Jan Kemp, a notorious figure in Georgia sports history, died this past Friday. She was 59.
Infamous among UGA football fans, Kemp was a University of Georgia professor who blew the whistle on the school’s preferential treatment of student athletes. Fired for refusing to pass athletes in her classes, People magazine hailed her as “a hero of the 80s” for filing a lawsuit against the university in 1986 in order to get her job back.
The trial brought many of UGA’s unseemly practices to light, especially an infamous tape recording of remedial studies director Leroy Ervin saying that “I know for a fact that these kids would not be here if it were not for their utility to the institution… They are used as a kind of raw material in the production of some goods to be sold as whatever product, and they get nothing in return”.
Such revelations about a university producing functionally illiterate athletes led to the resignation of longtime university president Fred Davison. They also led to a million jokes from Georgia Tech fans, as well as a humorous “UGA Athletes’ Exam” that was chain-faxed thousands of times in the Atlanta area.
Reforms were immediately instituted at UGA and across the NCAA as a result of Kemp’s lawsuit – which she won. She was awarded $2.58 million, although this was later reduced to $1.1 million. Kemp, although a pariah that was often verbally assaulted by UGA football fans who blamed her for the program’s later difficulties, refused to leave her Athens home. Indeed, she lived there until around six months ago, when a combination of a broken hip and Alzheimer’s Disease forced her to move to a nursing home.
Q. What did the average UGA football player get on his SAT?
A. Drool
God bless, Jan!