For a number of my friends, this spring marks their last quarter at Ohio State. While many of them are planning their senior crawls and keggers, I’m left with just a twinge of I-wish-that-were-me jealousy.

Four years of college, one changed major and two school transfers produced a lot of fond memories, but along with those memories comes a bill for another full year of tuition, books, rent, and the beers that will surely follow.

What makes it even worse is the fact that the student-athletes here at Ohio State seem to be bucking the “dumb jock” stereotype.

I have about 10 hours left before I’ve fulfilled my university requirements for my journalism degree, but thanks to the aforementioned road blocks, I will be spending most of my fifth year taking general education classes.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m nowhere near the appropriate maturity level necessary to join the “real world” but it has become apparent that my method of selecting these general education classes has fallen into serious jeopardy.

This past winter, 44 Ohio State athletes were named to All Big Ten Academic teams for their respective sports, good enough for fourth best in the conference.

Even the joke that football players are just “dumb athletes” has taken a serious hit. Forty-nine football players on this year’s squad have a cumulative grade-point-average higher than and 3.0, 51 topped that mark last quarter, and the entire team’s combined GPA is slightly better than 2.8.

Seriously guys, knock it off.

My conversations with academic advisers used to go a little something like, “What foreign language are you interested in taking, Jim?”

To which my response was,” I don’t know, what language do most of the football players take?”

Swahili it is.

There used to be something calming about hearing a professor ask the class on the first day if there were as many football players as there were the previous quarter.


Avid college football fans – and all Ohio State fans - remember Anthony Gonzalez’s sweet back-breaking catch against Michigan last year that set up the Antonio Pittman touchdown and the dramatic, comeback win against that team up north, but there is more to “Gonzo” than just football.

This past winter quarter Gonzalez, who is majoring in philosophy, knocked out his fourth perfect quarter as a Buckeye.

“Any pressure I felt, I put it on myself,” he said. “I want to be a lawyer so I set my sights on getting a 4.0.”

I know, I thought the exact same thing you all are thinking right now: A Lawyer?

Gone are the days of football players taking first aid (great class by the way) and golf. In their place stand young men like Gonzalez and Craig Krenzel (remember the OSU quarterback who won the national championship in 2002?) who want to be lawyers and molecular bio-genetic chemists. (I think I just made that up, but it’s not that far off from Krenzel’s actual major.)

It gets better, or worse for those of us trying to skate through with the bear minimum. Coach Tressel isn’t satisfied.

He says his goal is to have a cumulative team GPA higher than a 3.0.

“Maintaining academics is what we believe in,” Tressel said following the opening of spring drills in April. “This is a great school with a great support system and our kids are working hard.”

I don’t know how I’ll decide which GECs to take from here on out but I’ve got to come up with something quick. Perhaps I should take classes that would help me in my career someday or that I have a sincere interest in.

Nah, that would be too sensible. I’ll probably just flip a coin or something.
 
Jim Field is just a little bitter that football players have a better GPA than he does. Tell him not to playa hate at james.field@atomicsportsmedia.com