<p>Hmmm . . . nice stereo-type painting all athletes as “dumb jocks”. Yes some sports and some schools are more notorious than others, i.e. the University of Colorado football team over the last few years. I hope the new rules imposed by the NCAA will help address this. If a school’s football team does not get a sufficient graduation rate then they will lose athletic scholarships in that sport making it harder to compete and generate revenue from a particular sport. Probably a very good thing for the schools on the top of the list linked earlier in this thread with high graduation rate, i.e. Duke, Stanford, and the Ivy league.</p>
<p>I think we hear more about any issues with the sports program because those students are public figures. When some other student has an issue it is not on the front page of the paper the next day. Regarding the special treatment, it really gets back to the revenue generated. The schools are doing what they can to enable the athletes to compete and compete at the highest level.</p>
<p>It does seem that the money generated by the schools is the corrupting component, not the athletics itself. If the other ECs were as publicly facing as some of the sports programs perhaps we would see more corner cutting in keeping a certain musician in school.</p>
<p>BTW, do we know what the graduation rate is for students who are in the other ECs? I suspect it is much higher than some of the more notorious basketball or football programs. However, there is no NCAA for theatre to get at this type of information.</p>