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students are continuing to trail behind their peers in a pack of higher performing nations

Scores from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment

the U.S. performing about average in reading and science, and below average in math

It seems that Alabama is making a pretty big statement by canceling classes, and it is that football is much more important than the classes being taught at the university.

Alabama decided to cancel classes starting on Wednesday, January 6th until Friday, January 8th in order to allow more fans to make their way out to California.

say current and former teachers and parents. Red Lion, they say, has undermined its mission by admitting students who haven't met academic or faith-based requirements and bent or disregarded rules to field a competitive football team.

This was particularly true for football players, as their average SAT scores were some of the lowest.

Nationwide, football players average 220 points lower on the SAT than their classmates

Players also spend more time on their sport than their homework and see themselves more as athletes than as a students.

Once athletes start attending the university that paid them to play a sport, it is perfectly understandable why they commit more to training than to studying.

examined the SAT scores of 53 schools, there was at least an 88-point difference between the student body’s average and that of football team members’ average score.

Fact 1: Enthusiasm for football has never been higher -- not just for the NFL, but with young boys and teens. Participation in prep football has increased 21 percent in the past 20 years, by nearly 200,000 boys per year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Many states have begun to allow what is essentially year-round football practice. Youth-league tackle football is expanding. American boys are devoting more time and effort to football than ever before.

Fact 2: In higher education, student populations are increasingly female. Twenty years ago, there were more men in college than women. Now there are more women, and the ratio of college women to men is rising.

A 2004 study, meanwhile, revealed that football players with multiple concussions were 7.7 times more likely to experience a "major drop in memory performance"

What's most disturbing, perhaps, is that these cognitive deficits have a real-world impact: When compared with similar students without a history of concussions, athletes with two or more brain injuries demonstrate statistically significant lower grade-point averages.