WHY THE BADGERS RAN OUT THE CLOCK. Chris Lawrence picks up a New York Times story of independent study abuse in Auburn University's football program (last seen downing a punt at the Wisconsin 1 with nine minutes to go in the game only to watch Wisconsin take a knee inside the Auburn 10 as time ran out.)

Eighteen members of the 2004 Auburn football team, which went undefeated and finished No. 2 in the nation, took a combined 97 hours of the courses during their careers. The offerings, known as directed-reading courses, resemble independent study and include core subjects like statistics, heory and methods, which normally require class instruction.

The professor for those players and many other athletes was Thomas Petee, the sociology epartment’s highest-ranking member. The star running back Carnell (Cadillac) Williams, now playing in the National Football League, said the only two classes he took during the spring semester of his senior year were one-on-one courses with Professor Petee.

At one point, Professor Petee was carrying the workload of more than three and a half professors, an academic schedule that his colleagues said no one could legitimately handle.

“It was a lot of work,” Professor Petee said. “And I basically wore myself out.”

Proper universities have rules to prevent this sort of thing. I may be critical of the Northern Illinois University administration on a regular basis, but that's because I see this university as a place with the potential to shine by doing the right thing. In directed study classes, for example, economics department rules prevent any faculty member from supervising more than two of them in a semester. Professor Lawrence has referred to my suspicion that some programs might be less rigorous than the traditional social sciences. True enough, but university-wide there are restrictions on how many directed studies a faculty member may teach, and it is contrary to university policy to offer a directed study class in lieu of a scheduled class. (The faculty member with the responsibility for scheduling has some responsibility to ensure temporal dispersions of courses such that students with scheduling constraints, whether they are working full time or on athletic scholarships, have opportunities to complete their degrees.)

At Auburn, it's apparently a different story.