Re: Sheesh. Ask a legitimate question and get accused of being

Assuming things haven’t changed in the 10 years I’ve been out, freshman and sophomores who intend to obtain a degree in one of the business majors, such as accounting, finance, management, marketing etc., are listed as Pre-Business majors until they’ve completed their prerequisite coursework, which includes introductory coursework in accounting, finance, management, marketing, etc. Once completed, generally at the conclusion of sophomore year, these students then have to declare a specific business major, such as accounting.

I think I may also be able to shed some light on how many of our football players are able to graduate early. I attended a small rural high school and enrolled at clemson with zero college credits. Despite never taking a Maymester or summer course, I was able to graduate on time, but to your point I had a lot more time to devote to my studies than football players do. However, it’s becoming more and more common for freshman to enroll with a substantial amount of college credits. But most importantly, since football players are already staying on campus for summer workouts, they’re likely taking full courseloads during summer session. They probably take one or two Maymester courses as well. (Maymester classes meet numerous times per week for several hours at a time to basically cram an entire semester’s worth of coursework into a month).

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Re: Does anybody know anything about college athlete majors and

Feb 21, 2020, 9:28 AM

Couple of serious thoughts about the subject of a question that was obviously biased and badly intended.......

I have also been nervous about the number of our graduates who complete their college degrees in less than four full years. It took me 4.5 and I went to summer school twice. So how do our football players graduate so quickly? So I thought about the question.

I started a long time ago and I went to Clemson having completed zero advanced placement classes. When my own kids started school, all three of them had at least 15 hours of advanced placement credits that were recorded on their transcripts and counted toward completion of their degrees.

I had a lot of fun at Clemson often at the expense of academics. Like a great many of my non-scholarship athlete friends and classmates, I goofed off a lot for several years, more or less coasting through easy classes and dropping those classes that were hard and the ones where I only started to study the week before mid-terms. In short, I was a terrible student, as were many of my friends. The athletes that we recruit these days almost always have a work ethic way way beyond that of average Clemson students of my era. Today's athletes have an athletic support staff that 'assists' them in going to every class, that monitors their progress weekly, that lines up tutors for them the instant academic weakness is noticed. Athletes who play football were recruited by a head coach who insists they complete their degrees and exercise diligence in the classroom that matches what they display on the field. So the academic support offered to todays scholarship athletes vastly succeeds the level of support most Clemson students had when going to Clemson.

The era of the dumb jock stereotype seems to be fading. In the way back I knew and knew of a few jocks who were dumber than rocks. I'm sure that sort of player still exists, but Clemson has not had a player fail to qualify for a long time. We used to 'lose' several players a year before they even got into school. When I listen to ANY Clemson player being interviewed pre- or post-game, or watch any and every Clemson player with a role in any promotional program video, I am often very much pleasantly surprised at how they speak, what they say and how they come across. If you picked 10 players at random off our team and ten students at random from campus and did a TV interview, I'd bet on the jocks coming across better than the average student. Most of the jocks are well spoken. I worked 40 years for a large Charlotte based corporation and we hired more than a former Clemson football players. I never noticed that any of them were weak performers or out of their depth doing work that required a college degree. I think the jocks of today are, in general, as well prepared for college work as average students.

I am positive that every athlete playing football at Clemson today is remarkably more diligent about everything they do than the majority of students. Most bring a huge and well developed work ethic to life. They learned that work ethic in the gym, but I believe it carries over to life. Perhaps the OP was a highly developed, dedicated scholar who always worked hard on his studies. Most students are not like that. Most football players in our program ARE like that.

Finally, I think the large majority of athletes Clemson recruits to play football come out of high school planning to play professional sports. Most of them have been heading that way for at least 4 or 5 years before enrolling in college and most have had counselors in high school drilling it into their heads that they must get into college, must achieve decent grades and must score reasonably well on standardized test to become a pro athlete. When those same guys get to Clemson, many plan and expect to go pro 3 year after their senior year in high school. Those guys have academic assistance from the athletic department who show them exactly what they have to do to graduate in 3.5 years. They know they must take X number of hours for 6 straight semesters, they must attend two sessions of summer school every summer after the last year in high school. Most players now enter Clemson a semester earlier than was once common getting a semester for full time college at a time most non athletes are still in high school. Finally most players do not graduate in 3 years. Most redshirt a year and/or never play sports. Usually college sports makes it clear they are not going to be NFL players and so they end up graduating a bit later.

So those are my answers to the question of HOW the players do it. I've been out of school a long time and over the years I have grown to think that for many careers what you majored in might not be so important. I've know Clemson guys with RPA degrees who had great careers not remotely related to their field of study. Most of the corporate engineers I knew ended up doing management jobs not really engineering jobs. And the world is full of highly successful people with what would have once struck me as a 'weak' degree.

Well that's what I think.

Go Tigers!!

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This would be a fair question to Bubba at UNC.

Does anybody know anything about college athlete majors and

If you are somehow implying...

Re: If you are somehow implying...

Re: Does anybody know anything about college athlete majors and

Re: Does anybody know anything about college athlete majors and

Re: Does anybody know anything about college athlete majors and

Re: Does anybody know anything about college athlete majors and

Re: Does anybody know anything about college athlete majors and

Re: Does anybody know anything about college athlete majors and

Sheesh. Ask a legitimate question and get accused of being

Also, thanks to those who gave me a legitimate answer. ***