MAJOR PAIN

“At least you can fall back on your major in….communications?!?!”

“I know, ’tis phony major. Lupchenko learn nothing. NOTHING!”

Did anyone ever hear the story of the Houston football player who thought he was getting an English degree, then when his scholarship was up, he found out he had been told to take classes that werent going to help him graduate with that major. He then had to pay for another year or two on his own dime. I sortof blame him on that though for not keeping tabs on his own education, but at the same time, thats downright wrong of administrations to do that to people.

The whole sorry story makes my stomach queasy.
Gundlach, Petee, Sociology, New York Times, Auburn…

I don’t feel very good…

NCAA will come down hard on you for cheating to GET someone into your school. NCAA will do nothing to you for cheating to KEEP someone into your school.

Excellent point, Mike. You hit the head of the nail with that one.

The “Arts and Sciences” listed for UGA players probably refers to the fact that they are in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences which has all your general liberal arts degrees at Georgia (like History, English, Sociology etc)

Someone explain to me how political infighting in a small academic department became a NY Slimes sports story?

I still think this is a Blair witch hunt.

To expand on Chris’ comments.

Arts and Sciences is a FR and SOPH holding ground department for a variety of majors that you can’t apply to until your SOPH year.

For instance, the Journalism Majors can call themselves that as FR and Sophs but in reality they can’t even apply to the Grady College of Journalism until late in Year 2.

There are other majors like that.

There is no Arts and Sciences major. It’s an entire school with thousands upon thousands of kids studying dozens of majors.

(ie – its also a cooler way to say "Undecided)

The Auburn hunt for foolish grades seemed to be a more venting of sour grapes than anything else. If the guy who blew the whistle then said he wasn’t going to be part of any investigation, then his motives are the ones that are suspect.

Back in the day, I seem to recall at LSU a number of athletes who were getting degrees in “General Studies”. A lot of fluff went up, until there was a look at how much of the general campus population was getting that same degree. The furor became a tempest in a teapot. Now, I think the atheltes at the Ole War Skule tend to major in Kinesiology.

It took a lot of “courage” for Gundlach to call the NY Times. If nothing comes of this its because all he wanted was his face on the cover.

What’s the over/under on this being a bet between him and some buddies after six hours at a hooka bar? He looks like hooka kind of guy…

Some principles Gundlach has; He won’t participate with the investigation because he thinks Auburn tried to make it seem that Petee getting the dean job over him was the reason he started all this… However his principles allowed him to spin and pretty much lie that athletes were getting preferential treatment to get his squabble with Dr. Petee some attention. give me a break.

Not to be anal about this, since I agree with the broader point. But USC has a highly regarded sociology program. That said, I have no idea what a sociology major does (and from those enrolled I’m guessing they do very little).

The other popular choice used to be “Communications”.

An OSU grad myself, I often laugh at the majors of these guys. I know OSU, and tOSU’s reputation, and a lot of the guys major in Sociology (joke), communications (joke, including Troy smith), and Family Financial management or Sports management. As CHM said, the NCAA will do anything to keep you from getting into school illegally, but once your in, it seems you have to do something pretty bad to get out. This does go on at EVERY school, tho 119 wrongs dont make a right, in cut throat competition and millions of $$ in making/not making bowl games, teams do anything to get players eligible. I think i remember a Randy Ayers basketball team carrying a team GPA of under 1 during the early 90’s, and CB Shawn Springs having a 0 GPA. I think this may have been before the dawn of academic ineligibility tho. Does anyone know when the GPA rule came into effect?

I tried to tell you all that this story was much ado about nothing and in the Bama knuckledraggers rush to spew vitriol it got swept up.

This was an office politics situation blown out of proportion.

don’t worry fan, we’re just exercising the thumb while they thumb around our campus.

Bama knuckledraggers!! Can I use that phrase without paying a royalty to you?

In spite of
1. the assurances of Tuberville,
2. the faithful’s collective scream that ‘nothing happened that doesn’t happen at ALL colleges’
3. the congenital dislike between AU and Ala fans

this thing is NOT a conspiracy and it is not over. AU will definitely be reinvestigated for its scholastic credentialing, but unless this thing takes a life of its own the NCAA will probably not become involved. The NCAA infractions div is notoriously lazy and respond, like most DA’s, not to a need for justice, but fear of public opinion as spun by the media.
Dr G. isn’t a deep throat just a deep goat.

SJ, what NCAA infraction do you see here, or as you put so melodramatically, what here constitutes “a need for justice?” Most Auburn fans have been saying the whole time that the NCAA has nothing to do with this, but none of us are thrilled at the prospect of internal academic problems, even those of us (myself included) who never took a Sociology class at Auburn. Myles Brand is even quoted yesterday, in the sensationalist ass-rag* that produced the first article, as saying:

“That’s an institutional problem of some magnitude,” Brand said. “It’s not an athletics problem. It needs to be addressed on an institutional level.”

I really don’t buy the conspiracy charges, either, although it’s funny how Bammers knew about this article coming out before Auburn fans did.

*Please note that my contempt for the NYT stems not from this incident, nor previous articles about my alma mater- it’s the oral diarrhea of op-ed columnists such as Paul “The Keynesian Kocksucker” Krugman and Maureen “every bit of writing I do is saturated with the sorrow a little boy gets from watching his puupy getting beat to death” Dowd. The fact that you have to pay to read them online is laughable.

The reason they knew about the article is because wsj on Tider Inside(her as in their cousin)r is Warren St. John of the New York Times. And BTW, that’s not conjecture. He wrote a book last year called Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer and now posts on TI.

Does anybody have any stats on the Mississippi State Bulldogs’ team’s choice of majors? It seems like those guys are always majoring in “Poultry Science.” I guess it prepares them for the Egg Bowl.

Cool Hand Mike – run your theory by Clem Haskins. I think he would disagree, whilst weeping about his vacated 1997 Final Four run.

auburn fan,

I think Warren St. John writes for the Style section of the Times, not sports. And why would he need to be involved when Gundlach was on the record with Thamel, the Times reporter, who said on Finebaum’s show that he got his initial tip from an anonymous letter postmarked from Montgomery, AL. Gundlach said in an interview that he assumed that was sent by one of his colleagues, since he has been vocally criticizing Petee within the department for months. So Thamel gets the letter, calls Gundlach, and Gundlach says, more or less, sure I’ll talk to the New York Times. So at what point does Warren St. John — or anyone else — have to be involved? The conspiracy theory stuff is ridiculous. Take off your tin foil hat.