A list of 571 men and 910 women sports-icons, 1,481 in total, hailing from Michigan State University (MSU) were honored by the United States Track and Field Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) last Monday, August 1, 2016, with the NCAA Awards Committee rumored to give follow-up awards. The honors were given to MSU's all-academic student-athletes who have shown diligence in both sports and academic careers.

The USTFCCCA's standards for honor was said to be tight for each university student. Thus, it requires that a student must have earned a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or better.Nevertheless, he/she must match up to any of the criteria. The criteria include records showing that the student participated in an indoor season, finished a regular season ranked in the national top 96, participated in any round of the NCAA Division and must have participated in any championships, preliminary rounds included, EKU Sports stated.

Marking the grand event, the NCAA Awards committee was reported to also give honor to the following academic-sports icons, MSU Spartans reported. 

As of the moment, the whole of NCAA is preparing for defense against the North Carolina allegations, News Observer  reported.

The male honorees are led by Riley Norman, Clark Ruiz, Noah Gary, Caleb Rhynard plus many others. Opposite, the females' list is front-lined by Shelby Jackson, Katelyn Daniels, Alexis Wiersma, Hannah Sailar, Lauren Churney, Lindsay Clark, Rachele Schulist, Katie Landwehr and many others. All honorees total to 1,481, MSU Spartans again reported.

Some of the top awardees are joggling multiple awards this season.One of the awards is the Big Ten Distinguished Scholar Honor which, in the case of Wiersma, has its criteria met with utter fit.

Meanwhile, the Michigan State University, East Lansing is encouraging student athletes to apply for advanced screening so that they will be given an academic-athletic support slot by the both the NCAA and the USTFCCCA during the academic season.