September 21, 2006.

One week before getting waxed by Southern Miss, North Carolina State head football coach Chuck Amato blamed a loss to Akron on the Zips’ policy of allowing non-qualifiers to play college football, saying it gives teams an unfair advantage.

&#8220Do you know what kind of players non-qualifiers are, usually? They’re inversely proportional to what their grade-point average is. They can make a big difference,” Amato told the Charlotte Observer.

On the Saturday of the Southern Miss game, during an episode of ESPN’s College Gameday, host Chris Fowler said Amato’s Wolfpack would have a difficult time with Southern Miss because the Eagles allow non-qualifiers as well.

&#8220It befuddles me, because we don’t use them,” said Southern Miss Senior Associate Director of Athletics Compliance Don Oberhelman, who’s been at the school for five years. Oberhelman said the Eagles have one on the roster now, but when he enrolled, all requirements were met, but a conflict with a standardized test score two months after enrolling technically made him a non-qualifier. The Buckley Amendment, also known as the Family Education Right to Privacy Act, forbids institutions from releasing grades of students who are athletes.

Qualifiers meet all academic requirements, i.e. grade point average and standardized test scores. Non-qualifiers do not meet one or both of those criterion, but some conferences, such as the Mid-American Conference in which Akron plays, allow non-qualifiers to participate.

In actuality, the Southern Miss football program is routinely honored for graduating its football players. For the 2004-05 season, the Eagles graduated an astounding 92 percent of their football players, while the general student graduation rate is 55 percent, Oberhelman said. In addition, the NCAA lauded Southern Miss as being in the top 5 nationally for graduating football players. In no particular order, Oberhelman said, Southern Miss, Duke, Boston College, Southern Methodist and Notre Dame make up the top five. The school has been honored the past three years by the American College Football Association for outstanding graduation rates.

So why would Fowler, who leads a crew that routinely applauds the Golden Eagles for playing anyone, anywhere, any time, make a blatantly wrong statement like he did?.

A slip of the tongue? An honest mistake? Or, a general bias toward a school from the state with the worst reputation for everything. We are the fattest, dumbest, poorest people in America, so it would be impossible to believe that any university in said state could possibly graduate real students, let alone football players.

Mississippi suffers enough black eyes without the help of a college football analyst spitting out incorrect information.

&#8220There is a myth out there that we use non-qualifiers, but that is just not true,” Oberhelman said. &#8220Character comes first for Coach Bower, and it always has.”

Fowler, at least, owes Southern Miss coaches, athletes and alumni an apology for lumping them in with so many other college football programs of ill repute.

We can spell in Mississippi, Mr. Fowler, and read, too.

And at Southern Miss, football players graduate.

Lots of them.