We know that the football team lost every single game they played but led C-USA in academic performance. I wanted to know if there is a correlation and if the UTEP coaches have been given orders to get grades up beyond what the NCAA requires. Would it explain the losses from the football team for years and an offensive line built to push and punish but had the force of a marshmallow being pushed by a pill bug. More importantly would it explain why both the football coach and the basketball team just up and gave up in the middle of the season. In the last post I looked at the basketball team.
This time I looked at the Senior Class of the UTEP football team. There were 20 players listed. Six of the 20 already had degrees. Five more had academic recognition in the bio’s. Sounds pretty impressive to me! But, maybe every team nowadays is like this. I don’t think so.
What I did go find out is how UTEP’s basketball team compared to a randomly picked fellow C-USA member’s team, the UTSA Roadrunners. They list 15 on the roster. I believe there are 5 members of the team that are academically recognized. UTEP has three students who already have earned degrees and 5 others are recognized for their academic performances.
Many would say that it seems like UTEP is doing the right thing and ask me why am I complaining. Let me be clear. I am a retired teacher. I value education. There is a good chance that I value it more than most. I am happy to recognize the academic accomplishments of the players. What I am not so good with is UTEP allowing the teams to be non-competitive because of it AND not even at least explaining that it is because the coaches are handicapped. It is kind of an honesty thing in a strange way. I know it sounds very odd for me to complain that the university is making the players get good grades. That isn’t my complaint. It is a matter of what the product is expected to be and it not being what it is expected to be.
The fans who shell out their money do so to watch a football team that are students at UTEP and are not paying to watch students at UTEP play football.