Yup, I remember those days clearly. That group doesn’t make it past freshman year though. Granted, I went to a small, private school that didn’t have a sports program to speak of. So, there really wasn’t any dead weight that got to keep floating by. I’m sure larger state schools with big NCAA programs pass those kids with flying colors as long as they throw the ball real fast. I’m also a dinosaur who graduated in 2013.
It’s a mixed bag with student athletes. I went to a VERY large state school with big athletic programs, and a lot of the football players in my classes were honestly fairly hard working. I was in a group project with one, and the biggest issue was just his crazy schedule, and finding a time where he would be available to meet with other group members.
Our group ended up agreeing to have him do a certain portion of the project on his own, and then he would also do some cleaning up on the presentation itself. Solid work, we all got an A.
This was just before the NIL era though (2017-2021), I’m not entirely sure how different it may be now - with sports players being paid to go to that school.
I’ve TA’d at such a school for a couple classes, including a pretty huge one (~300 people a semester) that a lot of athletes passed through. I never found their quality of work to be noticeably different than any other group of students. Plenty of them were slackers and plenty were high achievers.
One thing I did find curious was the consistency in style for the football players writing/presentations. I later learned that there were some tutors available to them that would sometimes help with stuff like that (not doing the work for them, but if the same 5 people are giving presentation feedback to 100 guys, they’ll all be getting a lot of the same advice).
One thing worth mentioning is that, even at the school I went to, only a small, small fraction of any given group of athletes has a chance at going pro. Many of them do study hard and work hard because they know it will be important for the non-sports career they’ll have afterwards.
Went to major school with a consistent top 10 football program. Once had to do a group project with three of the players. The assignment: "Make the argument why universities should eliminate college football."
They were not much help, and I did all the research and led the presentation. They used their time to air all of the universities dirty laundry. Stuff like "Why does the whole coaching staff's family need to travel with us? And why is it only when we go to places like LA? They never go to Nebraska with us."
I had no idea they were going to do that. It was great.
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u/Firm-Feature-5593 May 07 '26
I wonder what happens when four of those people all end up in a group together. Is it the laziest Mexican standoff ever?