OTL: Fred Rouse, Florida State Academic Scandal

According to a Florida State and NCAA investigation, members of the university’s athletic academic support unit in some cases supplied answers to tests, and in other cases typed papers, for 61 athletes in football and other sports.  Read more here

Fred Rouse, a former Seminoles receiver, attributes the prevalence of learning disabled athletes to an awareness of the resources available to those with such a diagnosis. He says some players are just lazy and looking for someone else to do their academic work.  Read full story here

Fred Rouse (born December 17, 1984) is a wide receiver  for Concordia College, formerly of the Lincoln High School,  Florida State University, and UTEP football teams. Declared that he would be the first player to jump straight from the High School level to the NFL. He projected himself as a 4th round pick. On January 20, 2006, it was announced that Rouse and offensive linemanCornelius Lewis were kicked off the team for what was claimed as “conduct detrimental to the welfare of the football team” by FSU head coach Bobby Bowden. He has often been compared with Randy Moss both athletically and personally. He is gifted with spectacular speed and ability and is a decent target, but his lack of focus also made Bowden furious (also similar to Moss).

About 80 percent of the FSU athletes sent to him receive a learning disabled diagnosis.

SEC stiffens penalties for complaining coaches

The NCAA is using Bobby Bowden as a tool against other schools to get them in line, saying they will come after even the innocent to get the guilty. After the NCAA, thinking it was clever, decided to keep the ruling on  the appeal a secret for two weeks, it let FSU release the ruling it put out and, surprise, nothing changed. They still intend to screw Bobby Bowden out of 14 wins that are all his. This music history class that students from 10 sports cheated in had nothing to do with the head coach of each of those sports. The NCAA is punishing Bowden and the other head coaches at FSU because, you may not believe this, the NCAA is simply out to get FSU.   Read full story here

Until her departure in 2007, Monk worked with Florida State’s most academically challenged student-athletes.

The Seminoles hired Monk in 2001 to work with these athletes.

“Florida State couldn’t be left behind,” she said. “I think they recognized the fact that there were a lot of very talented student-athletes who were maybe reluctant learners or who struggled in the classroom who were not maybe academically as prepared to come to college as they should be. And so they were looking at that population — how do we let this talent go by? Is there some way that we can have both? Can we have the talent and can we also provide them with some kind of help so that they can remain academically eligible while they are in school?”

Monk received a glowing review in her first year on the job. As she experienced more and more success keeping at-risk athletes eligible, she says she became a tool of recruiting, with coaches and parents asking her to work with athletes with increasingly severe learning disabilities. That’s when she made what she calls an error in judgment, asking one basketball player in 2007 to input the answers to an online sports psychology test for a teammate who left a hard copy of the test on her desk.

“I was exhausted, totally exhausted,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking clearly and made an error.”  Read full story here

Watch Video Here

Sources:  ESPN/Outside the Lines

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Behind Blondie Park Related Articles:

Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino Blasts the Media Video

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Louisville Coach Rick Pitino Apologizes for His ‘Indiscretion’ (VIDEO)

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Steve Spurrier Backs Bobby Bowden

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Lane Kiffin Reprimanded

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Jon Gruden Talks About Getting Fired

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Posted by:  Joe Who?  (Sports Writer)

Tags: bobby bowden, brenda monk, fred rouse, fsu, fsu scandal, outside the lines

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 1:42 pm and is filed under College Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.