Why is this an issue that fans, the Hill, or anyone outside the AA is even discussing?
We pay a football coach over $2 million per year to put a winning football team on the field. We pay an AD approximately $600K (or will when we hire another, if he makes about the same as DRad did) to make sure our athletic operations are meeting all expectations...including APR. If those people say they need more exceptions, let them have the exceptions. If those exceptions fail out of school and cause the APR to suffer, fire the coaches and the AD.
Additionally, can all of you academic snobs stop with the horseshit argument of "those exceptions of yesteryear would never make it today"? Those kids were "exceptions" at the time...meaning that the Hill didn't think they'd make it then. Newsflash, many of them did.
I happen to be very good friends with Dennis Scott, who also was one of those academic exceptions. He not only managed to survive for 3 years in the classroom at GT, he's working on completing his degrree from GT during off seasons of work now. Why? Because he'd like to have his jersey retired at GT and that won't happen unless he receives his degree.
My point is that you all just assume that these guys will fail out...disregarding completely the fact that there are support measures in place now for academics that simply were not in place when flunkgate happened. That travesty happened, not because the students weren't capable, but because of a: coach who wasn't making sure his athletes were going to class, an academic advisor who really didn't give a crap about her job, and a crotchedy old fart who was close to retiring...one who was our NCAA Compliance Director, but who didn't attend the annual meetings for the 2 previous years and didn't know that the requirements had changed. Lest we forget, 8 of the 10 kids who were "ineligible" were still eligible by NCAA standards, just not by GT's standards. And this was what had changed...causing them to be ineligible across the board.