It seems strange to give credit to Pat Dye (the man who lost his pants in Lake Martin) for anything positive, but I worked with a lady in the late 1990's whose husband (henceforth referred to as "Champ") played at Auburn under Pat Dye while majoring in an engineering discipline and being active in many professional organizations affiliated with that discipline. She said that Coach Dye would sometimes let Champ leave practice early or arrive late (or even miss practice on a few occasions) if he had a conflict with one of his classes or organizational activities. Coach Dye simply requested that Champ let him know as far in advance as possible and there were a few occasions where Coach Dye refused to let him out of a particular practice or team activity, but most of the time Champ was allowed to relegate a football-related activity to a lower priority if a schedule conflict arose. I believe that he was redshirted in 1990 and then may have played some limited snaps in the 1991 season, but he lettered in 1992.
When Tiny Terry took over, he allegedly told Champ that he needed to switch his major to something less demanding on his time because Tiny Terry wasn't going to allow anything to take priority over football. Champ allegedly told Buster Brown that he didn't want to change majors because he had three years in his current major, he had no future as a professional football player, and this was his passion and path to success. Buster told him that some players had decided to put the team first and had switched to easier majors, but Champ still refused to change majors. He continued to put his education first and apparently paid the price because he slid off the depth chart and never played in another game.
He is now the owner of a successful Engineering Consulting Firm. I wonder what ever became of those players that switched majors to put the team first?
