'... College football is based on ...the illusion that the players are students, just like everyone else.


...Albert Means played football at Memphis after his high school coach admitted, in court, that he paid another student to take the ACT for Means. The Memphis basketball team includes six -- six! -- players who left high school early in order to graduate from prep schools that the NCAA's Myles Brand later labeled as "diploma mills."



...[A]s chronicled in the book The Blind Side, [Michael] Oher had former Ole Miss point guard Sean Tuohy to help him through the maze.

"Sean learned about the Internet courses offered by Brigham Young University," the book said. "All you had to do in one of the 'Character' courses was to read a few brief passages from famous works -- a speech by Lou Gehrig here, a letter by Abraham Lincoln there -- and then answer five questions about it."

Ahhhh, but the BYU courses had to be completed during the school year, which was almost over by the time Tuohy found them.

"That's when Sean discovered, deep in the recesses of the NCAA rules, yet another loophole; the student-athlete was allowed to generate fresh new grades for himself right up until Aug. 1, so long as that student-athlete was 'Learning Disabled.' Whatever that meant, thought Tuohy. He had no idea if Michael was actually learning disabled, but now that it was important for him to be learning disabled, Sean couldn't imagine any decent human being trying to argue that he wasn't."

So Tuohy found a psychologist who diagnosed Oher as learning disabled. Oher qualified to play at Ole Miss. And it's hard not to think that the most important difference between Oher and Powe might be that Oher had a savvy adviser looking out for him.

... The college system is corrupt enough without the bogus courses and the grade-fixing and the paid test takers and the sudden outbreak of learning disabilities.'