Is Michigan Too Smart for College Football?

Good thing he didn't say "ACC-style." 

I was a BGS major... I work in IT Consulting now.  I wasn't an athlete though :(.  Although I was on a softball team (shout out to my fellow Buckfutters.)

Interesting that MGoBlog is referenced:

I saw a good deal of academic smack talk after Alabama beat Michigan, 41-14, on Saturday night. A Wolverines fan named “MGlobules” took to the excellent MGoBlog and complained of an uneven playing field. “Brent Musberger is never going to give a shit that we graduate more kids or have a school attached to our football factory,” MGlobules wrote. He/she added, “Should we just go all Ivy League and not give a crap about the SEC?” I think that part was a joke.

This kind of makes us out to be whiny bitches.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm DEFINITELY better than everyone else because I went to Michigan.

Look, Michigan tends toward the better end of the spectrum in terms of how they apply the rules of NCAA eligibility and academics, but don't be naive about whether or not we make exceptions for footballs players in terms of entry into the university and have means by which to shepherd them through the system to graduate........we do. 

Most people here call BS when Notre Dame or Stanford or Northwestern employ the academic standard argument, I would do the same in our case. 

Agreed it makes us sound like whiny bitches. 

Nobody who has had a class with a football player can even remotely refute that.  Sure as in life of course there are outliers, but it's impossible to argue that the football team is full of Rhodes Scholars.

I had the professor they're referencing for a class called, "Learning to Learn," (I was a psych major trying to overcome ADD tendencies). My class was 80% varsity athletes, and it was well known you jump on that professor's radar if you want a more tailored way ahead.

Michigan is too smart for Einstein.

Michigan is too sexy for Kate Upton.

Michigan is too cool for the Fonz.

any others?

The article referenced (originating from Ann Arbor News) brings up an excellent point though: to what extent can we expect athletes to compete in the classrooms?  Many of these kids are not as academically prepared as the majority of the student body.  On top of that, now try balancing their training, practices, games, with finding time to study.  It's unrealistic to expect everyone to be like Zoltan Mesko.

And to the point regarding Reuben Riley, he specifically states his career path was to be a professional athlete... that was his goal, so he made that decision.  My viewpoints on College Athletics may not jive well with most on this board, but I will say, there is a huge problem with college athletics.  The academic expectations the public in general has are not realistic for the majority of athletes (primarily in revenue sports).  And really, it stems from educational gaps that exist from K-12.

http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/academics/stories/index.ssf/2008/03/athletes_safe_harbor_is_genera.html

Grantland seems to have taken a special interest in us, with UM stories heading their "triangle" section for the last several days.

As someone who doesn't like that pompous bluster is a part of Michigan's image to outsiders, there aren't many websites I'd like talking about us less than freaking Grantland.

The end point is money.  Academic smack talk depends on and reinforces the idea that big time college football is somehow tied to college.  It's not, but it's a fiction we have to keep up so that we can pretend we are doing something other than underpaying kids to ruin their lifelong health in order to make already-rich unviersities and ESPN a crap-ton of money.

Honestly, there are some pretty dumb and/or underprepared students in the general population at Michigan.  Unfortunately, that's one of the problems with a large university.  Stereotyping athletes as dumb doesn't really make much sense.

Having said that, the time constraints placed on athletes does make them a different breed of student, so to speak, so really there shouldn't be too much consternation about the extra efforts used to help them along academically.  And even for the weakest academic performers, once they are on campus, it's really in everybody's interest that they aren't simply left behind.

I think it is important to always question what the true goals of college athletics are.  To be honest with you all, I'm not certain what that goal is.  This is a topic which I have discussed at some length with a multitude of people, each of whom has given me a different response.  Although Michigan is a large school which makes it easier to "hide" athletes, some smaller schools still employ a similar number of varsity sports (and, as a consequence, athletes) even though their student population is miniscule compared to Michigan.  Take Wake Forest.  The school benefits from athletics by helping to raise their national profile.  But that is only true for a select few sports.  Does having a softball team or men's swimming team really add any value to the school?  With such a small student body, it more obviously eliminates spots in the student body usually reserved for academics-only students.  Would Wake Forest be better served dropping sports altogether? 

I have also heard the argument that sports enable children who normally wouldn't be able to go to college to have a chance.  Perhaps that is the case for some athletes, but should say, a water polo player, from an economically-advantaged setting really be included as evidence in such an argument?  Perhaps they wouldn't normally be given the opportunity (thanks to grades, standardized testing scores, etc), but I doubt that is what one envisions.

Or is the goal of athletics to improve school spirit and influence donations?  Perhaps, but it seems as if many smaller schools (think the Ivy League, Washington and Lee, and others) have managed to maintain high levels of alumni support, donations, and huge endowments (granted they have long and fruitful histories) without maintaining a massive sports-industrial-complex.

I understand that Michigan is a different animal to some extent.  We are a highly successful academic institution, with a huge alumni base, massive endowment, great history, etc etc.  Michigan can afford to have a huge athletic department.  But imagine if you were paying tuition to a school whose sports were third-rate, drew no additional applications, barely raised the school's national profile, and admitted many more (possibly) under-qualified student athletes. 

I understand this may be ripped to shreds (as most of you are sports fans), but with the recent news out of North Carolina and numerous other academic and ethical problems arising from sports (combined with the almost apparent need to cheat to win), I think it is time to completely re-examine the question of, what are the goals of college athletics?

~Herm

A Michigan Grad did decide to schedule an NFL team the first week of the 2012 season, so no I would say that Michigan isn't too smart. 

that my point, even in the bit he quotes (that Brent Musberger is never going to notice that M has a great university attached to its football factory) was HIS: you can't play the virtue game if you are going to get on that stage in the first place. (He missed the part where I acknowledged that we were in some degree a football factory, too.) 

I do think these are social questions the whole country faces, not just Michigan. There's little that's fair about college football to begin with, but when you climb into the ring with Alabama. . .

Who knows, the reduction in oversigning, four-year schollies--maybe these will change things a little. Most fans, as I realize, just want us to shut up and get better. A quarter of me appreciates that; as an alumnus with an appreciation for the academic side, I would also be cool with the B1G just refusing to play the SEC.

Not gonna happen, I know. 

Yup, we were definitely too smart to beat Alabama. That was our problem.