It's pretty sad that you can't stay eligible at a community college
Can't help but think of that Showtime show last year and how they pull their players out of classes before every road game so they can do all their schoolwork with the team and special "tutors" brought along for these road trips. No way in **** that stuff is aboveboard. Guarantee someone is doing their work for them if needed.
I am not going to defend F$U, but I want to point out something very important. Ever since the rise of weeknight games, I have been VERY against these mid-week games. Even Saturday noon games are tough, you absolutely have to travel on Friday, at least. When I went to UM, we never had Friday classes past 1 pm, I'm not sure if every college has something similar.
I do have a bit of empathy for the football players, who must travel (approximately) half of the weekends in the fall semester (or even mid-week travel, which is worse).
The real key in all of this is the control over the tutors. I was an Athletic Department tutor when I was at UM, working under Dr. Anna Price, and I never did any classwork for any athlete. Fortunately, Dr. Price was an amazing mentor to a lot of the players, and she would have known if, all of a sudden, a particular player who had struggled previously was banking all As and Bs on assignments and class grades.
Sadly, with all of my observations of F$U fans, I know there is a kiss-athlete-**** culture in Tallahassee. You see it in every aspect of that town, and you hear about it CONSTANTLY from any F$U-FAMU students who are not F$U-kool-aid-drinkers. Even from what has been ESTABLISHED in the past (tons of F$U athletes taking easy coursework where they were able to cheat off of one another), it is fairly clear that there are many enablers working within F$U's Athletic Department, and don't even get me started on how their Athletic Department handles "criminal matters".
Bottom line is that the "missing class" and the "tutors", generally, are just a part of modern college football. How F$U handles these issues, SPECIFICALLY, though, could very likely be fertile ground for "helping" players remain academically eligible.
When UM had a rogue employee helping students fill out FAFs so that they could get Pell Grants, we fired him and we have NEVER had a recurrence of that problem. But the F$U academic issues have been there for a while, and while they always ACT LIKE the wrongdoing at F$U is "rogue", it just moves around and takes on a new shape.
It will not change until they get a University president who gets rid of garbage/jokey majors, and who establishes control from the top on issues of academic support. That's just not an issue that "Jimbo" should have any control over. But re-read those F$U posters, they honestly think that Jimbo should be able to "change a grade" to make a player eligible for the "big game".
