Editorials

Sports talk shows had a field day as callers (most of them University of Alabama fans) got all lathered up at the possibility that the NCAA would do to their arch-rival what it did to the Capstone’s team a few years back.

Meanwhile, down on the Plains, university officials began damage control. Which included finding out what was really going on.

What they found out was this.

Auburn University had a problem. But it was not with athletes getting special treatment. The problem was with two teacher/administrators using “bad judgment” in teaching and administering directed readings courses. Of the hundreds of students taking these courses, only 18 percent were athletes and only 7.5 percent were football players.

Auburn University had an academic problem, not an athletic one.

And Dr. Ed Richardson, the university’s interim president has moved to solve it. The professors involved have been relieved of administrative duties. Tighter restrictions on directed readings courses are now in place. A formal investigation is almost complete. And all of this will be reported to the university’s accrediting bodies.

Good for Auburn.

Not so good for The New York Times.

“I believe,” Dr. Richardson concluded, “that athletics was infused into this discussion to provide a sufficient traction to make it newsworthy.”

It looks that way to us as well.

Had the reporter sent in a story about a Southern university, or any university for that matter, that was teaching too many directed readings courses, do you think it would have been published?

Not likely.

We expected better from The Times.