Spring football is fast approaching, and the Sooners will be without their top cornerback, redshirt senior Jamell Fleming, due to academic misconduct.

Fleming led the conference last season in interceptions (five) and is Oklahoma’s top returning defensive performer. He also was named an All-Big 12 performer in 2010.

He is the best cover corner in the Big 12, bar none. If he continues to play to his capabilities, Fleming will surely be picked in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft.

Last Friday, Oklahoma football coach Bob Stoops released a statement that said Fleming is not enrolled in classes at OU this semester due to a personal matter.

“We’re hopeful that Jamell can work through the things he’s facing and resume his college career,” Stoops said in the press release.

However, according to The Oklahoman, Fleming was suspended by the university due to academic misconduct.

The university handbook describes academic misconduct as “cheating from concealed notes on a midterm or final examination, altering a major assignment for re-grading, submitting all or substantial amounts of another student’s work as one’s own, or intentionally plagiarizing substantial portions of a term paper from online sources.”

This is Fleming’s second suspension for academic misconduct, the first coming two years ago when Fleming had to take classes at a junior college — again, during spring football — but was allowed to return to OU by the fall semester.

Oklahoma’s chance at a national title next season is legitimate.

The Sooners return a core group of players that boasts offensive weapons Landry Jones, Ryan Broyles and Roy Finch, with Tom Wort and Travis Lewis bulstering the defense.

But without Fleming in the mix, it will be hard to say how vulnerable the Sooners might be on defense.

It’s not out of the question for Fleming to return to Oklahoma academically eligible, but how many student-athletes would be given the kind of leeway Stoops appears to be giving Fleming?

Isn’t cheating supposed to be frowned upon by faculty, staff and coaches?

All signs point to Stoops welcoming Fleming back this fall.

Might he be “demoted” to a walk-on next season after missing an entire semester of school, weights, conditioning and practice?

It is highly doubtful.

Fleming is as good as advertised, but it seems patently unfair to allow him to be readmitted to the team as a scholarship athlete knowing he did not endure the rigors thousands of other student-athletes — most of them walk-ons — will this spring.

Even so, he has been suspended for academic misconduct not once but twice.

It is a privilege to attend college — be it as a student or student-athlete. Academic misconduct shows the student lacks the respect to do the work necessary to obtain a bachelor’s degree from this or any other school of higher learning.

If Fleming is readmitted, we can only hope that he is given a short leash that is given a tug every now and again to remind him of the privileged position he is in.

But that would mean Stoops is not prepared to tolerate any more of this kind of conduct from Fleming or any of his players.

Hopefully that is the case.

— RJ Young, professional writing graduate student