I will be moving on to other topics in the coming posts...

....but thought I would include a blurb from and a link to an article about academic performance of Notre Dame athletes. Given the current state of intercollegiate athletics and their relation to an athlete actually receiving a college education, they're pretty remarkable.

I will be delving into other topics in soon, though. Tom has been busy with some very sound theology posts, so I will do my part by tackling other important, weighty, intellectually and spiritually stimulating topics such as:

** Titanic: Great Movie, OK Movie, or God-Awful Movie?

** My Hollywood Disconnect: Why a 10-Movie-A-Month Film Fanatic (And Former Reviewer) Became A 2-Movies-Since-Thanksgiving, "Why Bother?" Film Avoider

** The Failure (and Dangers) of Deconstructionism

** Bread At Dinner: To Cut Or Break (I wrote something about this around Thanksgiving and emailed to my friends. I'll post my take on this raging controversy here...)

** Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism: Questionable Science vs. Awful, Amatuerish Philosophy And The Double Standards Employed By Each Side
(This subject, given the rather heated rhetoric on both sides, is touchy; it might take a while for me to formulate my thoughts on the topic into a piece (or pieces) that I would post for public consumption)

** Why Most Detractors Of John Wayne And His Movies Are Full Of Crap (Alternately titled "Why I Would Never Trust A Man Who Didn't Like John Wayne")

** The Truth Of Beauty vs. The Beauty Of Truth: Two Approaches To Faith

And a topic near and dear to my heart:

** "Boo-Yah": The Disintegration Of Sportswriting And Its Slide Into Oblivion


For today, however, it's more Notre Dame accolades, proof that academic and athletic achievement are not mutually exclusive endeavors:

"Sixteen of 20 athletics programs at the University of Notre Dame compiled graduation rates of 100 percent, and none were below 90 percent, according to the new Graduation Success Rate measurement developed by the NCAA and announced in December. NCAA figures showed that, among Notre Dame's men's sports, baseball, cross country/track, fencing, ice hockey, soccer, swimming and tennis achieved 100 percent GSR scores. Football scored 96 percent, golf was 92 percent and basketball was 90 percent (lacrosse is not included because the program did not offer grants in aid during the years covered in the survey).

The Irish women's programs with a GSR of 100 percent were basketball, cross country/track, fencing, golf, lacrosse, softball, swimming, tennis and volleyball. Soccer scored a 94 percent GSR."

"While the Irish football team has returned to the ranks of the nation's elite programs under first-year coach Charlie Weis (the Eddie Robinson national coach-of-the-year award winner), and led by Associated Press All-Americans Jeff Samardzija (a consensus All-America selection) at wide receiver, Brady Quinn at quarterback and Tom Zbikowski at safety, the Notre Dame football team achieved unprecedented results in the classroom during the 2005 fall semester. The Irish football players combined for a 3.04 team grade-point average during the '05 fall semester, marking the highest semester average ever achieved by the football squad. That figure includes 56 of 97 players achieving a 3.0 average or higher."

For the full article, go here...