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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Sunday, July 23, 2006

"I'd be much happier if his American literature grade was higher."

Careers are at stake because winning is far more important to a coach's job security than graduation rates. In some places, those are not just the jobs of the coaches, but of the college presidents as well.

The idea that the football team wants to have a college of which it can be proud once was meant to be something said as a joke.

These days, there are times when it's difficult to see the humor.

Compromises are made. Athletes who are forced to be students are pushed through classes and leave their colleges ill-prepared for the real world.

Graduation rates don't change that.

What needs to be changed is the idea that every player in a college uniform is a true student-athlete. The NCAA needs to understand that it's OK to admit this.

No one in the stands for the Auburn-Alabama or Texas-Oklahoma game or even the Virginia Tech-Virginia game is going to watch a player score a touchdown and then say, "I'd be much happier if his American literature grade was higher."

Universities should pay these athletes or provide them with a vocational education or permit them to work somewhere on campus. They still would be part of the university community and still could represent the school on the athletic fields.



---richmond times-dispatch---