Class Attendance

[TU1NNJ]

Interesting conversation with a friend, his grandson played football at Memphis the past two years and at Marshall the two years before. He transferred to a CUSA school at semester to get playing time. I asked about how he was doing. His response was, “he is having to go to four classes in person this semester, almost all of his classes were online before”. I was surprised by this. I realize this was common during the epidemic but thought things were back to normal now. Are TU’s athletes in live classes or online?

 

[goldenhurricane2]

Live classes.

 

[TU_BLA]

Interesting conversation with a friend, his grandson played football at Memphis the past two years and at Marshall the two years before. He transferred to a CUSA school at semester to get playing time. I asked about how he was doing. His response was, “he is having to go to four classes in person this semester, almost all of his classes were online before”. I was surprised by this. I realize this was common during the epidemic but thought things were back to normal now. Are TU’s athletes in live classes or online?

It's probably a mix. Professors and other faculty actually like the online delivery for certain classes and as they've developed the curriculum to fit this mode of delivery, the class actually becomes more effective for both the professor and student. My son took an online only class in computer programming at TCC when he was still a HS Sr. Online learning doesn't work for everyone and it's not necessarily appropriate for every class or course of programs but I think the pandemic taught every school in the nation that you could offer some classes and even full programs via online delivery and possibly expand your student base.

Online classes also work well for athletes because you don't necessarily miss class when traveling for games and if it includes a video recorded lecture or lesson, you can go back as many times as you need.

 

[HuffyCane]

TU requires all faculty teaching in traditional classes to teach live. There are some limited exceptions if the teacher is ill or traveling on University business.

TU permits athletes to enroll in their online offerings but those course offerings are mostly limited to nursing and cybersecurity.

Athletes can enroll as transient students, typically over the summer, for certain online courses but those credits often have to go through the scrutiny of the clearinghouse.

In the case of football, they don’t miss class typically unless it’s a Friday road game. So we are talking about 4 or 5 missed classes at most, the faculty are notified in advance, and efforts are made to limit the impact of missed classes. When you consider that all other classes are mandatory, most non-athlete students miss more classes than your average football player.

Compare this to multiple current LSU athletes who have publicly stated they have never attended a single class in person and would transfer if they were forced to do so. You wonder if they are learning anything and if they are even doing the work. FSU was famously put on probation, in part, due to allegations volleyball players helped football players complete online tests in the computer lab, some sitting on their lap during the process.

Hope this helps.

 

[TU1NNJ]

TU requires all faculty teaching in traditional classes to teach live. There are some limited exceptions if the teacher is ill or traveling on University business.

TU permits athletes to enroll in their online offerings but those course offerings are mostly limited to nursing and cybersecurity.

Athletes can enroll as transient students, typically over the summer, for certain online courses but those credits often have to go through the scrutiny of the clearinghouse.

In the case of football, they don’t miss class typically unless it’s a Friday road game. So we are talking about 4 or 5 missed classes at most, the faculty are notified in advance, and efforts are made to limit the impact of missed classes. When you consider that all other classes are mandatory, most non-athlete students miss more classes than your average football player.

Compare this to multiple current LSU athletes who have publicly stated they have never attended a single class in person and would transfer if they were forced to do so. You wonder if they are learning anything and if they are even doing the work. FSU was famously put on probation, in part, due to allegations volleyball players helped football players complete online tests in the computer lab, some sitting on their lap during the process.

Hope this helps.

I just thought it was really interesting when he said his grandson had taken only a few courses live before this transfer. Just one more thing these players are missing about the college experience.

 

[TU_BLA]

I just thought it was really interesting when he said his grandson had taken only a few courses live before this transfer. Just one more thing these players are missing about the college experience.

Hell, my guess is the NCAA is not even going to try to keep up the facade that these are student athletes with everything that's going on. Yeah, you're going to have players who are in it for the college degree and I applaud them, but the farce of making them go to class and pass when we know there's a large number of these guys (nationally) that are only "enrolled" so they can play and make it to the NFL.

 

[goldenhurricane2]

I just thought it was really interesting when he said his grandson had taken only a few courses live before this transfer. Just one more thing these players are missing about the college experience.

With money involved, I don’t think they’re all that worried about the college experience.

 

[HuffyCane]

With money involved, I don’t think they’re all that worried about the college experience.

It’s like we talked about at the very beginning five years ago. A few kids will make a ridiculous amount, mostly for their off field personality, not their pro playing potential. And the regulators will clean up with $150,000 jobs but essentially be able to control nothing. The rest of the kids will get comparatively nothing. And after 10 to 15 years the facilities will fall into disrepair as donations go to overhead and not capital maintenance and improvement. The sport will collapse on itself without major reforms. The kids deserve to get paid but not at the expense of bankrupting the sport. As Mike Gundy just found out.

All of that said, yes, there’s a growing number of well documented cases of athletes earning $6 million or more per year, mostly young women. A gymnast clears that not counting her internationally recognized swimsuit modeling which is probably another $1 million. One exceptional case was a crypto payment that supposedly hit for just over $30 million for a men’s basketball player.

If you’ve got $20 million in the bank at age 21, you aren’t worried about college or the college experience if you are getting good advice and protecting yourself from yourself.

