The Auburn football team’s performance in the N.C.A.A.’s new rankings of student athletes’ academic progress surprised many educators on and off campus. The team had the highest ranking of any Division I-A public university among college football’s six major conferences. Over all among Division I-A football programs, Auburn trailed only Stanford, Navy and Boston College and finished just ahead of Duke.
Among those caught off guard by Auburn’s performance was Gordon Gee, the chancellor of Vanderbilt, a fellow university in the Southeastern Conference and the only private institution. Vanderbilt had an 88 percent graduation rate in 2004, compared with Auburn’s 48 percent, yet finished well behind Auburn in the new N.C.A.A. rankings.
“It was a little surprising because our graduation rates are so much higher,” Mr. Gee said. “I’m not quite certain I understood that.”
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The sociology department became “a dumping ground for athletes,” according to one sociology professor, Paul Starr. That did not bother Professor Gundlach as much as what he viewed as the university administration’s apathy toward Professor Petee’s academic approach.
Professor Gundlach took the case to John Heilman, a university administrator who would soon become Auburn’s provost. He included paperwork showing that Professor Petee taught more than 250 students individually during the 2004-5 academic year. He also provided Mr. Heilman with examples of how prominent athletes had cut academic corners.
“It was at that point that I figured the corruption runs the full gantlet of the administration,” Professor Gundlach said. “We were getting sociology majors graduating without taking sociology classes. I’m a director of a program putting out people who I know more than likely don’t deserve a degree.”
After Professor Gundlach turned over many of his findings to The New York Times and a reporter began questioning administrators two months ago, the provost’s office began an investigation. Mr. Heilman said today in a prepared statement that the investigation began on June 5 after an anonymous complaint was submitted.
In a separate statement today, Edward Richardson, Auburn’s interim president, said, “I want to assure everyone associated with Auburn that upon completion of the investigation we will deal with this issue as we have dealt with other challenges –— directly and openly.”
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The Auburn football team appeared to be the biggest benefactor of Professor Petee’s directed-reading offerings.
The 18 football players received an average G.P.A. of 3.31 in the classes, according to statistics compiled by Professor Gundlach. In all of their other credit hours at Auburn, their average was 2.14.
“He’s the kind of teacher that, you know, he wants to help you out, not just pile a lot of stuff on you,” said Carlos Rogers, a former sociology major and defensive back who left the university early and now plays in the N.F.L. for the Washington Redskins.
Mr. Williams said one of the two directed-reading courses he took with Professor Petee during the spring of 2005 was a statistics class.
Asked if that course, considered the most difficult in the sociology major, was available to regular students as a directed reading, Professor Petee said, “No, not usually.”
Mr. Williams described the class this way: “You’re just studying different kinds of math. It’s one of those things where you write a report about the different theories and things like that.”
He said that Virgil Starks, the director of Student Athlete Support Services at Auburn, set up the courses. Mr. Starks said scheduling was not his responsibility but that of the dean’s office. Mr. Williams said he appreciated the convenience of the two courses, because he was traveling around the country auditioning for N.F.L. teams at the time.
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The academic journey of the former Auburn defensive end Doug Langenfeld illustrates how Professor Petee and the athletic department helped athletes remain eligible.
When Mr. Langenfeld arrived at Auburn in 2003 from a junior college in California, he wanted to major in nursing. To do so would have required him to take a heavy load of 21 credits his first semester. Instead, he said, Mr. Starks suggested he major in sociology. Mr. Langenfeld asked for advice from Mr. Williams, who claimed that the major was “easy if you studied.”
In the fall of 2004, Mr. Langenfeld found himself in an academic bind. More than two months into the fall semester, he realized that he had been attending the wrong class because of a scheduling error. Mr. Langenfeld approached Professor Gundlach about adding a class, but Professor Gundlach said he could not help him because it was too late in the semester.
Mr. Langenfeld then went to his academic counselor in the athletic department, Brett Wohlers, with a plea: “I got dropped from a class and need a class to stay eligible for the bowl game,” Mr. Langenfeld recalled in a recent telephone interview. “I need a class, and I’ll take any class right now. I don’t not want to play in my last bowl game.”
He said Mr. Wohlers told him about a “one-assignment class” that other players had taken and enjoyed. So in the “9th or 10th week,” Mr. Langenfeld said, he picked up a directed-reading course with Professor Petee. Semesters typically run 15 weeks.
Mr. Langenfeld said he had to read one book, but he could not recall the title. He said he was required to hand in a 10-page paper on the book. Between picking up the class and handing in the paper, he said, he met several times with Professor Petee in his office.
“I got a B in the class,” said Mr. Langenfeld, who started in the Sugar Bowl against Virginia Tech. “That was a good choice for me.”
I mean nevermind that Auburn was trying to sit on this until another Auburn professor blew the whistle to the NY Times and forced Auburn to start ass-covering investigating thanks to “an anonymous tip.” Actually, the fighting among professors is further evidence to the Auburn faithful that this is not a real scandal (not that most of it wasn’t predictable once the story broke).
$20 bucks says the NCAA ends up doing minimal sanctions.
