Special Report on Oklahoma State Football: Part 2 - - The Academics. The story has been amended to reflect two corrections. Shortly after Les Miles took over as Oklahoma State's football coach in December 2.
Herschel Sims the 5'10' running back from Abilene, Texas committed in April to play for the Oklahoma State Cowboys next season. Sims is one of the most. Sims is fast but what makes him special according to his football coach at Abilene is that he is as fast in a football uniform as he is in track shorts and spikes.
Stillwater. The reality is that when jobs and money are at stake, priorities quickly skew. Players said that they routinely had their coursework completed by tutors or university staff members, that they were provided with answers to exams before taking them, and that they received passing grades despite doing little or no work. Players also allege that the academic counselor for football scheduled them in classes with exceptionally lax professors and pigeonholed them into majors without consulting them. That's the only thing it was about. So, no, he didn't promote academics. That is an especially disheartening revelation given Oklahoma State's history.
In 1. 98. 9, Dexter Manley, then an NFL defensive end, disclosed that he had not been able to read above a second- grade level for most of his life, although he had played four seasons for the Cowboys. His confession stirred a national discussion about how schools keep athletes eligible. It also dishonored the university, even if John Campbell, the school's president at the time of the revelation, wasn't chastened.
So maybe we did him a favor by letting him go through the program. But if you were one of those people that they know is not going to do the work, .
There is no disputing Bryant's on- field accomplishments as a sophomore - - he was second in the nation with 1. There's no way he could do the college work. Inside the program it was known that a player's grade point average and the classes he completed often testified only to the duplicity employed to keep him on the field. Minor (2. 00. 5 and '0. Marcus Richardson (2. Herschel Sims (2. Artrell Woods (2.
Thomas Wright (2. SI that they had work done for them and/or that they received other improper academic assistance. They and a dozen other players say they witnessed teammates participating in academic misconduct. Among those they named: running back Tatum Bell (2. Prentiss Elliott (2.
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Josh Fields (2. 00. Vernon Grant (2. 00. Darrent Williams (2. Kevin Williams (1. Bell, Elliott, Fields and Kevin Williams deny ever having work done for them while at OSU. I didn't go there to go to school.
Other players did most of their own work but used tutors and others to get improper help in a single discipline in which they struggled. Richardson says he enjoyed writing papers but that he had difficulty with math, so tutors completed those assignments for him. I never really learned how to write a paper, but I had to pull a B in Comp I, and I pulled my B in Comp I. During his freshman year, Carter says a teammate introduced him to Ronald Keys, an assistant professor assigned to the library. Keys began working in the library in 1. April 1. 99. 8 until February 2.
Carter says that he and several other players would visit Keys in the library, drop off their assignments and return a few days later to pick up the finished work. Carter says that this went on through his senior season, and that during his four years in Stillwater he estimated that 1. Keys. Massey says Keys also did work for him and others. His name was infamous. Currently the football team's senior academic counselor, he was hired as an academic adviser in July 2.
Miles took over - - and a year before he received a master's degree in human relations from Oklahoma. Despite never having worked in academia, he was immediately assigned to the football program. Among the 6. 5 football programs in BCS conferences in 2. His bio on the university's website says that he also handles .
It was high stress for him. Carter, wide receiver Eric Allen, and defensive backs Ricky Coxeff and Daniel Mc. Lemore say there were players on the team between 2. Coxeff recalls a 2.
Miles asked one of the Cowboys to write house on a chalkboard. How can someone who can't spell come to a major college?
He also questions how a player would know if one of his teammates was illiterate. He does sometimes determine which players are unlikely to survive at OSU, saying those Cowboys will . I'll go to the coaches and say, 'Look, we have a potential issue here. Now, why would I then go throw that individual into college algebra, biology? Those who remained beyond their sophomore year found themselves boxed into a major because of the courses Henley steered them toward - - a charge to which Henley denies. I'm just taking the classes they give me.'?
Carter arrived in Stillwater shortly after Henley was hired, and he says they never had a discussion about his major. He just took the courses Henley advised him to take and ended up majoring in sociology. What are you going to do with a sociology degree? Now a guy may have wanted to be a business major, but he can't get through a math class. That's a big reason why we don't initially declare a major for a player.?. I'd love to tell every single one of them who walks in that door, You go be what you said you wanted to be, but at the same time I've got to look at aptitude, attitude and work ethic.
Running back Dexter Pratt says that in his first semester, in 2. He concedes that he schedules more online courses for the program's weakest students because . Well that stuff is never accurate, so a guy could be missing class. So what the online classes have allowed us to do is to keep better monitoring of those at- risk players.
There were enough of them that a player could schedule a semester's worth of classes that required him to do next to nothing. You don't have to do a homework assignment. You don't have to do anything. If you go to class, they'll give you a C because they care about Oklahoma State football.
Carter says they received A's in both despite never attending class or doing any work. In the spring of 2. Carter says that this time they both received failing marks. The tutor and Bell received copies of the test, and then Bell turned in the one that the tutor completed. Mc. Gill says that he saw the instructor watch the tutor take Bell's test for him, but . At the end of one semester, a professor asked to meet with him in the academic center. Woods says the professor asked him, .
In one instance, in 2. He says that despite the fact that he had done no work the entire semester he was awarded an A. An article in the Tulsa World reported that all 1. The players in the 1. Bob Simmons. The truer test of Henley's belief that Oklahoma State could win and still graduate its athletes would be the graduation rates of the classes brought in by Miles and Gundy, filled with the highly ranked recruits who helped push the football program to elite status. It is a more forgiving metric than a straightforward graduation rate, in part because the APR takes into account transfers and players who left early for the pros.
Oklahoma State's average APR from '0. From '0. 8- 0. 9 to '1. Fiesta Bowl victory - - the Cowboys' average APR was 9. BCS schools in 2. The rest of that stuff .