It’s going to be a busy fall for Tim Tebow. The quarterback for the University of Florida football team—the defending national champion—is expected to contend for the Heisman Trophy, his team kicks off its season this Saturday, and he’s set to graduate with a degree in Family, Youth, and Community Service in December.

Good thing he isn’t letting academics interfere with his buys schedule.

As Tebow told the New York Times this weekend, his course load this semester is rather light:

Q. How close are you to graduation?
A. I’m going to graduate in December.

Q. A light semester coming up, I assume?
A. Yeah.

Q. Ballroom dancing like Matt Leinart?
A. (laughs) Easier.

Q. What do you have?
A. I guess the class that I would have is senior seminar. It is one hour and one credit. It’s on Tuesday afternoons and we have practice. I’m going to work around that with the professors. I’m going to do whatever my counselor sets up. I’m a football player this semester.

Tebow is far from the first elite college football player to pursue a light course schedule in his senior season. Matt Leinart, the former University of Southern California quarterback, had the best example of senior slacking when he took a single class in ballroom dancing for his final season, but the phenomenon is pretty widespread. Two years ago, 16 of Boston College players—including current Atlanta Falcon Matt Ryan—took only a few night classes because they had already graduated and didn’t have any requirements to fulfill.

It’s hard to blame athletes for this practice, especially those that graduate. Many of these players also have sat out, or redshirted, a season, meaning that their “senior” falls are actually the start of their fifth year of enrollment. In other cases, students have taken lots of summer school courses so that they could have a lighter class load during their seasons. Either way, these individuals have simply done what we’ve expected of any other college student—graduate more or less on time.

But that’s assuming coaches are not meddling too much. The Detroit Free Press broke a story on Saturday about how University of Michigan Head Football Coach Rich Rodriguez would regularly exceed the time limits on practice that the NCAA uses to ensure students have time to study. And this isn’t the first time Michigan has come under fire for subverting academics to athletics—a four-part series in the Ann Arbor News revealed that the university steered athletes to specific majors that were easier to complete. When faced with this mentality from the coaches and higher, it’s little wonder that athletes feel less compunction to actually take advantage of the academic opportunities they have.

The general acceptance of the minimal-course season should, however, end the facade of the “student athlete.” Tebow will enroll in one class this semester that meets one hour a week and never attend it due to a schedule conflict. In exchange, he will receive a scholarship worth several thousands dollars for tuition, room and board, and other fees (it would be interesting to know if Tebow gets a scholarship for the single credit hour he’s taking or for a full load). By contrast, he’ll spend about three hours a week playing in a football game and countless more practicing for that contest. That certainly sounds like getting paid to be an athlete.

And the athletics emphasis reverberates beyond students. The Chronicle of Higher Education this morning had a story ($) about the rise of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and how its significant investment in athletics has not always been met by subsequent support for academics. At 10 of the 12 SEC schools, including Florida, athletic spending has increased by a larger percentage than academic spending over overlapping four-year periods.* Even if some of that increase was driven by private boosters, that’s still a source of money that the academic side of the university then can’t reach out to for fundraising.

Big-time sports are undeniably intertwined with the DNA of higher education, at least at many of the flagship public universities. But it’s time for schools and the NCAA to decide whether to enact real reforms to make these athletes actual amateurs—such as strictly monitoring practice time, stopping recruiting violations, and changing schedules to minimize classroom absenteeism. Otherwise, institutions should admit that players are just there to be athletes, and pay them accordingly.