While we were at MSU in the early 90s, my roommate took Western Equitation - horseback riding. It was a 4-hour class that included a lab, but all they did every week was catch, saddle and ride horses. There was a textbook but he never bought it.
The class recorded one grade - a final exam - for all the points of course. The test nearly kicked his ***. He'd been taking the class to get 4 hours of easy A to average in, but was able to scrape a C on the exam because he'd grown up with horses and dealing with them was part of his life. He said there were other people in the exam completely freaking out - crying in the classroom, all that.
He himself was pissed as hell. Needless to say, the person teaching the class had never hinted the test would be anything like that. There really hadn't ever been any lecture - just how to put a saddle on a horse demoed once or twice at the beginning of the semester. After that, they just rode. The moral being, just because it's a sop subject, don't assume it'll come with a sop test.