Marty Tadman speaks out about student-athletes

A mini-firestorm erupted on the Boise State campus and in the local papers yesterday when Boise State legend Marty Tadman made a claim in USA Today that student-athletes might choose majors for reasons other than their education value. Start bunching your shorts, Gene Bleymaier.

"I think we all take offense to it," Bleymaier said. "The implication is 100 percent wrong."

Tadman was interviewed months ago for a story that appeared this week in USA Today about the number of college athletes who choose or are pushed toward easy majors. After a lengthy personal interview with Tadman, the reporter chose to use only a single quote from him, never minding its context. According to Tadman, the quote was taken from a point in the interview when he was asked about the flexibility of certain majors.

"You hear which majors, and which classes, are the easiest and you take them," Tadman says. "You're going to school so you can stay in sports. You're not going for a degree. … It's a joke."

Makes sense to us, but then again, we're prone to believe anything Tadman says or has said or ever will say.

The kerfuffle over Tadman's comments wasn't so much over the fact that his quote was erroneous, but rather over the impression it might give about Boise State. Even though every other school in America deals with the same issue of getting student-athletes to care about being students, the fact that Tadman's picture was plastered on the article might send the wrong message about BSU.

Do we blame Tadman? Of course not. We blame USA Today, and those stupid pie graphs they put in every single section of their paper. Seriously, who needs to know how many Top Ten finished Jeff Gordon has in the month of October since 2001? We don't.

The quote wasn't even all that bad. It is common knowledge that a lot of athletes aren't in school for their education. They're in school for sports or chicks or free booster swag. And assuming that a major like communication is easy is not that far off, either.

Plus, the whole ordeal put Tadman back in the news, which made us all sorts of whimsical.

We like having a reason to talk about him other than our never-ending man crush.

Read more: College athletes' studies guided toward 'major in eligibility' [USA Today]
Players react to Tadman's comments [Press-Tribune]
Boise State: Athletes aren't steered to easy majors [Statesman]