From ESPN:

A report commissioned by the University of North Carolina says school academic advisers steered athletes into sham classes over an 18-year period but does not directly implicate coaches or athletic administrators in the scheme. The report, released Wednesday, says academic advisers in North Carolina’s athletic department colluded with a manager in the African and Afro-American Studies department for student-athletes to take classes to boost their GPAs and keep them eligible in their respective sports.

Here’s a question I’ve never seen asked: What percentage of African-American Studies professors in the United States have their jobs because white Republican boosters of college football and/or basketball teams demand victories from their alma maters’ administrations?

I don’t know the answer, but it seems like an interesting question. (I’ll leave it up to you to fill in the chain of logic for why this would be so.)

At Rice U., there used to be a jock-only major called Commerce. But, in a bout of post-Sixties idealism, the professors revolted and made Rice get rid of the phony, non-academic Commerce major. During my four years at Rice in the late 1970s, the football team won 7 games and lost 37. Cause and effect?

But what if instead of Commerce, jocks were channelled into, say, African-American Studies? What kind of vicious racist hater would complain about the academic worthiness of African-American Studies?