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Football players at major Ala. schools lean toward `jock majors' Associated Press BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -

Chances are, if you play football at the University of Alabama, you're majoring in general studies. At Auburn University, lots of football players apparently want to be sociologists. And at UAB, history is a popular degree choice among players. The Birmingham News analyzed degree choices listed in the media guides of each of the state's big three schools and found that each appears to have so-called "jock majors," or degree programs that attract large numbers of football players. At Alabama, the most popular football major is general studies in the College of Human Environmental Sciences, the newspaper reported.

Twenty-six percent of football players majored in general studies, compared with 2 percent of all Alabama students. The most popular football major at Auburn is sociology, accounting for 17 percent of the team's declared majors. This season, football players are 35 times more likely to major in sociology than the student body. Less than 1 percent of the student body chooses that major. Since summer, Auburn has been investigating the expanded number of directed-reading courses in sociology and some other fields - courses that produced mostly high grades. Two professors have resigned.

The paper reported that 22 percent of UAB football players are majoring in history, followed by 16 percent in communication studies and 15 percent in criminal justice. Those majors represent 2 percent, 4 percent and 3 percent of the student body, respectively.

The clustering of athletes in certain majors isn't necessarily unethical or against a university's policy, and is common on most campuses. "I don't know why anybody in the world would expect the students who arrive with lesser academic credentials not to end up in the easiest majors," said Alabama law Professor Gene Marsh, the school's former faculty athletics representative. "But people who say it's OK to end up with athletes huddled in particular majors because of their time demands don't understand reality.

There are many students working many hours a week in part-time jobs" and they do not cluster into easy majors, he told the News. Linda Bensel-Meyers, a University of Denver professor who once alleged academic misconduct at the University of Tennessee, said soft majors and classes provide a grade cushion to maintain athletic eligibility. But the greatest threats, she said, are grade changes and waivers of standard policies to benefit athletes. "It enables some athletes to appear to be enrolled in a college curriculum," Bensel-Meyers said. "In fact, they are merely being housed until their eligibility expires, often to graduate without an education."

Many athletes don't need a special path through college: They take challenging courses without the need for extra guidance. But at every school, pockets of athletes who struggle academically find ways to stay eligible. Alabama cornerback Simeon Castille wishes he were still a communications major. He wants to become a broadcaster. He's a general studies major in the College of Human Environmental Sciences now because "I screwed up, and this is getting me back on track to graduate." Castille was academically ineligible for the Cotton Bowl last season. He became lazy, he said, and passed only three credits in the fall 2005 semester, leading to his ineligibility and a change in major.

One general studies course meant writing about football for former Alabama football player Ahmad Childress. For three credits one summer, Childress said, he and five teammates composed an entire football class that required only instructing a football camp for kids in Gulf Shores and writing a four-page essay. "That was the whole class. I got an A," Childress said. "Yeah, it was a little weird, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do to be eligible."

The dean of Human Environmental Services at Alabama, Milla Boschung, said she was surprised to learn the number of football players in her college, but does not believe general studies has the perception of being a "jock major." "I just had no idea who is an athlete and who is not in our college," she said. "We just consider them our students. We think that's the right thing." At Auburn, the largest concentration of athletes in the sociology department came under scrutiny months ago because of the large number of players who were taking independent study courses under a single professor, raising questions about whether their work was properly supervised.

But Virgil Starks, senior associate athletics director for student services at Auburn, said he isn't concerned about the large number of sociology and criminology majors on the football team. Athletes still must take the core curriculum, he said, and athletes often must choose majors that will readily translate into jobs after college. At UAB, 61 percent of this season's starting football players, as of Oct. 14, major in history or communication studies, according to the team media guide. Six percent of UAB students major in those disciplines.

Mark Hickson, a communication studies professor at UAB, believes his department is popular because football players typically do not have good math skills. Students in communications and most social sciences, such as history, are required to take only one math course. The same is true of general studies at Alabama. Additionally, Hickson said, these fields have professors who live in "a more ambiguous world.

Thus, their students are less likely to have to answer specific factual questions." UAB interim athletics director Richard Margison said the clustering of football players in particular majors reflects "athletes making their own choices, athletes talking to athletes. Nothing about that would alarm me." --- Information from: The Birmingham News