BACK TO ACADEMICS

I, for one, am happy that, aside for thousands of televised replays, college football is over for a couple of months; that is, until Spring practice.

I'm happy, because student-athletes can return to their primary occupation, scholarship. That's correct, isn't it? After all, it's not "athlete-student."

Yes, thousands of highly-paid - I mean tuition, room and board, books, etc.; not one would accept a penny, a gift, or any sort of preferment under the table - college football players will resume the challenges of mastering such recondite disciplines as Playground Managememt, Psychology of Agent-Player Relationships, Architectural Tinker Toys, Black Studies, Athletic Studies, Shoelace-Tying, and English for the Hopelessly Illiterate.

This is the whole idea of athletic scholarships, I'm told; that the poor and deprived can obtain "college educations." From my own observations that must mean loitering around student unions and leering at girls, but that's the stock rationale for importing thugs from the other side of the country to represent the beloved alma mater on the fields of honor. Ask how many of them EVER get degrees.

Congratulations to Alabama, World College Champions once again. A couple of years ago the NCAA called Alabama the worst in terms of obeying its regulations and said it has "an abysmal record of compliance." This outfit has been in hot water more often than a dishwasher's hands, so one can be certain that although not under the NCAA's light-pressure thumb at the moment, the school has never stopped cheating. That, though, is college athletics, right?