Koch Arena tour

Honestly, the Koch Arena tour didn't shed too much new light on a subject I already knew a thing or two about. I was involved in sports writing for nearly a decade; when your 28, that's a big chunk of your life. Obviously, I'd been in one or two press rooms and interviewed one or two collegiate coaches. So no, there wasn't a whole lot of new material seeping into the nooks of my brain.
However, there was one little bit of the tour that kind of got to me in that oh-no-she-didn't kind of way. Forgive me for not remembering her name, but the woman from the athletic department who talked to us while we were waiting for the PR rep down in the press room really, really, really bit down on of my most sensitive nerves.
Here is one tasty, little paraphrased quote of hers: "of course, some professors are too lazy to get these back to us." What she was referring to here is grade sheets that the athletic department sends out two or three times a semester, in which they ask teachers to give updates on the progress of their student-athletes. This is completely understandable. They want to keep tabs on their kids. Ok, fine. Good for them.
However, for her to imply that some professors/GTAs are too lazy to do this is particularly annoying, and mildly insulting.
Look, I was an athlete as an undergrad, so I understand what it's like to try to balance a course load on top of a rigorous game/practice schedule. But again, I also always understood that we were not special enough to get all these privileges.
Now, as a GTA, I can sympathize with my student-athlete students.
But I also don't treat them any differently than my other students.
While I do fill out those grade sheets, I can understand why some of my peers ignore them. We don't give grade updates to most other students.
And it's not like we are just lying around laughing at the questions these sheets ask. We are busy, busy people, especially GTAs. As GTAs, we not only have a teaching schedule, but we also have our own classes to attend and prepare for. I won't even mention what we get paid.
This whole process of filling out the grade sheets is also a practice in redundancy, considering that grades are constantly updated on Blackboard.
Why can't these people from the athletic department take a few minutes out of their day to simply log on to their athletes' Blackboard sites?
I guess that's just too much extra work.
I have no problem giving these progress reports. I've yet to have any real problems with an athlete and it seems like they are being mentored in the proper manner.
But I'd also like to get a little more respect.