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Originally posted by BillMill71
I respctfully couldn't disagree with you more.
There are so many articles regarding this very subject that I will be more then happy to provide for you.
I don't say things here without knowing I can back them up for the most part. This is one of those things.
Here's just an example...from Sports Illustrated a few years back....
"With the sliding scale all but gone, as long as you maintain a 2.000 GPA and complete all your core classes, you will get into school. This doesn’t help the Stanfords and Georgia Techs of the world but it certainly helps college programs with minimum academic requirements. Schools such as Stanford, Georgia Tech and Notre Dame have higher academic standards for their student athletes to begin with. In fact, Stanford’s minimum academic requirement is a 3.0 GPA and 1100 SAT."
I will find more and provide.
Notre Dame has SET the bar higher for student athletes then 98% of all other Division I schools. To say that is not right is just for lack of a better term ignorance on your part.
We can compete with the other elite schools, we just have to work harder at it then some others that can get the world class athletes that are dumb as rocks.
Just look at the graduation rates for Notre Dame....here is another example....
"The NCAA ranked Notre Dame student-athletes second among Division I-A colleges and universities in its graduation rate, according to a study released in October.
Notre Dame shares its ranking with Northwestern and Stanford, each with a four-year average graduation rate of 87 percent of student-athletes. First-place Duke graduated 90 percent of its student-athletes. The national average for Division I-A schools is 61 percent.
Senior Associate Athletic Director John Heisler said being ranked high in athlete graduations is nothing new.
"If you looked at the rankings themselves or the graduation rates themselves, they're almost the same as six years ago, which says that things have been done consistently over the course of time," Heisler said. "We've been routinely in the top half dozen in the country."
According to the formula used by the NCAA, an athlete is considered to have graduated if he or she matriculated within six years of entrance. Students who leave or transfer for any reason are considered non-graduates.
The report also states that Notre Dame graduated 94 percent of women competing in varsity athletics, ranking third behind Northwestern and Duke. Among men, Notre Dame graduated 82 percent, ranking third behind Duke and Stanford.
Additionally, Notre Dame graduated 71 percent of its black student-athletes, ranking ninth nationally and 77 percent of Irish football players graduated, ranking eighth.
Among athletes who completed all four years of athletic eligibility, 99 percent graduated, compared to a national average of 84 percent.
The NCAA Graduation Rates Report is a federally mandated survey compiled each year. The 2004 report covers students enrolled between 1994 and 1997 at all 328 Division I institutions, including the 117 in Division I-A.
Heisler said achieving this ranking will only continue to push student-athletes to achieve his or her best.
"It speaks very well for our academic support system in general," he said. "We try to tell people if you're a solid enough student, you're going to get your degree with very, very rare exceptions."
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an article from a Georgia Tech paper
Beyond the White and Gold
Schools should not sacrifice academics for athletics
By Michael Clarke Senior Staff Writer
Tech constantly faces the issue of balancing academic standards and being able to compete on the football field. Stanford, Notre Dame and Northwestern are just a few schools that are also trying to find their own answers to this question.
At the end of March last year, Paul Hornung, an alumnus of Notre Dame and 1956 Heismann Trophy winner, sparked a heated debate on this very subject with his comments in a radio interview.
Hornung said in the interview, in reference to the recent lack of football success at Notre Dame, “We can’t stay as strict as we are as far as the academic structure is concerned because we’ve got to get the black athletes. We must get the black athletes if we’re going to compete."
Hornung retracted his comments the next day because he claimed that he meant all athletes instead of just black athletes.
As I watched various telecasts this weekend, I noticed that Hornung’s comments were brought up in four separate games.
Taking the racial issues out of the equation, Hornung does make a solid point. Although it is harder for some schools to recruit because of their admissions requirements, there is a reason that they are called student-athletes and not just athletes. The same reason applies to why ‘student’ comes first in the equation.
In an interview on the Dan Patrick Show the next day, Hornung said, “I was wrong. What I should have said is ‘for all athletes, it is really tough to get into Notre Dame."
