Has Auburn stepped in it?

From the New York Times.

A graphic popped up on James Gundlach’s television during an Auburn football game in the fall of 2004, and he could not believe his eyes.

One of the university’s prominent football players was being honored as a scholar athlete for his work as a sociology major. Professor Gundlach, the director of the Auburn sociology department, had never had the player in class. He asked the two other full-time sociology professors about the player, and they could not recall having had him either.

So Professor Gundlach looked at the player’s academic files, which led him to the discovery that many Auburn athletes were receiving high grades from the same professor for sociology and criminology courses that required no attendance and little work.

Eighteen members of the 2004 Auburn football team, which went undefeated and finished No. 2 in the nation, took a combined 97 hours of the courses during their careers. The offerings resemble independent study and include core subjects like statistics, theory and methods, which normally require class instruction.

Uh oh.

As a graduate of the University of Alabama, I can't help but slightly enjoy the Tiger's new time in the spotlight a bit, but at the same time I recognize that this is not good for the state of Alabama. To have one of our two major universities riddled with the reputation as a "football factory" would certainly be a blow to the state.

Why? Well, Auburn (and Alabama) have both been ranked in the US News and World Report Top 50 Public Universities the last few years. But if some of the statistics used to obtain that rank (after reading the article, I would like to ask Carnell Williams the definition of "statistics", by the way) were skewed by a criminal justice professor teaching all manner of "independent study" classes to keep folks eligible for football season, what does it really mean?

Nothing.

It will be interesting to see how the Auburn administration handles this. Will they continue the insular, deflective, and micromanaged policies that brought Bobby Lowder under question by ESPN, or will they meet this problem head-on and fire who needs to be fired, suspend who needs to be suspended, and take real action to ensure that people don't laugh at the word "University" when it comes after the word "Auburn".