Pretty much nobody in the Big 12 wants to go dipping into the academic argument, at least in regards to athletes. Everybody will let just about anybody in if the wheels are greased enough.
What bigtime conference member doesn't have this? Maybe ND, Duke on occasions, maybe Stanford, Northwestern.....there ain't many that won't make damn sure a stupid 5* gets in.
Yeah. And in the case of Duke basketball, I'm pretty sure the wheels get greased too. I think Stanford, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt are really the only BCS schools that actually adhere to their school's normal set of academic admissions standards.
But yeah, LSU is pretty damn easy to get into, and yet there are a number of really talented athletes who STILL can't get in to their football program and end up going to 1-AA McNeese and occasionally Southeastern Lousiana and Northwestern State. McNeese has won a number of conference championships off the backs of LSU non-qualifiers who are talented enough to knock around their 1-AA counterparts but not talented enough for LSU to invest themselves in exploiting a loophole or two to get them in. I'm sure their basketball program is the same way. Nebraska needs the talent, so they'll find a way to get Spencer in. Even if the NCAA puts the kibosh on the transfer (they won't), NU could just funnel him to a JUCO for a semester or two and pump his grades up. Nebraska is well-known among coaching circles for having athletes take a crapload of courses at JUCO's during the summer and then giving them like...3 hours of coursework during the academic year, and then they count those JUCO grades into their whole Academic All-American count. Hence the inflated numbers in that department.
