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[50's PONY]

Major issue: Athletes' studies
By Douglas Lederman, Special for USA TODAY
The NCAA is feeling unprecedented pressure to tackle growing financial, ethical and academic issues. USA TODAY continues an occasional look at college athletics and its future. Today: Academic reform.

Defensive ends Shadler Manning, left, and Calvin Murray at a sport administration class at Southern Mississippi.
By Gavin Averill, Hattiesburg American

When the Auburn football team's defense heads into the huddle, the players probably don't talk sociology. But seven defensive players on Auburn's 2003 football roster are majoring in that field. Overall, 10 of the 38 Tigers football players whose majors appear in the team's media guide are in sociology.

That ratio — nearly one in four — makes football players far likelier than other Auburn students to major in sociology. Only 62 of the university's 19,000-plus undergraduates chose that field in 2002.

Officials at Auburn attribute the concentration of football players in sociology to the major's flexibility and job prospects. They note that the sociology major allows students to take many elective courses and fewer required courses, which is attractive given athletes' busy practice and competitive schedules. (Related item: Academic support hits new heights)

And because a lot of football players come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, they often are drawn to academic fields that will result in jobs after college, says Virgil Starks, the Auburn assistant provost who oversees academic support for athletes. "In sociology, they can literally see a career path outside that major," he says.

Mayo Sowell, an Auburn junior linebacker, says he didn't think much about career prospects when he decided to major in sociology in the summer before his sophomore year. He told his academic adviser in the athletics department that he got along well with people and liked being around kids and asked what academic field that might point him to. When the adviser suggested sociology, Sowell says, "I asked him, 'Is it hard to graduate in?' I'm capable of doing the work, but I wasn't always the smartest student in high school."

Sowell also says he talked with older teammates who "were kind of similar to me because they weren't really concentrating on school too much," to find out what they were majoring in. "A couple of them were getting their degrees in sociology, so that helped my decision."

Majors as havens for athletes

The clustering of athletes in a given major, which is common on many campuses, concerns some observers of college sports. They fear athletes might sometimes be drawn to an academic program less because of its academic attractiveness than because it is easy or overly friendly to athletes. Sometimes athletes just follow as their teammates guide them on such a path; other times they might be nudged in that direction more formally by advisers in the athletics department.


By Robert E. Klein, AP
Harvard's Ryan Fitzpatrick and 34
teammates are studying economics.


"Every school in the country has a hideaway curriculum, a secret underground tunnel, for athletes," says William Dowling, a professor of English at Rutgers. Dowling also is a leader of the Drake Group, a faculty watchdog group that has called for colleges to disclose information each year about the majors taken by their athletes and the average aggregate grades of students enrolled in those majors.

Critics such as Dowling suspect that if newly adopted NCAA academic rules work as some observers expect, such clustering might become more common.

Under the new rules, colleges could face financial and other consequences if their athletes don't make demonstrable progress toward a particular degree each term by the start of their third year in college and meet escalating minimum grade-point averages based on their colleges' graduation requirements.

That pressure, some observers fear, will force athletes to choose majors earlier and might encourage advisers who work with athletes to push them into easier majors that have been identified as havens for athletes.

"Many student-athletes will choose the path of least resistance — less competitive majors — so they can maintain their eligibility," says Gerald Gurney, associate athletics director for academic affairs at the University of Oklahoma. "Does every school have them? No. Do many schools have them? Yes."

Gurney notes that in 1989, amid a scandal involving Oklahoma's football team, the faculty there shut down four majors — recreation, physical education, law enforcement and general studies — after a review suggested they existed, in part, to provide a painless path for athletes.

Quite a few nationally ranked football programs appear to have clusters of players in a given major, as disclosed in January by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Eleven of the 50 Michigan players whose majors appear in the team's 2003 media guide are in sports management, as are 11 of the 33 at North Carolina State. Ten of the 54 players at Virginia Tech whose majors are listed as a field other than university studies, a catchall for underclassmen, are in residential property management.