In the past, schools such as Tech and Notre Dame have been able to maintain superior academic standards and a high level of competitiveness on the football field, but in the last 10 years the football powerhouses have fallen to the wayside as parity has taken hold of the game. This parity is partly due to the increased national exposure by teams such as Louisiana Tech, Nevada and others that wouldn’t have seen a television audience outside of their local areas.
“We try to do a great job with academics here because that is one of our strengths. One of the things that we try to do a very good job of here is to show the academics,” said Chan Gailey. “There are not as many [recruits] out there that we can recruit the same as Florida, Georgia and Auburn because we have more stringent academic requirements, but there are enough guys that can do the academic work and win a championship. You just have to go out there and turn over more rocks and ask more questions to find out where these guys are. You have to find them; they aren’t just going to fall in your lap."
In order for Tech to be able to stay competitive in the years to come, the administration and Athletic Association are going to have to adjust to the way recruiting is handled. Not only will they have to work harder at recruiting, but they also will have to start to look at Junior College athletes. These athletes may not have had the academics to get into Tech straight out of high school, but they have worked their way into that position.
“Since I went to Georgia Tech, we also struggle with a limited curriculum and very high academic standards for student-athletes. Sometimes it seems like those are too restrictive, and it means that you aren’t going to be able to recruit in some areas where the school systems aren’t as strong. I don’t know what the answer is except to improve our educational systems. It is something that all the top academic institutions have to deal with right now,” said Bill Curry.
Not only do these athletes have to make it into Tech, but also they must succeed in the classroom. At the end of spring semester, 30 of Tech’s football players were among 152 student-athletes who made the Dean’s List for the semester. In the fall semester of last year, 33 football players and 163 total student-athletes made the Dean’s List. This total represents roughly 45 percent of the student-athlete population.
Considering that Tech lost 10 football players to academic ineligibility for the 2003 campaign, our student-athletes are excelling in the classroom. This feeling shows through in all of Tech’s programs. Despite the basketball team’s success on the court, Paul Hewitt could not successfully recruit Randolph Morris because he believed that Tech would be too challenging.
Although this is the most recent example that comes to mind, Tech faces this in recruiting on an annual basis in every sport.
In the process Tech has also avoided having academic scandals in the classroom as to the reason for the grades. Tech also doesn’t have anything in the curriculum like Jim Harrick Jr.‘s Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball course like our counterparts at the University of Georgia.
Starting wide receiver Nate Curry graduated with a year of eligibility remaining after majoring in Building Construction. The GPA for student-athletes during the Spring 2004 semester was 2.89. I’m not insinuating that the student-athletes are smarter, but they definitely do have better time management skills than the average student at Tech.
“Everyone is convinced they’re making it to the NFL and they don’t concentrate on being a student,” Tim Brown said. “I’ve asked kids why don’t they consider Notre Dame, and they say it’s too tough. The kids these days are just looking for the easy way.”
“If Notre Dame doesn’t win games because they don’t lower their standards, I can live with that,” Brown said. “But to lower your standards just to win football games is a wrong decision."
Tech should not and cannot afford to sacrifice the academic prestige of the Institute to becoming nothing more than a football factory. Is the cost of winning worth lowering ourselves to the academic levels of the University of Georgia and Florida State? It is possible for Tech to maintain a level of competitiveness in the classroom and in the various sporting environments that the student-athletes compete in, but the coaches and administration will be forced to make changes in the way that they recruit athletes.
In the future Tech will compete whether we lower our academic standards or not, so although lowering our academic standards would be better for competing in the short term, the long-term goal has to adapt to the new environment around us without sacrificing our academic prestige in the process.
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This is an article from 2001
When No. 1 Notre Dame defeated No. 2 West Virginia (remember Major Harris?) in the 1989 Fiesta Bowl, the undefeated Fighting Irish were crowned national champions.
A big reason for Notre Dame"s success that season was the play of its quarterback, Tony Rice. Rice fought tremendous odds he was an academic non-qualifier his freshman year to lead the Fighting Irish to their 11th national title in school history.
