UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen spoke truth to power in a Bleacher Report interview that was published this week.

“Look,” Rosen told Matt Hayes, “football and school don’t go together. They just don’t.”

He’s right. High-end athletics and school don’t mesh. Not easily, and not without major compromises along the way. Something always has to give.

It takes extraordinary commitment from an athlete, an academic support group, a coaching staff and oftentimes professors to make elite education and elite competition coexist. When that commitment isn’t present or an athlete is in over his or her head, corners can be cut. Majors are changed, academic fraud happens, transfers proliferate. Simply staying eligible becomes the goal.

Rosen’s stated truth will make school administrators uncomfortable, on both the academic and athletic sides of campus. It will flare up some fans and boosters who don’t like the youngsters pulling back the curtain on their autumn Saturdays. It will lead to a series of individual rebuttals from athletes who maxed out their college experience – exceptions to the rule – who competed at a high level while attaining a degree.

The question that rarely gets asked, is not factored into graduation rates, and is not part of any Academic Progress Rate equation, is this: In what area of study did you earn your degree? The one you wanted, or the one you accepted (or were steered toward) as a means of getting through school while still playing your sport? And how applicable is that degree in the real world?

The non-athletic universe is full of college students who change majors – their interests change, or they realize they weren’t good at what they originally intended to do, or whatever. The same rationale obviously can apply to athletes, as well. But there also are time demands, often tied to scholarship money, that force the hands of many student-athletes.

UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen (L) sparked a conversation when he said college football and school don’t go together. (Getty Images) More

It’s not a new issue. In fact, a decade ago, a coach at Stanford called out his alma mater, Michigan, for steering football players into easier majors than the general student population.

That coach? Jim Harbaugh, who presumably thinks Michigan is doing a better job in that area now.

Rosen comes at the issue from a player’s perspective, and his point resonates. He’s an Economics major at a prestigious academic institution (UCLA is tied for 24th in U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of American universities). In his third year of college and entering upper-level courses, where the academic demand intensifies, so do the conflicts with football.

“It’s cool because we’re learning more applicable stuff in my major [Economics] – not just the prerequisite stuff that’s designed to filter out people,” Rosen told Bleacher Report. “But football really dents my ability to take some classes that I need. There are a bunch of classes that are only offered one time. There was a class this spring I had to take, but there was a conflict with spring football, so … ”

So, when you’re the starting quarterback at UCLA, spring football wins. This is how it works.

Since Rosen is likely in the most important months of a multimillion-dollar job interview for the NFL, it makes sense for football to take priority over Econ classes right now. Theoretically, there will be time for book learning to become the priority later.

The myth is that both can be simultaneously accomplished in a sort of harmonic convergence. Not often in the hardest of majors.

“If I wanted to graduate in three years, I’d just get a sociology degree,” Rosen said. “I want to get my MBA. I want to create my own business.”

Make no mistake, schools sell the you-can-do-it-all experience in recruiting. Then athletes arrive and, after a year or two or three, start to figure out that what sounded doable on the official visit is harder than it appeared.

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