<p>You say you don’t want to start a debate – and then dispute virtually everything I said. I’ll just say this. I have intimate experience with the football programs at Notre Dame and Stanford. I’m not just chit-chatting with “friends and relatives affiliated with” the schools. And not one thing you have said about the football program at Notre Dame is accurate. The idea that those players are morons (or kids who have “little business attending a major university” as you colorfully put it) is both offensive and wrong. So is the notion that they are “spoon-fed” their academics. I can’t conceive of where that idea came from, because it didn’t come from the reality at the school. And, by the way, both Duke and Northwestern have easy jock majors and classes for their football players (something Notre Dame does not) – and each has a dedicated tutoring staff that is the equal of anything at ND and Stanford.</p>