The phenomenon isn't limited to football factories. Based on information in 2003 team media guides, at Duke, nearly one in three of the football players who have declared a major have chosen sociology. At Wake Forest, 23 of 52 players were specializing, or planning to specialize, in communication. At Harvard, 35 of the 75 football players listed as having chosen a "concentration," as majors are called there, have selected economics.

Harvard athletics director Bob Scalise attributes the predominance of football players in one field of study to the "increase in current students' interest in careers in business." University statistics bear him out to some extent: 666 Harvard undergraduates, 13% of the total, have chosen economics as their concentration. But why are football players so much more heavily represented in that field? "Athletes," Scalise says, "see this as a viable career after Harvard — one which values intellect, interpersonal skills, leadership, and teamwork — all of which are developed on teams."

Monitoring majors

Some college officials bristle at the suggestion that a large number of athletes in a major implies something nefarious.

Twenty-nine of the 66 Southern Mississippi football players whose majors appear in this season's media guide are in sport administration (four of the 29 were listed as pursuing double majors). Dennis R. Phillips, the faculty athletics representative and graduate coordinator of the sport administration program, notes Southern Miss has one of the nation's oldest and best coaching education programs, and the sports industry is booming with possible jobs.

He also says his program has built a good relationship with the athletics department, and the program has crafted its schedule to avoid late-afternoon classes to prevent conflicts with athletes' practices or games.

Demetrius H. Marlowe, assistant to the vice president for student affairs at Michigan State and president of the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletes, says there is no shame in acknowledging "there are programs that because of the content or rigor of the program or the time the courses are given are better for some athletes."

When is a cluster of athletes in a major a problem and who decides? Several sports officials and faculty leaders say colleges should monitor their athletes' academic choices and, if they see patterns, check them out.

"If you've got 40 athletes in the same program and not very many other people in that program, that ought to be investigated," says Andy Geiger, athletics director at Ohio State. He suggests the NCAA develop a system for reporting which majors athletes cho

[OldPony]

The guy from Rutgers says "every school has hideaway majors" for jocks. What is ours?
I love that Bill Snyder is so concerned about these poor guys who aren't getting academic counseling and wants us to pony up tax $ to pay for more counselors. Bill is really for the downtrodden. What a prince!!!
I bet it has nothing to do with the fact that 1/2 of his squad doesn't belong on a college campus.
They act like the fact that many of these guys would have to sign pro rather than attend college is bad. I'm sure the NFL will take this cause up too. It owuld be horrible to have to pay for their own minor league system.
That though is the way the game is now played. Do it or lose seems to be the idea. It will be interesting to see how many of the reforms now being discussed are implemented. My guess is very few. What happened to the "scarlett letter" idea of uniform designations for teams with abysmally low graduation rates and prohibiting them from post season play? Was it unfair to the little darlings?

[EastStang]

Bully for the Auburn Sociology majors who happen to play football. That way when they graduate they can become parole officers and keep track of those players who majored in other subjects.

[KnuckleStang]

SMU 2003 football majors (excluding true freshmen):

25 Business
10 Economics
7 Undecided
5 Sociology
5 Communications
5 Engineering
4 Advertising
3 Financial Consulting
3 Journalism
2 Political Science
1 Computer Science
1 English
1 Public Affairs
1 Antropology
1 Management Information Science

<small>[ 11-19-2003, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: KnuckleStang ]</small>

[Hoop Fan]

Knuckle, that list is really admirable for SMU and our athletes. The problem is the only thing that matters in college sports today is winning and staying off probation. It would be great if somebody could post the majors of the TCU football team. I bet Movement Science is a real winner over in Cowtown.

[FWMustang]

Actually, this seems another measure, which, on the surface, only seems to help the smaller academic-minded schools. But, alas, I fear that it is yet another hinderance.

