SMU football misplaced
SMU President Gerald Turner seems determined to lower the academic standards of his university so as to ensure that the six-year contract just given to new coach Chad Morris will result in the successful rebuilding of the football program.
How else to understand his comment that “Morris can recruit on an even playing field regarding academic entrance requirements.” He added, “Looking at admission scores over the last four or five years, they [SMU’s] are very similar to what you would expect from an FBS school.”
And he also notes how hard the university has made changes “to help athletes get in school, and once there, providing academic support” in the form of “mentoring, tutoring, and literacy enhancement.”
Literacy enhancement, really? Is this the direction SMU should be moving, toward lowering academic standards so that normally unqualified athletes can just cross the minimum threshold even if they have to learn how to read once they are in college?
In that direction lie the disasters that have struck universities like UNC where academic support got way out of hand. Does Turner want to create the “culture of reverence” for football that got Penn State into so much trouble? SMU needs to rethink its priorities.
Sanford Thatcher, Frisco