"Throw sports into that mix, and it’s easy to see the challenges for an athlete. Plus, Notre Dame’s internal standards are higher than the NCAA requires.

For example, the NCAA says Division I athletes entering the second year must have 90 percent of their school’s minimum overall GPA necessary to graduate. At Notre Dame, that is usually 2.0, so the NCAA requirement of 90 percent would be 1.8. But the Irish choose to require a 2.0 GPA entering the athlete’s second year.

On one level, there is no sign things are that hard.

Notre Dame’s football graduation rate, according to the most recent data, is stellar. The program’s graduation success rate is 93 percent, as calculated by the NCAA.

But there is an indication that football players are less successful in the classroom than the average student at Notre Dame.

Beginning in 1992, the school began tracking the cumulative GPA of its football team each semester.

The Irish team GPA did not reach 3.0 in a given semester until the fall of 2005 (3.044). On the university’s grading scale, that’s a B average.

For the campus as a whole, the average class grade in the spring 2012 semester was 3.563, according to Office of Strategic Planning and Institutional Research data made public by USA Today. That’s a hair shy of an A-minus (3.667)."

http://www.journalgazette.net/sports/colleges/notre-dame/--8216-Student-athlete--8217--tiring-job-at-ND--8E13F0OH