Vince Young Turning Pro

[me@smu]

While I dont' approve of Leinart being allowed to just take one class (and ballroom dancing at that) to hang around campus, I still like the idea that he wanted to stay around and compete for another NC and help his team out. Too many athletes are just going through the motions at school with an eye towards jumping to the NFL as soon as possible.

Besides because of the way that contracts get less with each pick you drop down and being considered the second and third pick this year, Leinart essentially paid somewhere around a million bucks for his last season.

[Corso]

In my warped world, I still like the idea that these guys go to school, that's all. A couple hours a week of swinging your girlfriend around a dance floor doesn't constitute going to school, in my view. I'm not saying he has to be on the path to a second career as a brain surgeon or a poet or the next head of FEMA -- I understand that not everyone is a great student (and I speak from experience, believe me). But there are tons of guys at USC and Texas and Oklahoma and Miami and every other supposed "jock school" that take a full load of classes, and still manage to lift, study film and get to practice every day.

Maybe I'm being too idealistic to think everyone should do this.

[Danny Noonan]

If Matt Leinart worked his butt of to graduate and he ended up with just 3 hours left, good for him. Why should he take more? I went to summer school and took extra classes so that i could only have 9 hours to take my last semester.

If he had three hours left, why in the world should he be required to take any more? He obviously took more classes at some point than everyone else did, and it payed off for him in the end.

As far as the graduate classes argument go, come on. Why take 6 hours of classes towards a graduate degree you'll never complete? DD Lee did it. Good for him. But matt leinart shouldn't be required to fill up the rest of his courseload with graduate classes.

Getting ahead should be rewarded, not punished.

[HorsePower]

That's true, getting ahead should be rewarded. No argument there.

But I kind of agree with Corso's assertion that a one-class schedule gives a guy an advantage in preparation time over opponents who have to attend more classes and do more homework.

Of course, there's a limit to the number of hours an athlete is ALLOWED to spend (20, I think) on practice, film, lifting, etc. Think the USC coaches ever threw Leinart out of the office, saying "sorry, you can't prepare any more for UCLA"? Neither do I.

[Danny Noonan]

That's true, getting ahead should be rewarded. No argument there.

But I kind of agree with Corso's assertion that a one-class schedule gives a guy an advantage in preparation time over opponents who have to attend more classes and do more homework.

Of course, there's a limit to the number of hours an athlete is ALLOWED to spend (20, I think) on practice, film, lifting, etc. Think the USC coaches ever threw Leinart out of the office, saying "sorry, you can't prepare any more for UCLA"? Neither do I.

So what? That's part of Leinart's reward for getting ahead. He has more free time and can spend it how he wants. If you're a finance major and only have 6 hours left, you can lay on the couch or you can go get an internship. You earned it.

As far as USC getting an advantage. Well, they deserved it too. They recruitied a smart kid and made the decision four years ago to redshirt him. If he wants to spend his free time breaking down film (which we don't even know if he did) good for him.

[EastStang]

I had only 10 hours to graduate at SMU my last semester. Man was it tough to find a one hour credit class that wasn't PE. I finally found business writing for 2 hours, so I ended up with one hour of gravy.