A few years ago, I took a look at what UB's student athletes were studying, and Conrad had a great question near the bottom of the comments. He was interested in:

"who SWITCHES majors…does it indicate our program steers kids away from their interests and pushes them into something "easy" ".

Only four years have past since then, so it is not realistically possible to fully address his question. Regardless, this post will simply document where things stand at this particular point in time.

Since my original post (d)evolved toward the Engineering disciplines, I will continue with that focus now. For this article, I have limited the number of student athletes to only those on the football team.

Since 2013, Jarrett Franklin's freshman year, eighteen football players have listed their major as Engineering for at least one year. Only one other student athlete graduated with an Engineering degree. Three players are currently still with the program, and they all have changed majors. That's it. Everyone else left the program before graduating. Eight players left after only one year. And, five players left after just two years. Three of them listed Engineering both years, and two did not.

Why all these student athletes left early is impossible to know. Perhaps some found the jump from High School football to a DI program to be be too physically demanding. Maybe others found that their Engineering workload was too difficult. Without researching, Rodney Scott is the only name I recognize as someone who transferred to play football at another school. For me, the overall quantity of student athletes who left early was more surprising than the few who changed major along the way. What do you think, has the question that inspired this post been answered?