Maryland athletes grapple with changing role of academics: ‘This is a business’

‘I’m getting paid to basically be an athlete’

Rourke acknowledges that the recent changes, from more student transfers to direct payments to athletes, haven’t made his job easier.

In addition, the Big Ten’s expansion to add four West Coast schools has forced athletes to miss even more class time, but that’s where Rourke comes in.

The baseball team’s road trip to Michigan State this season overlapped with six members of the program’s math exam. Rourke arranged for a member of the Spartans’ athletic department to bus those players to their academic center the morning of the series opener, proctor the test there, and send their scores back home.

Most critically for his job, however, Rourke believes it has not gotten harder to get athletes to care about their classes. Smith agrees.

“Student-athletes at Maryland go to class,” the athletic director told The Sun. “There is a pathway toward a degree, if that’s the path that student-athlete wants to go. That importance of academics still exists and will always exist here.”

But Maryland athletes suggest their peers have a different attitude now.

“I’d be naive to think that it hasn’t changed,” said Terps men’s lacrosse senior Will Schaller, who on Monday was named Maryland’s student athlete of the year. “I think there might be a sense of, ‘I’m getting paid to basically be an athlete, so that’s going to be my full-time job now.’ I grew up a little bit differently. My parents were college athletes, and they went to class and they played because they loved their college. I think there’s definitely some work to be done to make sure student-athletes are still keeping their education at the forefront.”

Shrinking focus

With 170 majors, Rourke boasts that Maryland has “a lot to choose from.” Despite those options, most players on Maryland’s highest-earning teams focus on just two areas of study. Of the football team’s 96-man spring roster, 46 are majoring in either sociology or communication or are undeclared. For men’s basketball, 11 of 16 players on last season’s team had one of those three focuses.

That’s a noticeable shift from before college athletes could legally profit off their abilities. In 2019, during coach Michael Locksley’s first season, just 21 football players majored in sociology or communication or were undeclared. That same year, only four men’s basketball players chose those majors.

Jeremy Grossman, a communications professor at Maryland, said those fields of study have become more popular among athletes because they are “being encouraged to” enroll in them.

“They perceive that it is a little less demanding,” said Grossman, who estimates he’s taught hundreds of athletes over his seven years working in College Park. “There’s a more obvious incentive structure that makes them think of that redistribution of priority in more direct terms. Their priorities were not distributed out the same way that other students at the university’s priorities are distributed out. Athletics takes a large portion of their attention, their time, their energy. Then, depending on the school, there’s kind of a bare minimum that is expected of them academically.”

A faculty member who was granted anonymity to speak freely and works in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Maryland, which houses the sociology major, seconded that they’ve seen athletes narrow their focus, “maybe because they perceive it as easier.”

“It’s lower course requirements,” said the faculty member, who added they teach “20 to 40” athletes per year. “They’re just looking to stay eligible. That’s a different form of interaction than students who are looking to get the highest grade possible. I’ve had football players, basketball players participate and be active members in classes. But that’s usually the rarity.”

‘There’s a reason you’re called a student-athlete’

Some athletes’ attitudes toward academics haven’t wavered despite these changes.

Anthony Pecorella completed a finance degree while punting for the Terps from 2019 to 2023, then transferred to Stony Brook and earned an MBA. Now at Maine, the New York native is on track to complete an athletic administration certificate this summer and play his eighth season of college football this fall. “I’m collecting degrees like they’re Infinity Stones,” he said. The 24-year-old is hopeful modern college athletes see things the way he did.

“Not once did [Locksley] ever say like, ‘Oh, now that you’re the starting punter at Maryland, you don’t need to go to class,'” Pecorella said. “He was still on our a– to be in the first two rows, to participate. I’ve been in three different programs, played under a bunch of different coaches, and everyone’s always had the same mentality, that although you spend a lot of hours in this facility, there’s a reason you’re called a student-athlete.”

According to Maryland’s athletic council handbook, class attendance is “monitored regularly” by Rourke’s office and can be reported to coaches, although there is no member of the athletic department who is directly responsible for ensuring athletes attend class, a department spokesperson told The Sun. Missing class for team travel is an excused absence, according to the student-athlete handbook, and athletes are responsible for coordinating with professors to make up missed work.

In addition to credit and GPA requirements, 40% of the required coursework for a degree must be completed by the end of an athlete’s second year, 60% by the end of the third year, and 80% by the end of their fourth year to stay eligible with the NCAA.

Maryland athletics reported a 3.34 GPA across all sports in the fall 2025 semester. That’s up from spring 2025, when the department boasted a 3.26 GPA across its varsity programs. Twenty-nine football players made Honor Roll, third-most among Maryland teams. Terps football is also the only Big Ten program that lists players’ majors on its online roster, along with information such as height, weight, and hometown. Players’ majors are absent from the main roster page on all 17 other Big Ten team websites.

“We haven’t cut any positions in academics,” Rourke said. “The budget has not decreased. In fact, we’ve added positions. We’ve continued to keep academics a priority, and we’ve resourced it well.” Late last month, university president Darryll J. Pines announced a hiring freeze and that the school expects to eliminate as many as 150 positions because of a roughly 10% reduction in state funding for the University System of Maryland. It’s unclear how, if at all, this will affect athletics.

The university did not include in its fall GPAs announcement how many men’s basketball players made the Dean’s List or Honor Roll this past fall during coach Buzz Williams’ first year. The group was almost entirely made up of transfers, and just five players remain with the program after the Terps tied their record for losses in a season.

“If we had an exam that would interfere with practice, Lefty Driesell might stomp his foot and wish that the teacher didn’t schedule it, but nevertheless, he’d let us go,” Terps men’s basketball legend Len Elmore, now a professor of sports management at Columbia and member of Maryland’s board of trustees, told The Sun. “Today, I’m not so sure you have that type of dedication from coaches.”

Michael Howes contributed to this article. Have a news tip? Contact Taylor Lyons at tlyons@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/TaylorJLyons.