Government saga exposes UT

The president and head football coach of the University of Tennessee, attempting to head off a shutdown of state government, inadvertently exposed the big lie UT has been telling and confirmed the truth of English professor Linda Bensel-Meyers' 1999 allegations.

John Shumaker and Phillip Fulmer appealed to legislators to provide the revenue needed to keep state government and UT operating through the new fiscal year, which began today.

Shutting down state government "puts in jeopardy the UT football season," Shumaker said. "We have summer school athletes for football enrolled in classes they need to complete for eligibility purposes."

The NCAA requires athletes to pass 24 hours of credit per year in order to be eligible. Eighteen of those must be earned in the fall and spring terms; the other six can be earned in the summer.

Fulmer won't say, but it's estimated that anywhere from four to perhaps 15 key Vol football players need summer credits to be eligible for the 2002 season.

Shumaker said "there are NCAA issues that we can't get around" if UT-Knoxville shuts down and there is no second summer term.

The 39 athlete transcripts provided by Bensel-Meyers in 1999 to me and ESPN reporter Tom Farray are replete with examples of players taking summer courses to maintain their eligibility. They show that 35 of the 39 athletes took 89 courses in the summer of 1999. Among the more popular summer courses were Political Science 493, and certain geology, sociology and phys-ed crips such as tennis, racquetball and weight training.

All football starters were among the 39. Names and other personal information were deleted to protect the players' identities.

The transcripts show a clear pattern of grade changes and steering players toward easy courses to keep them eligible. Part of the scheme included having athletes attend summer school to be eligible for the football season.

Forget the hundreds of regular students whose job offers were predicated on completing their degree work this summer. Nobody was appealing on their behalf. Obviously they're not as important as the Vol football program.

The moment of truth has arrived, and it is ugly. The driving force at UT-Knoxville is football. It certainly isn't education.

Kramer