Terms like “student-athlete” are easy to make fun of in a billions-of-dollars business like college football, and the quips are often understandable. Given how much time college athletes spend on their sport between practice, workouts, games and travel, the easiest of jokes says that, at the least, the order of the words ought to be reversed.
It took several years to make it happen, but Dan Mullen is doing his part at Mississippi State to end some of those jokes. Like any football team in the country, Mullen’s has academic standards which must be met in order to maintain eligibility and continue playing.