From: oday@lobster.gsfc.nasa.gov  (Orin Day)
Subject: Student Athlete Classes (Was: Re: Some Purdue Notes)
Reply-To: oday@lobster.gsfc.nasa.gov  (Orin Day)
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 18:13:06 GMT

In article <1992Sep14.114034.14101@doug.cae.wisc.edu>  
saunders@luther.che.wisc.edu (Brian E. Saunders) writes:
> Hah!  CS classes?  Chapin, are you posting while not having slept in over
> 24 hours again?
> 
> The sad thing is that I think a lot of these guys would do better in a
> technical field than a non-technical one.  Your classes aren't as dependent
> on memorizing things.  You can learn a method, and apply it to different
> problems.  Is this not more like an offense or defense that you learn,
> where you have some latitude on how you run the play?

Hmmm, this is an interesting theory, but I'm not sure it would work
well for athletes given the sequential/building nature of some
technical courses, since one missed concept often is built on,
and it's way easy to get behind, and be completely lost in reading
the (often poorly written ITOOM*) texts. 

[*ITOOM = In The Opinion Of Many]

Where I went to school, the philosophy of the athletic department was
to encourage the basketball players to avoid the more technical courses
because labs took lots of time and missed work was harder to make up.
I certainly knew more econ and history majors who would cut class than
engineers, and quite often the hoops players were forced to miss 
classes.  Also, the bulk of history type course evaluations were
based on papers, often with more flexible deadlines than in class 
tests.  In my experience, there was nothing an instructor hated more
than writing a makeup test, and in travelling with the team 4 years
to the conference and NCAA tournament, I missed plenty.

It seemed like more football players took technical subjects than
basketball, in part because their season did not span semesters 
or cause many missed (weekday) classes.  They had scheduling
difficulties due to practice during the fall only, though on Mondays
practice was in the evening to allow for a lab class then.  I recall
basketball players only scheduling morning classes year 'round to 
make the traditional afternoon practices.  Some of those 8 AM classes
must have been a bitch after road trips, but, then again, so is my loan!

I guess in today's society it is still possible to pursue a grad 
program in virtually any field - though some catching up by taking
some undergrad classes would be needed.  I guess one could look at
that catching up as similar to other scholarship post-graduation
commitments (such as ROTC or teaching scholarships, not that I am
saying that I support either).  The circumstance that can prevent
athletes from doing well enough to get into grad school is another
story as an athletic scholarship is not a "free ride".  

Also, I must point out that there is the additional consideration
of the so-called "flunk out" classes at large schools - many are
technical classes such as calculus, by which a (former) Purdue
(still) friend of mine was victimized twice despite having had 
calc in H.S.  Coaches everywhere protect their players - thus
some classes are blacklisted, and thus many technical majors


Orin

> -- 
> 
> Brian E. Saunders			saunders@luther.che.wisc.edu

--
* "In 27 years of marriage, Todd never noticed Marie's tentacle" *
Orin Day, Code 664.1                    oday@lobster.gsfc.nasa.gov
Hughes STX/NASA       GSFC Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics
*******"Think that this is NASA's opinion?   NO, NO, NO!!!" ******
Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.college