Spurrier - College is for Football, not Academics

South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier blasted the school's admissions process, apologizing to two recruits who signed with the Gamecocks last winter and were denied academic entry this summer.

"In my opinion, I still believe we made a mistake," Spurrier said Sunday.

Spurrier had spoken with university president Andrew Sorensen and the two agreed, the coach said, that things needed to change.

Spurrier was angered that receiver Michael Bowman of Wadesboro, N.C., and Arkee Smith of Jacksonville, Fla., were cleared by the NCAA to enroll, yet were turned down by the university. The rest of the Gamecocks football team officially reported Friday for preseason camp.

"Hopefully, I truly believe this is the last year this is going to happen, because I can't operate like that," Spurrier said. "I can't operate misleading young men."

Per AP.

Apparently not living up to the general student body admissions requirements is not sufficient to keep the players out. Great.

 

I have absolutely no problem with schools accepting athletes that are below the academic standard of the general university population. Frankly, I'm glad someone is being honest about it.

 

Painful perhaps, but society created this monster. Facts are facts.

 

You can't be serious.

If you can't achieve minimal academic standards, you have NO business being in a university.

Being honest about it and accepting it as a policy are two different things.

 

I was on a road trip with a partner in 1991 and I remember telling him that athletes needed to be paid because of all the money they were generating for the universities.

He told me "Why? The universities need to kick those guys out. Why do the colleges need to have big time sports? We need to scale back and rethink our priorities."

At the time I thought he was nuts. Now as I have gotten older (and hopefully wiser) I realize that he was right and that this type of thinking has got to stop. America was built on intellect and hard work, not athletics.

 

Actually, they did achieve minimal academic standards. They did qualify, they just weren't accepted -- which happens to normal college students all the time, certainly. But let's not say these were students who weren't eligible academically.

There is a difference, and that's what Spurrier is frustrated with: because they did meet the minimum standards.

 

Click. Clack.

 

Meow.

 

But who really believes that college football has anything to do with academics?

 

South Carolina isn't exactly the Harvard of the Southeast. If these kids met NCAA academic standards I have a hard time believing they couldn't hack it academically at USC.

 

The University of Spoiled Children?

 

JR -- I'm with the other fella on this one.
The sooner we divorce the bigtime athletic spectacles sponsored by the universities from the academic functions thereof, the better.