I know it's weird to think about... but at Duke, the kids go to classes. The football players I knew were always there, always passing. I knew a dummy or two, but they still maintained good grades and strong attendance.

And no offense to the big guys of this world, but it's hard to find pro-level offensive linemen who can also rock a 1250+ on the Math/English portion of his SATs and get above a 3.0 GPA in high school. That's below the usual academic requirements for getting into Duke... I highly doubt they'd push that past 1150 and 2.5 in high school, otherwise they're gonna struggle academically at Duke, even with the easiest schedule.

Really the only elite academic schools competitive in basketball or football on a regular basis are Duke and Stanford. The fact that Stanford is so good at football despite the rigorous academic requirements I chalk up to a tradition of relative competitiveness that Duke simply doesn't have-- West Coast recruits with strong academic scores see that they can go to Stanford while still being in the hunt for a Pac-10 title. I'm sure they also put more money into football than Duke has in the past, although that's been changing in the Cutcliffe era and will surely change even more in the coming years.

(Thinking about it, I bet Notre Dame is close to that level of stringency when it comes to academics, but between their absolutely insane tradition and booster money, that's a no-brainer.)