Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 6, 2001
Latest update: January 2, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org

This essay is based on a Los Angeles Times article: NCAA Graduation Rates: Success, to Some Degree By David Wharton, Times Staff Writer. Los Angeles Times. January 3, 2002 At p. S 2. "Hurricanes, Cornhuskers lag in the classroom, but some say that the numbers are misleading." backup

Sports and academics have been juxtaposed for as long as I can remember. There was a football player in my class in Topology in my senior year at Tulane. He was quiet, never said much, but then there were only five of us in the class, and three of us were part of an engineering, physics clique. Topology was new then, and we all had crammed senior and graduate schedules, so we didn't pay him much attention. Two weeks before the end of the semester he looked up, kind of surprised, and asked, in the presence of the visiting professor, "Isn't this a geography class?"

Honest. It really happened. And it's a perfect story for the old . . . .

Related References:

• The Olmec Ballplayers

  The Sport of Life and Death: The MesoAmerican Ballgame

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