually got to be admitted to the university.
The coach at Hall’s high school is appalled.
“At the very least, I can say this is an injustice to Jeremy Hall. He did not do one thing wrong. He did everything he was asked to do and to his knowledge, he was packed and moving up there. To his knowledge, it was done.”
July 8th, 2010 at 10:09AM
After I read the story, what interested me was that the high school AD was appreciative of the SMU coach’s efforts on his player’s behalf, when it seems as though the SMU coach was the communication gap. If all of the quotes accurately represent what happened, the young man did not seem to be aware of the fact that he could sign a scholarship and meet the NCAA standards for academic eligibility but not meet SMU’s standards for admission. Nor did he seem aware of his failure to meet the standards and that his failure had been appealed, endangering his admission to the school.
I can applaud SMU’s decision to not rubber-stamp a student’s application simply because the football coach offers him a scholarship, but the high school coach has a point about the timing — some parts of this process could have begun when the scholarship offer was accepted in February and it need not have taken five months or more to complete.
July 8th, 2010 at 10:25AM
Good point, Brett.
July 8th, 2010 at 11:52PM
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