Players attending classes during rivalry weeks

It better be that players HAVE TO attend class.

That would include during rivalry week.

For what it's worth, I have a class with 7 football players and they all show up every day - including during ND and MSU weeks

From the viewpoint of a former college football player and soon to be college professor: Attendance is optional. Then again, so are passing grades.

So much for the "student" in student athlete.

If Hoke's policy is anything but, 'go to class everyday', do you think he's going to tell anyone?

That is utter bunk. I attended the U from 97-01 and had a few football players in classes. They always came to class.

As an academic peer advisor for summer orientations, I know that football players' schedules were set up to not have classes on fridays in the fall term. This was because of the team travels on fridays for away games and has nothing to due with wanting to just give them fridays off.

Class attendance is overrated IMO. Regular students skip all the time. I don't mind if the players are skipping a class here and there. I did that while I was in school and I did fine (depending on the class of course). Now if they're skipping once a week, then it's a problem.

With that said, it's admirable if the coaches require attendance. It's always good to try and be beyond reproach.

But I'm sure the coaching staff follows up on athlete attendance for discussion sections. I suspect - but I don't know for sure - that the athletic department has people who look for players in lectures.

I'm in a class with Jeremy Jackson, Will Campbell, and Michael Shaw.  They are there in lecture EVERY day (including the Friday session), often very early.  There's some academic advisor guy that checks to make sure that they are there every single lecture, too.  So, I'm pretty sure that the coaches find class attendance pretty important (even big lectures).

I had a big lecture class in Fall '06 with about 30ish football players.  Most of the starting secondary, a bunch of linemen, and a good chunk of the star WR's and RB's.  Those guys never missed class, rivalry class or no.  Even Adrian Arrington, who was having a decent bout of off-field issues at the time.  

Now, they may not have been the most attentive students at times, and now and then they may have had a girlfriend sign them in at  some of the evening film screenings (unless there were prominent linemen with incredibly girly, loopy handwriting).  But they were there.  Which was one of the reasons that little "policy" Bacon wrote about raised an eyebrow.

If John U. Bacon got this wrong, what else did he get wrong?

I do not care if players miss classes the week of the OSU game. If that is what it takes. I mean its been like 8 years or something.

I by no means had stellar attendence. So I would be a hypocrite to ask or expect much better from the players.