Bunuel wrote:
The football coach at a midwestern college noticed that some of his players were frequently late to morning football practices and seemed somewhat lethargic after they did arrive. He directed his assistant coach to look into the matter. The assistant coach reported back that most of the late and less active players belonged to fraternities on campus which were renowned for their frequent and latenight parties. The head coach then prohibited all of his football players from being members of fraternities. He reported that this would ensure that his players would get to practice on time and that they would have more productive practice sessions.
The head coach’s reasoning is not sound because he fails to establish which one of the following:
(A) He fails to establish a system to monitor his players’ fraternity membership and to impose penalties for those who do not follow his new rule.
(B) He fails to establish that his players are physically big and strong enough to be successful football players.
(C) He fails to establish that his new policy will ensure that at least some of his football players will go to bed at a more reasonable hour.
(D) He fails to establish that his best football players did not belong to fraternities anyway.
(E) He fails to establish that the success of the fraternity system will not suffer if the football players are precluded from becoming members.
Official Explanation
(A) No. This answer deals with enforcement of the new policy, not whether the new policy is likely to change the unwanted behavior in the first place.
(B) No. This answer is irrelevant to the issue — behavior the coach wishes to change.
(C) Yes. The coach assumes that if his players do not belong to fraternities, they will not have other distractions at night to keep them from getting a reasonable night’s sleep. Many other reasons may keep the players up late at night—non-fraternity parties, library research, part time jobs, etc.
(D) No. We know from the passage that only some of the football players were late and lethargic at practice and that many of these later players were fraternity
members. Perhaps his best players were fraternity members who showed up to practice on time, but we cannot tell this from the passage.
(E) No. This answer is also irrelevant to the issue. The impact of the coach’s rule upon the fraternity system is unimportant in this scenario.