[Husker] Pelini's Contract (fwd)

[Mike Nolan]

> This is still the tail wagging the dog.  In which other departments
> at UNL are employees getting $125K/year salary incentives for the
> academic success of their students?  An outstanding math or chem
> teacher?  If academics is the dog and football is the tail, which
> is the real priority?  In this, it's football.
> (Care to compare the budgets for athletics and engineering or the
> salary costs for football and physics?  I think I don't really want
> to know.)

Apples and oranges, Steve.  Beyond the occasional (and largely token)
teaching award, colleges don't reward faculty for their undergraduate 
(or even graduate) teaching prowess, they're rewarded for their ability 
to publish or get outside grants.

It may not be as true at UNL as it once was, but freshman year class
schedules at most large schools tend to be loaded up with 'flunk out' 
courses, designed to winnow down the size of each year's freshman class.  
These trip up the students who don't apply themselves to their studies.
(In most cases it isn't that these students can't succeed in college,
it's that they don't really try to.)

Of the scholarship athletes I've known, most were far more likely to
focus on the task at hand while they're in college than their non-athlete
counterparts, in the classroon as well as in their sport, and these are
attitudes and skills that tend to carry over into their post-college years.
(If I had two equally qualified applicants for a job and one was a former
scholarship athlete, I'd have a strong tendency to lean towards hiring 
that person over the other one.)

The Athletic Department does value graduation rates, in large measure
because the NCAA requires them to, and even tighter requirements are
on the horizon, with scholarship cuts if they don't meet designated levels.  
It's also true that schools want their student-athletes to stay eligible 
for athletics.  I don't find it at all surprising that Bo has some 
incentives based on academic performance.
--
Mike Nolan