Comments about ‘Letter: BYU athletics’

I'm okay with this scenario. Education is a lot more important than sports. Yes, I love watching BYU sports. I will continue to support them. However, life is about much more than making it to the "last one standing". I can still appreciate the games without getting hung up in the national premise of "the last one standing in the sandbox wins".

Spoken like a true Ute fan.

The great thing is, BYU teams succeed in spite of the challenges! Both football and basketball teams have had greater success in the nearly 30 years since the letter writer's nostalgic comparisons.

Can these characters beat Bo Diddly Tech this year?

The Big-10 and Pac-12 conferences have very good academic records. Besides, it's not like athletes need stellar academic credentials to get in, they just need to be decent and heading for graduation. That's not a debilitatingly high standard.

"Very few top notch schools go to BCS bowl games."
47 different schools have been to BCS bowl games.

But you have a solid point - sports fans are frustrated because they want to count BCS and Final Four appearances. If BYU appeased fans by focusing on sports, then the school's true message would be lost.

@alt,

You're right, but the difference is byu cannot recruit the necessary "demographics" to have a decent football program. They get angry every time I bring it up, but as long as its true I'll keep brining it up.

BCS athletes and sunday school boys just don't equal.

Sounds like the letter writer is trying to set up a legitimate excuse for BYU NOT succeeding in the "money" sports.

First, BYU has had some incredibly great success in those sports and I would asked the writer or anyone else to produce evidence that the academic standards of today are vastly different from those standards of 20 years ago. And as far as the honor code, among the usual nonsense heard from those who think you can't have fun without decadent behavior, there were many who praised BYU's standards and the way it was handled on both sides in the Brandon Davies issue.

But let's not forget that school likes Duke and Notre Dame and several others have had high academic standards for years and have found a way to win despite - or is it because of - those standards.

@ECR,

Don't forget to include Stanford.

The premise of the article seems to be that athletes as a group are less intelligent. Chris B adds athletes as a group are not religious.

Steve Young has a law degree. Danny Ainge is executive director of the Celtics. Ever hear of Byron "Whizzer" White?

I never met an athlete at BYU or any other school that did not pray silently before entering a contest.

Athletes from BYU,Utah and any other school may find this article offensive.

People have always underestimated B.Y.U.It's nothing new. B.Y.U. has every opportunity to be very successful in sports and academics. It has been done before and will be done again.

The mission of the LDS church is not to win NCAA Championships. The mission of the LDS church is to teach the Gospel to the world. If rings are won along the way than that is the cherry on the whipping cream.

The BYU football team has a much lower average ACT score than the 27 the author mentions. It's absurd to even suggest otherwise. I think the Dnews did a story earlier this year comparing the academic requirements for athletes at both schools; and BTW, Utah graduates more football players.

The higher the average scores for incoming students at a particular school, the bigger the gap is with the athletes. Stanford's football players don't come remotely close to matching the test scores/gpa's of the average incoming Stanford student. Cal Berkley? Give me a break. And I am not comparing BYU to Stanford or Berkley, for those that like to do so, please just look it up. BYU incoming test scores don’t even belong in the same stratosphere of comparisons. That would be comparing Top 3 ranked universities in the world with a 400+ ranked college.

The academic thing for BYU is a non issue. All universities with above average incoming test scores have a big gap between those averages and the average of the football team. Average test scores do not equal minimum score for an athletic scholarship.