Wednesday, August 25, 2004

"Muh. Huh. Huh. Li'l man make joke. Me no get."

What can you do at Kansas State University that you can't do at the University of Virginia? Or at Ohio State University, but not at the Naval Academy? Or at the University of Southern California, but not at Virginia Tech? If you're a football player, you can get course credit for playing football. Often, it's course credit towards graduation, although sometimes it's only credit for fulfilling a university physical education requirement. But it counts towards an NCAA-required minimum number of course hours per semester. At Ohio State, for instance, football players can take SFHP 196.06 ("Varsity Football") five separate times, for a total of 10 academic credits. Academic powerhouses like Brigham Young, Florida State, Georgia, Nebraska, and Penn State all have similar policies, allowing college credits for playing football.

If we're required to go through the pretense of calling football-playing behemoths "student-athletes," wouldn't it be nice if occasionally they actually were students?

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