Excellent Reference To SMU

[50's PONY]

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Posted on Mon, Jan. 10, 2005



Put the emphasis on student-athlete

By Gil LeBreton
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Imagine a world without college football.

A world where old grads and Aggies and Orangebloods have nowhere to go on autumn Saturdays.

A world where Lee Corso has a real job ... at McDonald's.

A world where the best 20-year-old football athletes in the country go to college to ... well ... go to college.

No more big campus stadiums. No more million-dollar weight rooms. No more $2.5 million coaches.

No BCS contracts. No billion-dollar deals with CBS or ABC. No freshman running backs saying on TV that they should be paid, just like the athletic director, just like the history professors.

Imagine a world where, if your talents have merited that most precious of rewards, a full-tuition college scholarship, you're actually required to go to class, to make satisfactory progress, and to summarily earn a degree.

A dream world? Maybe.

The real world of college athletics is probably somewhere in between. An as-yet mythical land where grade-point averages and athletic budgets run peacefully hand-in-hand. A world where big-time athletics enhances, not embarrasses, the university mission.

A world where the athlete finally realizes that he's a "student-athlete."

Speaking at the 99th NCAA Convention at the Gaylord Texan Resort, the group's president, Myles Brand, tried to offer his annual "State of the Association" Saturday. Mixed messages abounded, but Brand deserves credit for trying.

To an outsider looking in, college athletics is too expensive, too misguided, too academically inconsistent and, in the matter of its head football coaches, too white to have its laundry washed and ironed in one 20-minute address.

Brand, for instance, warned of a day when television revenues will not be able to keep pace with rising athletic expenditures. But even as he spoke, there likely was fresh cement being poured in new field houses and coaches' offices throughout the land.

At this same NCAA Convention, the Big 12 is pushing for the addition of a 12th game for Division I-A football. This is the same group that yelps the loudest whenever a postseason college football playoff is mentioned.

The delegates will get no cynicism here, however, when they vote today to implement a sweeping academic reform package. The new standards will attempt to penalize schools whose athletes have not graduated or progressed toward a degree at a satisfactory rate.

It soon will no longer be enough that the star kid quarterback got into the state university. The kid is going to have to pass courses, take a full-time class load -- perform like a common student, of all things -- or the school could lose scholarships in coming years.

Penalties also will be attached to low graduation rates, and that could stir debates. Brand himself pointed out the inconsistencies Saturday in the way that the federal government has calculated a school's graduating rates. Student-athletes, he suggested, in many cases are already graduation at a higher rate than the student bodies at large.

That might be, but the student body at large doesn't have a five-year, full-ride scholarship -- a ride that often includes multi-million-dollar, athletes-only academic centers and special tutors. Grading on that curve, the Texas football team's 34 percent graduation rate is abysmal. Southern Cal, for what it's worth, graduated 58 percent. SMU's percentage was 64.

The SMU number is worth noting. The school paid a dear price in 1987 for its runaway football program.

The so-called "death penalty" produced the apparently desired effect. A proud school was brought to its knees, then regrouped, and has tried to take the responsible path back.

Sadly, throughout college football, it remains the road less taken.

An academic reform package without teeth is no better than a death penalty with a pardon from the governor.

[PlanoStang]

I guess that world was in, and before the sixties when I was in grade school. It was sure fun back then following the Stangs with my Dad who graduated SMU 50.

Now its just a money grab among the BCS schools who are trying to narrow down the competition.

[UConn/SMU]

I'm a free-market, conservative, Republican. But college football would be a lot more fun if the playing field was level. Something like a salary cap would be great, but I don't see anything like that on the horizon.

[NavyCrimson]

i'm free market also, however, there is nothing 'free market' about the ncaa now, its become a cartel & that is the furtherest thing from the 'free market' - good observation uconn

somewhat off subject; however, i always loved that movie: 'christmas in connecticut'!!!

one of my all time favorite christmas movies!!!

[MrMustang1965]

somewhat off subject; however, i always loved that movie: 'christmas in connecticut'!!!

one of my all time favorite christmas movies!!!

from Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) movie description:

Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country's most famous food writer. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an umarried New Yorker who can't even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroic sailor will spend his christmas on *her* farm. Miss Lane knows that her career is over if the truth comes out, but what can she do?