College football already has a national champion

Too often in our high-pressured collegiate athletics, the term “student-athlete” has constituted an oxymoron. But that, quite frankly, is not the case with the University of Notre Dame’s football team, currently undefeated and ranked No. 1 in coaches’ and sportswriters’ polls, which plays the University of Alabama on Monday in what amounts to a national championship game. Why?

Because Notre Dame football players — at 97 percent — have the highest graduation rate of any school in the nation playing at the most competitive level.

That means Notre Dame’s graduation rate is higher than the rates of students who play football for great colleges such as Stanford or Duke or Northwestern or Michigan or the Naval Academy or West Point. And, yes, for Alabama and California, too.

Thank you, Dear Reader, for tolerating my obvious lack of objectivity in these matters. Shortly after the cooling of our planet, in one of life’s great unearned blessings, I was able to attend for four years and to graduate from Notre Dame.

I cherish my alma mater and acknowledge, reluctantly of course, that like all human institutions, Notre Dame is not perfect. But I am genuinely proud that the Notre Dame team is the first ever in American sports history to be No. 1 in both graduation rates and the national polls.

To its credit, Notre Dame does not isolate students who play football in a separate athletic dormitory, as so many schools do. Athletes live in dormitories with and take the same classes alongside students who are non-athletes.

This year’s team has two Academic All-Americans: center Mike Golic Jr. — who, having earned his undergraduate degree in film, television and theater (with a 3.428 GPA), is taking graduate courses — and linebacker Manti Te’o, the nation’s outstanding defensive player, who is a devout Mormon of Samoan roots from Hawaii and, with a 3.324 GPA, will graduate from the College of Arts and Letters with a degree in design.