There will be no skipping of class for Kansas hoopers

At first glance, I thought this article was from the Onion.

"Kansas employs senior citizens to make sure athletes go to class."

Its not. That's actually an article published on the online side of the Wall Street Journal. Not exactly a Dan Wetzel investigative report, is it?

It is, however, an interesting read. Apparently, Kansas made the change to senior citizen class-checkers because too many of the students assigned to the door were skipping class themselves or were playing the role of the star-struck student when asked by one of the basketball players to look past a skipped class:

Eight years ago, associate athletic director Paul Buskirk, who heads the school's Student-Athlete Support Services unit, hired a retired police officer and former Marine named Don Gardner to help oversee the class-checking operation and recruit a few more senior citizens to join. Mr. Gardner, now 72, is better known around Lawrence as "Red Dog." One of his first recruits, retired truck driver Bruce Guy, says he initially spent most of his time "checking on the checkers," and when it was clear that some of the students "weren't going to class and were just marking everybody down," Kansas did away with its student spies altogether.

"If it was just another student you could ask them, 'Hey, lemme slide,' " said Jeff Withey, the Jayhawks' 7-foot center, hunching over recently to scribble his name on a clipboard for a checker practically half his size. Signing in with retirees "gets kind of annoying sometimes, but it keeps you on edge," he says.

Being a college athlete has its benefits. You're a superstar on campus. I doubt a basketball player ever has to pay the five dollars to get a cup at a frat party or has trouble getting a date on a Friday night.

But, as this article points out, there are also down sides.

Skipping class is a time-honored tradition in college. We all had the professors that taught directly out of the text book or simply didn't test off of their lectures. It rarely took more than a week or two to figure out which classes you had to go to and which classes you could miss if, you know, that hangover was too strong or more pressing matters -- like a 64 team FIFA Tournament -- came up.

I guess that's the price you have to pay to go to college for free.