We survived yesterday which is traditionally the slowest day in sports and because yesterday was the slowest day in sports, there's not a lot to share with you this morning.

We did however come across this news story courtesy of KVIA ABC 7 in El Paso. The station did a report on the topic of 'Clustering' in collegiate athletics (and in particular at UTEP). Basically student athletes tend to end up in the same majors as the rest of their teammates. That's kind of the gist of it, there's an underlying premise to clustering which has been written about many many times including by the USA Today, the staff at the NCAA's blog The Double-A Zone, Inside Higher Ed (all three articles were written back in November of last year) and a more recent article in the Oklahoma Daily (OU's student paper) by Meredith Simons.

Back to the report done by KVIA, the results of their report indicated that UTEP's student athletes are more prone to clustering. For the record clustering is not illegal, nor is there any NCAA regulation against clustering. However, the concern raised according to the aforementioned article we found at Inside Higher Ed is and we quote: having significant numbers of athletes at a college in a particular major does raise concerns that the NCAA's academic policies, well-intentioned as they are, may be driving athletes -- or, worse yet, prompting colleges to push athletes -- into majors that are perceived as being easier.

The good news is that the KVIA report found that clustering was virtually non-existent among the big three sports (football and men's and women's basketball). That, combined with yesterday's Daily Aggie post in which we shared the article from the Deseret News that reported NM State ranking 3rd in the WAC with 145 Academic All-WAC honorees, would indicate that not only are Aggie athletes not choosing 'easier' majors in order to become and stay eligible, but they are excelling in the majors that they are choosing. Much credit goes to not only the student athletes for performing well in the classroom but also the support staff at NM State.

On to today's links...

Aggie Men's Basketball
Our man Kevin at Parsing The WAC shares a link to Chris Murray's (Reno Gazette-Journal) summer preview of New Mexico State basketball.

Aggie Football
Teddy Feinberg of the Las Cruces Sun-News blogs about the quarterback situation for this coming fall.

Misc.
Jason Groves of the Las Cruces Sun-News reports on facilities upgrades coming to the Aggie campus in the coming months. He also discusses a possible new floor for the Pan Am.

If you've found an article that you think other Aggie fans would like to read, send it to us! Select "The Daily Aggie" from the 'Category' drop-down.