This I know: Danny Hope is a fucking tool.

This I hope: U-M curbstomps Purdue this year.

This I want to believe but simply don't know enough to render a judgment: Is U-M the only school with a "General Studies" major? That is, are we sure Hope's comment was a crack at U-M?

Oh, good ole Danny Hope. Last year, at Freshman orientation, this guy said the most important thing in college was to HAVE FUN (in his southern drawl). He failed to mention athletics. It doesn't surprise me at all that he mentions this. He is singlehandedly, the cockiest coach in the conference.

Also, Organizational Leadership Skills (OLS) is a complete JOKE at Purdue. Basically, if you get a degree with it, you are bound for a youth camp leader. What else can you do with an OLS? I'd have to say that Chris Kramer is the poster boy for OLS...

PS...I'm about to be in IE, and even though it will appear to be one of the easier engineering disciplines at Purdue, I still have to take some rather bang-your-head-against-the-wall-at-3:01-am classes such as ME 200 (Thermo), ECE 201 (Linear Circuits (some genius told me this was a "real bitch")), and some others... I'm not gonna get all huffy puffy about people not calling it engineering... Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass...

Communications isn't a cakewalk.

Well, I guess it can be, if you're not serious about choosing a specialty and really delving into it.

Although I have very strong negative feelings towards Danny and his football team, I see his point.  If a man (or program) is measured by his enemies, Danny and Purdue become more relevent by picking a fight with Michigan.  To me, this seems like a poor attempt at building the legitimacy of a flailing program that hit its peak with Drew Brees and has struggled mightly before and since...  I'm not concerned with what Danny says.  His football team has no heated, national attention-getting rivalries and this is just a poor attempt at creating one, in my opinion.

Yeah, Danny Hope is one of the bigger douches in college sports, mostly because the other guys with massive egos (Saban, Meyer, etc.) have actually, you know, won something.  Going 5-7 is nothing to write home about.  I'm sure there are a couple of very hard-working athletes on the football team who challenge themselves in the classroom, but all schools have those kids.  Purdue is a good engineering school with some challenging courses, but slapping a name like OLS on what is basically general studies is just ignorant.

Another date/opponent circled on the calender

Non-seriously...

We're assuming malice where ignorance might be a better explanation.  Mr. Hope went to Eastern Kentucky University and, as a footballer, probably took their "General Studies" route.  That school probably graduates a lot of gym teachers.  It's quite possible that all the "management" majors at Purdue look real to him.

Here's the thing - I was a sociology major, and I do very well for myself.  Had I majored in General Studies I would be doing no worse off.  Why did I major in sociology?  Because it was fucking easy.  There, sorry if I offended any other soc alumni.  I agree that it should go in the "football players major in this because it's not hard" category.

The other thing - Fuck Danny Hope.  Purdue has always been a team about which I was pretty ambivalent.  Not anymore.  I want to beat them by a hundred.  I want Roy Roundree to score 7 touchdowns and then pull a girl out of the stands and have her score a few more. 

Danny Hope is an idiot. We better beat Purdue by 30 and I hope we go for 2 when we're winning by 20.

The BGS thing AGAIN? Someone get on the Jim James Johnathan Carty, Esq. EMERGENCY  HOTLINE.

A few things, based on my attempted debunking of this BGS BULLCHIPS from 3 years ago (that long? I'm getting old)

• Kinesiology is an actual science, in that they study the biochemical and biophysical aspects of human body movement, and the scientific method is used in peer reviewd literature, etc.
• The BGS IS NOT A MAJOR, it is a DEGREE. Say this to yourselves outloud 3 times. I can't emphasize this enough. It has similar requirements of any other DEGREE. Does it require FL? No, but the FL requirment at UM is above and beyond what is required of most (95%+?) undergraduate institutions in the US.
• Both of the above avenues of study can be taken advantage of.... like any other course of study. You get out what you put in.
• Does UM or any other institution push kids into BGS? Depends on where you draw the line, but it is MUCH more flexible not only due to the lack of FL courses, but also b/c the upper level courses requirements allow more flexibility as well. Scheduling must be a nightmare for D1 athletes, and if you need course ENG 450 for the traditional major and it's ONLY offered in the semester when your sport is in season, at ONE time... that's a tough thing to deal with. The BGS route allows more flexibility here. I'm sure every academic advisor makes this clear to students who have tough schedules, including athletes.
• The BGS allows you to study 2-3 topics, so if a certain Stanford coach who may or may not have been drafted by the Bears, took the Colts the the brink of the SB and
  guaranteed a victory over OSU while he was in college wanted to major in say..... history, the BGS allows you to take about 20 credits of histroy classes, among other things.

As a side note, calculus is not calculus everywhere. At about the same time as the BGS crap came out, ND people went all, 'LOL UM, dumb public school' and started talking about how EVERY ND undergrad was required to take calculus. 1st, that was a lie or at least a misunderstanding and 2nd, ND offers like 3-4 levels of calculus. Some of those calc classes are not at all on the level of Math 115, 116 at UM.

Jesus, can you imagine if Ryan Kerrigan was your high school math teacher?  He is going to have an easy time with classroom management.

This thread was fun. Kinda like two-a-days are fun.

So I wanted to know what OLS was like at Purdue.  I emailed a buddy of mine who is a proud Purdue grad to ask what it was all about.  His response:

OLS is the most ridiculous major at Purdue.  OLS guarantees that you will have no job options after college.  It’s full of jocks, but there are a few random fraternity idiots sprinkled in there.  I knew a few guys that did it because it helps with a grad school application to dominate the douches and have a 3.9 for doing absolutely nothing.

Go Blue.

EDIT: I did not see the Purdue student's explanation before I posted this.  Seems pretty consistent.

I don't know if he thinks that he can actually create a "rivalry" with Michigan, or that most Purdue alumni even want that. I suppose some probably enjoy the digs at RR, but most of us probably think this way:

1. We have a rival in the conference already. It's IU. Keeping the Bucket is important. Creating other rivalries is not.

2. We also have a rival outside the conference. Focus on them. Beat Notre Dame, and pretty much everyone else is happy.

3. Purdue is not a football school. It's a basketball school. Winning the Big Ten is nice. Going to the Rose Bowl is nice. But that's all it is. We'd like to see the football team do well, but it plays second fiddle to men's basketball. Stirring up a storm with Michigan isn't going to change that. (And if Painter gets Purdue to the Final Four this year, nobody's going to care what happened to the football team. Well, we'll care a little, but we sure won't remember in April.)

4. If you insist on creating a rivalry in the conference, pick Ohio State. No one likes them either. (Hell, we also have a trophy rivalry with Illinois. I don't think we need to be "rivals" with half the conference.)

Of course Purdue has easy majors, Hope ought to know that. We're just like most of the other Big Ten schools: strong academics with easier ways out for those who want or need that. It's foolish to pretend otherwise and stupid to suggest so publicly when it's so easy to refute.

The whole thing speaks to a lack of focus. Hope's message should be this: beat ND, beat IU, go to bowl games, win them. Do not pretend we sit at the big kids' table. We do not.

There may be some other Purdue alumni who disagree with me; so be it.

can there be this many posts ragging on IOE, soc, etc. but no one has a problem with math education being under real degrees? 

Education classes don't even know how to spell B, I've never gotten so many A's for so little work in my life. 

If you think organic chemistry, physics, and human anatomy are physical fitness classes, I would question whether or not you even went to college... and that just scratches the surface of science classes and doesn't mention all of the clinical health science classes.

thought it was worth mentioning...

Go for two.