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Greyson Gryphons - Athletics at Greyson
For all of that, however, the athletes at Greyson University tend to get along well with the average student. Harrassment and hazing are at a minimum, and most of the athletic teams have proved to be surprisingly open and welcoming toward minorities and gay and lesbian athletes. Many of the athletes also engage in humanitarian work in and around Shadowgard, participating in Red Cross blood drives, Goodwill donation drives, Habitat for Humanity construction projects and other such efforts, earning them a great deal of goodwill from the community and (somewhat grudgingly) from the student population. There are some bad apples in every bunch, of course, and some of the teams are kinder and brighter than others - the football team is notoriously aggressive and thickheaded, spoiled by the blatantly preferential treatment they receive in terms of scholarship money and general funding. But most of the truly bad, outlandish behavior is caused by a small minority - the majority of the athletes on campus are actually fairly friendly, personable and respectful toward their fellow students and the administration.
As noted previously, in addition to the intercollegiate varsity sports, Greyson offers a selection of coed intramural sports, with interested students assigned more or less at random to two to four teams. Most of the intramural sports seem to slip under the student population's radar, however, as very few intramural games are particularly well-attended, and some sports have had their seasons suspended entirely for lack of interest.
*Cheerleading is not currently a sport governed by the American NCAA; however, Greyson's cheerleading squad is competitive and is frequently entered in regional and national tournaments against other collegiate squads.
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Greyson University is a Division I-A school in the NCAA's Atlantic Coast Conference, with Duke and B.C. ranking as its chief rivals. The varsity teams are naturally segregated by sex, though the intramural teams are typically coed. Like many schools, Greyson officially holds its athletes to high academic standards, requiring them to maintain a GPA of 3.30; of course, as with many other high-tier schools, Greyson has also had its share of athletic scandals in the past, and athletes still seem to receive more than a little preferential treatment in the classroom. Doping has also been a common practice in the past, and many students still believe that the coaches in the more competitive sports have their athletes on something - perhaps some untraceable steroid, cutting-edge gene therapy or something even more esoteric and experimental. Corruption, addiction and favoritism are simply felt to be a part of life around the athletes by most of the students on campus.