Jan Kemp passes away at 59

This story is several days old and I'm not sure if it got the play it deserved in the sports world and that's too bad.

Jan Kemp, the former University of Georgia professor who was fired after publicly criticizing the university for allowing athletes who failed remedial classes to continue playing sports and stay in school.

If you were paying attention to college football in the early-80s Kemp's name was everywhere. She dared to mention publicly what too many knew privately, that college football players were getting into college without the basic ability to read and write and the colleges and universites were doing little if anything to improve their abilities.

Kemp was fired from the university in 1982. She sued in federal court the following year, claiming she was targeted because she protested UGA's preferential treatment of athletes. The jury awarded her $2.57 million in 1986, though that was later reduced to $1.08 million.

Kemp was reinstated.

Before the Kemp case, athletes with SAT scores that reflected little academic prowess were routinely admitted to Georgia. Today, all NCAA schools must adhere to standards on test scores, grade-point averages and the type of courses taken in high school.

Even without the help of the internet and 24/7 sports news coverage Kemp was hated by many college football fans across the country. The problem she highlighted weren't an SEC only problem they were happening at colleges and universities across the country; schools in the PAC-10, Big-10, Big-8, SWC all had members who were doing little if anything to help their athletes get an education, except they had no one who would stand up and say anything.

The kind of abuse she received for her actions are usually today reserved for fan sites and talk radio. But when Kemp spoke up it was newspapers and columnists who treated her with disdain and open hostility. A newspaper columnist once wrote Kemp should be "the next teacher in space" -- not long after Christa McAuliffe, an elementary school teacher chosen by NASA's Teacher in Space Project, died in the shuttle Challenger explosion.

Whenever another ranking of the most important people in college football is put together, Kemp should be on it, although she didn't completely change the culture of college sports she did set in motion many of the changes that we are familar with today.

Proposition 48 came into being, the first legislation that set minimum criteria for standardized test scores and grade-point averages for freshman eligibility. While Prop 48 was justifiably criticized for relying too heavily on tests that were culturally biased, the rule was the right idea. After considerable tweaking, the concept is still in place today: To be eligible to play right away, student-athletes must qualify academically, based on a sliding scale between GPA and test scores.

There is a more detailed article by pat forte on ESPN.com