That said Landon Donovan recently gave an extended interview where he talked about the first time he ever let himself taste alcohol was when the USA beat Spain in one the biggest upsets in sports history. He took a couple of swigs from a champagne bottle because he felt he had to so the team would stay cohesive for the next game in the tournament. He had his first beer at a USA-Mexico game he watched from the stands a few weeks after he retired. He talked for awhile about how much of being a young man he missed and will never be able to revisit now that he is married with kids. He clearly has regrets despite being a generational talent.

 

[goldenhurricane2]

It’s like we talked about at the very beginning five years ago. A few kids will make a ridiculous amount, mostly for their off field personality, not their pro playing potential. And the regulators will clean up with $150,000 jobs but essentially be able to control nothing. The rest of the kids will get comparatively nothing. And after 10 to 15 years the facilities will fall into disrepair as donations go to overhead and not capital maintenance and improvement. The sport will collapse on itself without major reforms. The kids deserve to get paid but not at the expense of bankrupting the sport. As Mike Gundy just found out.

All of that said, yes, there’s a growing number of well documented cases of athletes earning $6 million or more per year, mostly young women. A gymnast clears that not counting her internationally recognized swimsuit modeling which is probably another $1 million. One exceptional case was a crypto payment that supposedly hit for just over $30 million for a men’s basketball player.

If you’ve got $20 million in the bank at age 21, you aren’t worried about college or the college experience if you are getting good advice and protecting yourself from yourself.

That said Landon Donovan recently gave an extended interview where he talked about the first time he ever let himself taste alcohol was when the USA beat Spain in one the biggest upsets in sports history. He took a couple of swigs from a champagne bottle because he felt he had to so the team would stay cohesive for the next game in the tournament. He had his first beer at a USA-Mexico game he watched from the stands a few weeks after he retired. He talked for awhile about how much of being a young man he missed and will never be able to revisit now that he is married with kids. He clearly has regrets despite being a generational talent.

We all make decisions in life that we think are the best for us at that time. Unfortunately the younger one is, the more likely said decision is to be misguided. Some of these guys have folks in their corner trying to help, but many who they think are helping them are really just ripping them off (hence agents openly loling about taking 20% of these college kids deals during interviews).

Now if the money is insanely good and sets up a kid from poverty to start the pathway to generational wealth, then I can’t blame him, but from what I’m seeing, while these kids are making decent amounts of money, they aren’t quite enough to set them up for the long haul… especially if they aren’t using said money wisely (like the pic saw yesterday on x where several guys had hundreds of boxes of shoes with the caption “NIL money just hit”).

At the end of the day, that money, even modest amounts is going to look really good to some of these guys who have come from generational poverty. Unfortunately, we’ll likely see it play out like we have with some guys in the NFL - where they blew all their money and can barely afford to live (the 30 for 30 on that is really interesting).

All that being said, I can’t hate on these kids for taking what would be (or what they think would be) life changing money. But I can damn well hate on the system that set all this up and is effectively ruining d1 sports and likely hurting these kids in the long run.

 

[TU_BLA]

The sport will collapse on itself without major reforms. The kids deserve to get paid but not at the expense of bankrupting the sport. As Mike Gundy just found out.

Did I miss something? What does this mean?

On Donovan, it almost sounds as though he regrets staying disciplined and being fit and ready for every match. I know that's not the same approach for all athletes but everyone chooses his own path. And that upset of Spain was in the Confederation Cup semis right? I remember that game...I think that was about when everyone thought the US could make some serious noise the next year in the WC

 

[HuffyCane]

They are slowly getting aggregated data on what kids are getting paid. Will be interesting to see the outcomes in two or three years.

 

[HuffyCane]

Did I miss something? What does this mean?

On Donovan, it almost sounds as though he regrets staying disciplined and being fit and ready for every match. I know that's not the same approach for all athletes but everyone chooses his own path. And that upset of Spain was in the Confederation Cup semis right? I remember that game...I think that was about when everyone thought the US could make some serious noise the next year in the WC

Correct on the Confed guess. It was a bigger upset than Douglas/Tyson at the time.

Spain had not lost a game in almost three years. The team the USA beat was widely considered at the time to be the best in international soccer history. And no team since has been as loaded.

The USA had lost previously and were eliminated but ended up advancing to play Spain after a miracle 3-0 victory over Egypt and Brazil beat Italy 3-0.

It wasn’t a fluke. We were up 2-0 at half against Brazil in the final before Brazil exploited the gap left by the absence of our captain who was given a straight red in the final minute of the 2-0 Spain win and was suspended. Brazil won the cup 3-2.

The Gundy reference is the fact that the school can’t pay him and the kids and maintain their facilities so he’s giving up $1 million in salary to buy players.

 

[TU_BLA]

It wasn’t a fluke. We were up 2-0 at half against Brazil in the final before Brazil exploited the gap left by the absence of our captain who was given a straight red in the final minute of the 2-0 Spain win and was suspended. Brazil won the cup 3-2.

I remember the US being up 2-0 on Brazil in the final as well. Just a crazy magical run for that group that got a lot of hopes up. WC didn't go quite as planned needing a miracle goal from Donovan vs Algeria to advance to the knockout stage. The draw vs England which was seen as a good result, a draw vs Slovenia which was not a good result, and the miracle vs Algeria. I was working at ORU at the time and my boss had a giant flat screen TV in his conference room and we basically scheduled a "meeting" to coincide with game time and just watched the game. When Donovan scored the room erupted and his admin came in and asked if we were OK 😆

I digress. NIL sucks and it's ruining college sports