… the highest salaries on campus, remember that their job includes handling the press.
Verbal skills like Gene Chizik’s don’t come cheap.
… Auburn’s top-ranked football team, which is preparing to play Oregon in Glendale, Ariz., for the national title on Monday, has tumbled in the N.C.A.A.’s most important academic measurement to No. 85 from No. 4 among the 120 major college football programs.
The decline came after the university closed several academic loopholes following a New York Times article in 2006 that showed numerous football players padded their grade-point averages and remained eligible through independent-study-style courses that required little or no work.
… Among all the bowl teams this season, Auburn has the highest disparity in the graduation rates between white players (100 percent) and black players (49 percent)…
When pressed on the issue of graduating black players, [football coach Gene] Chizik said, “Those are circumstances; there’s all kinds of different things.” …
January 6th, 2011 at 8:42AM
It’s a football thing, UD. You wouldn’t understand.
January 6th, 2011 at 8:58AM
I think my mistake, tp, is trying to understand.
January 7th, 2011 at 12:49AM
I’m sympathetic to the coach on this one, even though I generally agree with you on college football issues. He probably had the feeling the NY Times was going to do a hatchet job on him, his statement might be accurate, and I can’t think of any more specific reasons he could give without violating players privacy. Besides the coach isn’t the one responsible for graduating the players.