Head football coach Mack Brown faced the UT faculty for the first time in his career, making an appearance at Monday's Faculty Council meeting.
Brown spent nearly an hour portraying the average student athlete's life and answering questions from faculty. The Faculty Council praised the coach's interaction with them, but sought more transparency from the athletics department.
"I'm 56 years old, head football coach for 24 years, and this is the first time I've ever been honored to speak to a group like this," Brown said. "I'm really excited about it."
Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering associate professor Jon Olson said he was concerned about the athletes' graduation rates. The Texas football team has a 42 percent graduation rate, the lowest among the Big 12, according to an NCAA report released last fall.
Brown said he addresses low graduation rates by looking at each young athlete he has brought into the University and how many have graduated.
Athletes can take up to eight years to graduate, as some try their luck in the NFL, making a $285,000 starting salary, he said. But according to Brown, graduating is all that matters.
"Vince Young will not be on the graduation list because he's making $50 million, but what a great endorsement to the other kids that he would come back and go to school," Brown said.
Classics professor Thomas Palaima said he believes athletes receive extra assistance that is not available to the average student.
"I'm concerned about all the assistance that is being given. Education should not be about smothering people," Palaima said. "There are normal students who come from small schools who are in the top 10 percent who are facing the same kind of transitions but don't get this type of help."
Brown said the athletic department never offers tutors unless the students ask for them.
In response to another of Palaima's concerns - that student athletes spend too much time training - Brown said the NCAA allows teams to practice for 20 hours a week during the fall football season and UT uses 17 of those hours. A student can choose how much time to devote to athletics, he said, and many see campus sports as a way to belong at UT.
Douglas Burger, Faculty Council chair and a computer science professor, expressed concern about how athletic scandals could tarnish UT's reputation
nationally.
"We are competing with Berkeley and Harvard for new faculty and colleagues," he said. "We have a national brand to uphold, and when something bad happens in athletics, it affects us, but it's outside of our control."
For this reason, Brown takesLonghorns' negative appearances in the media very seriously.
"We take articles of student athletes getting into trouble across the country and put them on their lockers and put, 'The choice is yours. We hope you choose to stay at the University of Texas,'" he said. "It's really, really important to us that you're proud of your University."
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