Student Athletes, There Is No Such Thing

Per an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which should come as no surprise, there is a big gap in SAT scores for athletes vs. non-athletes at NCAA schools.  In fact, many schools go through great lengths to admit some of these "students."  Some interesting lines from the article:

More than half of scholarship athletes at the University of Georgia, Clemson University, UCLA, Rutgers University, Texas A&M University and Louisiana State University were special admits. 

The biggest gap between football players and students as a whole occurred at the University of Florida, where players scored 346 points lower than the school’s overall student body. That’s larger than the difference in scores between typical students at the University of Georgia and Harvard University.

The University of Oklahoma and the University of Florida, whose football teams play Jan. 8 for the national championship, ranked near the bottom in standardized test scores. Florida’s freshman football classes of 2002-04 ranked 50th in average score out of 53 schools for which football SAT averages were available, and Oklahoma’s freshman football classes of 2001-03 ranked 42nd. Florida’s football players ranked last in average high school GPA, at 2.54. The average for all football players in the study was 2.93.

Source: http://www.ajc.com/services/content/sports/stories/2008/12/28/acadmain_1228_3DOT.html