When Bob Davie was fired as Notre Dame"s coach this past Sunday, it got me thinking about Rice and his exploits in South Bend. In particular, I couldn"t help but be struck by how different Notre Dame is now than it was a dozen years ago.
Rice is the perfect example in 1988, he helped Lou Holtz win a national championship and cemented his place as a legend in Notre Dame lore. These days, Tony Rice (or someone in a situation similar to the one he was in) wouldn"t stand a chance of being admitted to Notre Dame.
In the 1980s, Notre Dame wasn"t much more than a football school. Consequently, Holtz could recruit pretty much whomever he wanted, including non-qualifiers like Rice. He knew that the university would admit just about all of his recruits, so he was able to bring blue-chip talent such as Jerome Bettis, Bryant Young and Tim Brown to South Bend. It"s no surprise that Notre Dame was a perennial national title contender throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s.
But and this is something that I think Notre Dame supporters have yet to grasp things have changed at Notre Dame. In the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings of colleges and universities, Notre Dame was ranked No. 19. That puts the Fighting Irish ahead of other world-renowned private schools such as Vanderbilt and Georgetown (and six spots higher than Michigan).
In other words, in terms of academic standards, Notre Dame and Vanderbilt are roughly on a par with each other. When"s the last time Vanderbilt had a good football team? Heck, when"s the last time Vanderbilt won six games?
Granted, Notre Dame"s football tradition is far superior to Vanderbilt"s. So on average, the Fighting Irish should be able to get better players than the Commodores. But, Notre Dame fans don"t care if the Fighting Irish outrecruit Vanderbilt they expect Notre Dame to outrecruit Florida State, Michigan and Texas. That"s just not possible, considering how strict Notre Dame"s admissions requirements have become.
I remember hearing a few years ago that Notre Dame has a freshman calculus requirement all incoming students (with no exceptions) must pass freshman calculus. This single requirement prevented Davie from signing T.J. Duckett and David Terrell, both of whom really wanted to go to Notre Dame, but neither of whom could pass a calculus class if their lives depended on it.
Even if the Irish find a topflight recruit who can pass calculus, they must then convince that player that Notre Dame with its mediocre facilities, horrendous Northern Indiana climate and ridiculously hard schedules is a better choice than any other school.
Now all of this isn"t to say that Davie is without blame for his struggles. He made his share of mistakes he was sued for age-discrimination a few years back but he still won nearly 60 percent of his games over a five-year span, with all of the obstacles I"ve just described.
But that wasn"t nearly good enough for Notre Dame, so Davie got the boot on Sunday. What I find ironic is that the Fighting Irish are now talking to Stanford coach Tyrone Willingham, whose record at Stanford was 35-33-1 entering this season.
Willingham"s supporters point out his ability to win at a school that has tougher academic standards than Notre Dame. Correct me if I"m wrong, but a 35-33-1 record isn"t much to brag about. In his first five years at Stanford, Willingham had two losing seasons and only won one bowl game those are the kinds of numbers that got Davie fired.
In addition, Willingham has had no pressure on him from Stanford fans, who unlike Notre Dame fans don"t expect the Cardinal to go 10-1 every year. Willingham also coaches in the wide-open Pac-10 and has the luxury of recruiting players to what may be the nicest campus in the country. Stanford doesn"t have Notre Dame"s reputation for football, but the Cardinal do have arguably the best athletic program in the nation Stanford has won 14 NCAA team championships in the last four years and has 79 NCAA titles overall.
Make no mistake, Willingham is a fine coach, but Notre Dame fans don"t want a fine coach who goes 6-5 they want a Knute Rockne clone who can win national titles under impossible circumstances. Notre Dame fans are dreaming if they think that the Fighting Irish will consistently win big again, and I have a feeling that whoever ends up as Notre Dame"s next coach (whether it is Willingham, Tom Coughlin, Jon Gruden or someone else) is in for a brutal wake-up call.
Arun Gopal can be reached at [email protected].
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Please don't tell me the higher academic standards of Notre Dame haven't hindered our recruiting. It has....but we've still managed to succeed.
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