Larger schools can afford/will be able to add throw away courses to accomodate the new rules quicker or with less guff from faculty senates or "Drake Groups."

Just another thing for the old farts at the NCAA to wave their canes at and say they are making it better. I think I have seen this somewhere else....oh yes, it's called BCS. Or punishing schools, with small athletic budgets, that can't pay the "in-house" NCAA law firm to fight investigations over filling out paperwork incorrectly, while b-ball players from Michigan just happen to drive matching Hummers.

[gostangs]

Our success depends on these clusters disapearring and pressure being put on NCAA to put Student back in student athlete - OR more likely - since that might kill the golden goose and it is suicide for whoever trys to pull it off - - we have to adopt the rules of the game and create some sports oriented majors - wishing it were different ain't going to cut it. Mr.Turner - we have to push the new majors NOW or we are division II in 2 years.

[DiamondM]

Didn't you read the part of the story where it said OU -- yes, that OU -- DID AWAY WITH cushy majors like PE, recreation, etc? The number 1 country in the country doesn't need a PE major for their student athletes, why do we?

We already have majors that athletes, if they choose, can get by with relative ease. We have Sociology, business, marketing, "communications," economics, and advertising -- all of which have easy tracks within them, though the majors themselves are legitimate. I personally would like to see a sports management or similar major, not so athletes can have an easy major, but because I think it is a valid program, one that athletes -- and others -- may be drawn to because of interest not ease.

[gostangs]

OU "shut" theirs down in 1989 - are you so nieve as to think it is not back? And, by the way OU does not exactly need easy routes - the whole school is one - SMU needs some safe havens - and the ones you listed are not safe enough for competitive football players - we have no choice -and it is not the high ground - but we do this or we don't get out of the hole - and it will better the school as a whole if we do it - because when your football team is well known your applicant pool will go up. At Stanford it don't matter - but we ain't Stanford (yet).

[EastStang]

I didn't see any dance majors on our football team. They must be pretty smart. When I was at SMU the true academic problems ended up in Coach Prewitt's PE "symposium" course and majoring in Dance (with its subjective grading). They usually still managed to flunk out, but it kept their eligibility alive for at least one more semester. Not that the strategy didn't backfire on occasion, one young man discovered he liked dancing (and rumor had it, other guys, not that there's anything wrong with that) and decided to dump competitive athletics entirely.

[OldPony]

There needs to be some type of sports major in any school today. Sports is huge business and does not operate under the same economic model as other businesses. Kids who are athletes are drawn to those majors whether they are smart or not. Sports marketing and management are growth industries. There is an explosion of sports realted events that cover TV now. That is reason enough to have those types of majors or at least those types of courses in the business school.

[Hoop Fan]

sorry Diamond M, but I gotta tell ya you are off in left field on this. You cannot really believe that Oklahoma doesn't have jock majors. As for SMU's easy majors, its all relative. Yes, to an engineering major, most think the business school is easy...until they take Accounting 101 which often whips peoples egos back into place. And whats easy for you doesn't mean easy for kids with 950 SATs either. To major in any business degree, marketing or whatever, you have to take basic accounting and finance classes. Not easy. As for economics, ever heard of a prof named Ravi Batra? He used to be infamous as a brutal Econ 101 prof. As for Sociology, didnt they disband that department several years ago? I posted a list of majors TCU has last week. They include Movement Science, PE, Psycological Kinesiology and several others. If you don't believe it, go to the main TCU website and check it out. SMU is on an island curriculum wise and it shows.

[Dooby]

Originally posted by Hoop Fan:
sorry Diamond M, but I gotta tell ya you are off in left field on this. You cannot really believe that Oklahoma doesn't have jock majors.

Thought I'd look at a bunch of junior and senior profiles of OU players on the OU website. Lots of juniors majoring in "University Studies" at OU, which strangly is not a major at OU according to their website. I would guess that means "undecided". None of the seniors I looked at are majoring in "University Studies", but there sure are a lot of sociology majors.