Independence Bowl on December 16th question.
- Thread starter bradcyclone
- Start date
I’ll never forget overhearing one of my professors telling a scholarship freshman who was applying to graphic design program that she’d have to pick volleyball or graphic design. The girl was kind of crying over it. I hope she kept the scholarship and just found some other path to a degree. The prof was not the sports friendly type.
Made me wonder what majors were athlete friendly, it’s not like we were curing cancer with what we were learning. The professor had a point though. We had 8am studio 3x a week every semester and if you missed 5 your best grade was a C if you scored perfect on every project, miss 6 and you’d certainly fail. Wouldn’t be fair to allow more absences for athletes.
Good question; I also wonder if it might be more of an issue of having professors who are athlete friendly as opposed to majors. My father was a (now retired) professor of sociology at Iowa State who had his fair share of student-athletes come through his classes, including such names as Jackson Vroman and Reggie Hayward (Hayward actually told my dad that his class was his favorite one at ISU). He was a good professor; not necessarily easy, but also fair. He was always willing to work with athletes due to missed class time because of road games, etc. It probably also helped that my dad was a big sports fan as well; I grew up going to games at Hilton with our family having season tickets. He got to know some of the coaching staffs somewhat well (most notably Wayne Morgan and his staff, see Jackson Vroman above) and had some good stories from time to time. As a kid I remember once upon a time Elmer Robinson coming over to our house for dinner.
What I was told during my time at ISU: 1) a professor is not required to excuse you from anything or reschedule tests. They can require you to be there or fail. 2) Everyone is aware that doing so would NOT be a shrewd career move.
If that’s ISU’s best bowl option, they will absolutely make it work.
If that’s ISU’s best bowl option, they will absolutely make it work.
There are staff at the university that specifically work with athletes and professors to ensure traveling athletes stay on top of coursework and exams. These staff will proctor exams from Shreveport or whatever. Even professors that don't like athletics work with these staff because they can escalate issues to deans or administrators to make sure student-athletes get fair accommodations.
Works for football and volleyball, kind of.
But doesn't work at all for basketball & wrestling.
I remember a Physics instructor in college. He walks in, states how many students are in the class, and blurts out due to size of class I only give “x” number of A’s. And finishes it off with, I have yet to ever give an athlete an A.
I was on the track team - and I actually got his final A (96.7%). Hate math, but man did I get into Physics.
I did not realize how much that guy HATED athletics, until his son read a note at my Hall of Fame induction, very humbling.
I was on the track team - and I actually got his final A (96.7%). Hate math, but man did I get into Physics.
I did not realize how much that guy HATED athletics, until his son read a note at my Hall of Fame induction, very humbling.
I knew athletes at ISU who had to deal with profs who resented them being there. To a point where the athlete was made to feel singled out for being there. I never understood that. Scholarship athletes work harder in their time at school than anybody else on campus. They may not all care about the academic side of things, but most of them do.
The Independence Bowl is in the "After Dark" window on the very first day of bowl games. It would kick off after 9:00 PM Central but at least it's a Saturday.
FWIW I saw Cael Sanderson’s exams by chance a few times in a class (the professor just laid them on his desk for us to pick up) and he did very well in a challenging class.
As a retired college prof, I can say that we (faculty) worked very fairly with athletes. Their coaches told them what they had to do, especially when they were going to miss class. We had some sports (volleyball for example) in which the athletes faired far better than others (football) due to their overall dedication to being STUDENT athletes. As for the prof who told the athlete they had to choose between the sport or the major...that would often be considered tough love and a hard dose of reality. But I would also let the athlete know if they give it a go we would treat them fairly. I remember my dad talking about Delmer Diercks who was the center on the men's bball team back in the early 50's. He happened to be in vet med and a prof told the class...we won't do him any favors, but we will work hard to make sure he gets the material he missed. The only time my students HAD to choose between sport and academics was the semester they student taught.
Drove to the Indy in college but if thats our destination I'm considering flying to Dallas for a couple days and then just driving over for the game.
BVD excepted it. We would accept, but we won’t go that know.
