College Acceptance of Athletes

[Texan4Auburn 1,626]

One thing that I think is missing and noone has discussed in the papers or in threads about all of this mess is the different standards that athletes have to get in to college vs the regular students.

It is important to note that there are very smart athletes out there. There are also athletes that can do well in class but just goofed off. Point, can't stereotype all athletes as dumb jocks.

If you look at the Auburn webpage, the average student accepted at Auburn in the fall of 04 had a ACT of a 24, a gpa of 3.5, and I think the SAT was 1170. Auburn no longer posts a standard baseline score to get in and states that its competitive based upon the scores of other applicants. This shift is nothing that only Auburn does, alot of major universities now base acceptance off the applicants, and just having x act, x gpa, or x sat no longer means your in.

Even with admitting there is athletes that goof off academically and that there is smart athletes, there is a large number of athletes that are admitted to universities that would not stack up academically to the regular students that are admitted. Most would be turned down if they had to.

If universities base their core off the average scores of regular students, and instructors base their workload and grading principals off the average performance of the students in their class, is it really fair to expect the athletes that were well below the average entrance scores to perform at the level of regular students.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that alot of athletes are put at a disadvantage in the classroom from the start because academically they are not at the same level as a majority of the regular students.

The NCAA clearly overlooks this fact with their eligibility rules, it would be like a true college freshmen getting to go to graduate school immediatly and then expected to work at the same level as those with 4 years of undergraduate education in that field.

Course if universities held all athletes to the standards of regular students, then most division I schools would have very poor athletic programs.