Interesting write-up on football student athlete majors for Mich vs. OSU

No matter what evidence is shown to the contrary, mouthbreathing Ohio folk are never going to believe it.  That's what Urban is banking on.  They're his base, and he's playing directly to them.

Terelle Pryor was 3 times academic all Big Ten?  Man, OSU must be even easier than I thought.

http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/michiganosu-football-player-majors-full-breakdown 

I have little doubt that that MGoBlog thread, plus another one on ElevenWarriors.com (it is actually linked in the story), is where Watson got the idea for the story.

BEAT OHIO!

hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh, wait, that guy was serious? Listen, I am not saying that Michigan is the best school in major athletics-- I begrugingly defer to Vanderbilt and Northwestern off the top of my head-- but to say that a OSU's communications department is some bastion of academic excellence is absurd. I had a friend from HS who graduated from Ohio with a communications degree-- the dude was probably sober one day a week until he had an "oh, shit, i need a job" moment when he became a senior.He still managed a 3.5 GPA before that moment (to be fair, he ended up with a pretty good job). 

I was sad to see he did not include Ohio State's version of general studies.  It's called Exploring, and there are 18 players on the football team on it.  I don't know about you, but I'd rather be a general studies major than have a major with a name that invokes images of Terrelle Pryor wandering through woods and collecting butterflies to chart for one of his expeditions (I'm assuming they have changed the name of classes too).

"But in the real world, does an Ohio State degree have more value than one from Michigan or vice versa? No."

He is essentially saying that "a degree is a degree" so where you go doesn't matter the slightest.  It's like saying a degree from Yale is the same as one from Arizona State . That is complete bull.  Employers sure as hell look at where that degree came from.

OSU Majors

Business - How to barter for tatoos

Engineering - How the ink goes into the skin and stays there

Biology - Long term effects of tatoos on the body

I think its naive to assume athletes everywhere aren't getting pressured to take easier courses/majors to give them more time to focus on football.

The Ross School of Business site has a slideshow on its front page. One of the pictures is of Zoltan Mesko with the following quote, "Ross took my goal of pursuing business seriously."

Sure, Michigan is a great school, but that picture demonstrates pretty clearly that enrolling at Ross is an uncommon thing for a football player. Instead, they congregate towards certain other majors that are (or are perceived to be) better for football players.

OSU isn't a bad school. Actually, it's a good school that educates an awful lot of Ohioans. Their athletes are also very likely to enter certain majors that are less rigorous than others.

The whole argument smacks of penile comparison (Ramzy at Eleven Warriors is right) and isn't really worth the time.

"Terrelle Pryor was Academic All-Big Ten for three years with an undecided major..." wow, that wasn't a suprise to any, especially since he received a top quality education at a premier prep school and is supremely well-spoken in all of his interviews.  

Oh wait, we're talking about the guy from a former steel town with less than top quality schooling who has asserted that everyone kills people and that OSU is such an impressive school it deserves to have the word "University" included twice whenever it is named. 

Hey, at least the tutors must be pretty good at their jobs.

Note to employers: Hire OSU tutors, impressive that they can graduate while doing twice as much work as the average student.

I was unaware that we only had 45 players on our team...

I like that the sign lists 59 Ohio players but only 45 Michigan players to give the impression with overinflation that Ohio players are striving more for academic excellence with more difficult majors. As noted in the article, many of the Michigan player's majors aren't even listed.

Also, it is inarguable that Ohio's engineering is anywhere near that of Michigan's. Same goes for Business.

You have to declare a major by your Junior year, winter quarter if I'm not mistaken.

I was in Exploring because I honestly didn't have a clue what I wanted to major in.  It just allows you to take several different courses in different fields while getting your required courses out of the way.  The problem you run into is my last 2 years were definitely stressful.

This obviously allowed them to keep Pryor in introductory courses for several different majors while being able to stack up on electives.

Urban Meyer getting into a pissing contest concerning anything with academics is beyond ridiculous.  My friends and I all had a class or two with football players, and they attend a different university then we did.  Of course there are exceptions just like any other large university where players do work their asses off in the classroom.

I had one player that (when he showed up) never came to class once with a book/notebook for the entire quarter (it was the off season).  He would even borrow a pen when we had a quiz/exam.  It was particularly hilarious because my Prof loved asking questions during class to students at random.  When this player was picked he could barely put a sentence together, let alone provide any answers to questions.  When we finished quizzes we would hand them down the row to hand in, several times only 1/3 of the questions were answered, yet there he was for graduation.

That's whay Meyer is.

Assume all of the chart's data is correct... So what? What does it tell a person? That Michigan football players major in General Studies. Is that bad? Is that more than the non-football population? It General Studies an easy major? Is a Communications major at OSU very difficult and financially rewarding? Does it have more prestige?

The stupid chart says/ shows none of this, so BFD.

I'd love to see the breakdown....every year we see kids making decision regarding X,Y & Z univeristy because they have a good engingeering, business, journalism, pre-med etc program; How many of those kids actually end up in those desired majors? 

You can write whatever major you want next to a name...that's no guarantee they are actually  doing anything to earn it.  We've seen enough of how things work down in ohio to be skeptical of anything coming from Urb & Co.

If they're all so book-smart why do they need a 4 ft. high sign to make their point?

I think the chart is for the parents.  The recruits already know the score.  Adolphus Washington summed it up best.

“I know all these schools athletically can offer me the same thing. The academic support at Ohio State, there is no way you can fail. Even if you’re giving minimal effort there is no way you can fail.”

This writer obviously didn't do her research either.  She thinks that Coach Hoke will create a chart like this because Urbs has one?!  We're the LEADERS and best, lady.  No followers allowed.

The only place an Ohio degree is worth anything is in a bathroom stall. This is quite possibly why they built a giant toilet-shaped stadium.