P*****t
发帖数: 4978 | 1 密歇根也被点名了。
PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. — In the aftermath of a football academic scandal at
Auburn in 2006 that caused two department heads to step down and the N.C.A.
A. to investigate, university officials are no longer bragging — or even
talking — about the team’s once-stellar scholastic record.
Auburn’s top-ranked football team, which is preparing to play Oregon in
Glendale, Ariz., for the national title on Monday, has tumbled in the N.C.A.
A.’s most important academic measurement to No. 85 from No. 4 among the 120
major college football programs.
The decline came after the university closed several academic loopholes
following a New York Times article in 2006 that showed numerous football
players padded their grade-point averages and remained eligible through
independent-study-style courses that required little or no work. Auburn has
earned a certain sort of praise from those who were its toughest critics in
2006.
“Auburn was in a rogue position and they corrected it,” said Gordon Gee,
who in 2006, when he was Vanderbilt’s chancellor, was stunned that Auburn
was ranked higher than his university. Gee is now president of Ohio State.
“When those loopholes are closed and the issue is dramatically different,
it shows that the loophole was being used. I applaud Auburn. They really did
make a concerted effort to curb those abuses. We should applaud them even
if they dropped 80 points.”
Auburn’s drop in the Academic Progress Rate, a four-year assessment of the
movement toward graduation for a team’s players, is the third largest in
college football since 2006, behind Mississippi’s (to 113 from 18) and
Florida State’s (to 105 from 17). Since 2006, both Florida State and
Michigan have endured academic scandals, with Michigan’s ranking falling to
84 from 27.
Among all the bowl teams this season, Auburn has the highest disparity in
the graduation rates between white players (100 percent) and black players (
49 percent), according to a study at the Institute for Diversity and Ethics
in Sport at the University of Central Florida.
Jim Gundlach, the Auburn sociology professor who uncovered the academic
abuse, saw the decline in the team’s ranking as progress. “A genuine
consequence to this has been that the people who want to do things right
have gotten a bit more grasp over what the university is trying to do,” he
said.
Auburn’s athletic director, Jay Jacobs, declined to comment. The Tigers’
second-year football coach, Gene Chizik, said of his team’s academic
performance and support, “We do a great job, so we’re not concerned with
that.” When pressed on the issue of graduating black players, Chizik said,
“Those are circumstances; there’s all kinds of different things.”
In 2006, Auburn football was No. 1 among public universities in the academic
ranking, alongside private institutions like Duke and Boston College. But
some irregularities had caught Gundlach’s attention two years earlier.
He saw on television that an academic football player of the week was an
Auburn sociology major, yet Gundlach was surprised that he had never had him
in class. He asked two other sociology professors, who also did not recall
having him as their student. Gundlach dug through records and soon found
that Auburn football players were graduating as sociology majors without
taking sociology courses in the classroom.
He found that 18 players on Auburn’s undefeated 2004 team had taken 97
directed-reading course hours — independent study-style classes — from
Thomas Petee, the sociology department’s highest-ranking member. Petee
taught 252 independent studies in one academic year, 2004-5, astounding
Auburn faculty members, who said that overseeing 10 independent studies
would be considered ambitious.
In investigating the situation, the university found that another professor,
James Witte, had taught an inordinate number of directed-reading classes.
The investigation did not find fault in the athletic department because the
courses were available to and taken by all students.
The N.C.A.A. investigation yielded secondary violations. Witte, the program
coordinator for adult education, and Petee stepped down as department
chairmen, and Petee was later forced to stop teaching after an audit
revealed that he had changed grades without the approval of professors.
Petee did not respond to a request seeking comment, and a woman who answered
the telephone at his house said that he was not available. Petee’s lawyer
also declined to comment. Witte did not return a call or respond to an e-
mail seeking comment.
Another factor in Auburn’s precipitous drop was the university’s decision
to hire Chizik to replace Tommy Tuberville as the football coach two years
ago. Kevin Lennon, the N.C.A.A. vice president for membership services, said
that rankings can dip after coaching changes because of the number of
players who transfer.
But Thomas S. Paskus, the N.C.A.A.’s principal research scientist, said
that a drop as large as Auburn’s was irregular.
“It’s unlikely that a change of that nature would be part of normal
fluctuation,” he said. “These numbers do fluctuate, and football is a very
large sport. There’s a lot of factors that could be involved, and whether
this was due to one of those factors is difficult to tell.”
Another factor in the Auburn case was the sudden death of Virgil Starks, the
senior associate athletic director for student athlete support. He died of
cardiac arrest while driving home from an Auburn football game in 2008.
“I don’t know if the falling in the ratings as precipitously as it did
there has anything to do with Virgil’s passing from the scene; he certainly
did an excellent job there,” said the former Auburn president William Muse
, who recruited Starks. “I’m disappointed to hear that the rankings are as
low as they are.”
The senior linebacker Josh Bynes said he did not know what impact Starks’s
death had on the program. Bynes, who is black, appeared more bothered by the
graduation-rate disparity between black and white players than in the
plunging numbers in the Academic Progress Rate. When asked for reasons,
Bynes began to answer.
“Maybe because it’s — never mind,” said Bynes, who graduated in December
. “I don’t want to say nothing.”
The senior offensive lineman Mike Berry, who also graduated, cited
sociological reasons for the disparity. “School systems coming out of high
school and stuff like that,” he said.
He added: “It’s one of those things; we put an emphasis on not getting
around things. You’re not going to be able to do that in the real world.”
As for Gundlach, his fate was not uncommon for a whistle-blower. He left the
university two years ago because of what he called “an ongoing sense of
discomfort” after his revelations. He received dozens of hate calls and
letters from Auburn fans. Although the university was unable to dismiss the
tenured Petee — he is now a consultant for Auburn University at Montgomery
— Gundlach said he was proud of exposing the academic fraud.
“The things that I did in the process of going out was one of the best
things I’ve ever done for Auburn,” he said. “In the long run, it will
eventually do more.”
When asked about the decline in the Academic Progress Rate, he chuckled and
said, “I consider that the Gundlach effect.” | C******y
发帖数: 2007 | 2 偶在auburn的时候记得07 fall那个学期department of athlete 查得特别严，那时候
班上有个football队的和几个垒球队的小姑娘，dept. of athlete的小姑娘每节课下课
都要找偶来登记这几个运动员的出勤情况。转过年来spring semester班上还是有运动
员，但是就再没人登记出勤了。 | W********s
发帖数: 2256 | 3 这个记者大概和奥本有仇，也可能因为他和市长的关系好，这些旧闻拿出来炒冷饭。 |
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