OU Student-Athletes Among Subjects Of HBO Real Sports Investigat - NewsOn6.com - Tulsa, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports - KOTV.com |

An upcoming episode of HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel will focus on the education of student-athletes and the role of academic advising centers enabling student-athletes with minimal educations to graduate from big-time universities. "Gaming the System," which involves student-athletes from Oklahoma, North Carolina and Memphis, will air March 25th on HBO.

Per a 'Real Sports' preview on monstersandcritics.com -

"In 2003, the NCAA instituted an academic reform initiative to reemphasize a commitment to the education of all student-athletes, mandating that schools graduate a majority of each team, or face punishments ranging from a loss of scholarships to a ban on postseason play. Later that year, the NCAA eliminated the requirement that student-athletes have a minimum SAT score of 820, which was determined to hurt the chances of minority acceptance in athletic programs. Lower admission standards, coupled with higher graduation requirements, meant that many top-flight schools needed to commit resources for learning specialists to ensure their student-athletes measured up.

What resulted, however, fell short of expectations. Real Sports' investigative team spent six months vetting the multi-million dollar academic advising centers, which operate as "schools within schools" and are responsible for enabling student-athletes with elementary educations to graduate from big-time universities. Correspondent Bernard Goldberg reports on some alarming discoveries."