NCAA Reform

[50's PONY]

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Posted on Mon, Apr. 19, 2004



Reform on plate of NCAA


The Associated Press

For nearly two years, Todd Turner has worked to return academic integrity to college sports. For two months, David Berst has tried to rewrite recruiting rules.

Both are about to face a major test.

The NCAA Management Council meets today and Tuesday to consider sweeping proposals endorsed by NCAA president Myles Brand and designed to change the culture and image of intercollegiate athletics.

"Both are very critical areas for us," said council chairwoman Christine Plonsky, women's athletic director at Texas. "Common sense can prevail very, very easily. In the academic world, we're moving into a new direction."

Turner, a former Vanderbilt athletic director, heads a committee that developed an ambitious proposal to penalize schools when student-athletes consistently perform poorly in the classroom.

Berst, an NCAA vice president, oversees a panel examining recruiting rules. That group's ideas also will be discussed this week.

If the proposal from Turner's committee is passed by the council this week and approved by the NCAA Board of Directors on April 29, schools could be penalized as early as next year. The NCAA would look at graduation rates and general academic progress of athletes, assigning a score to each of the more than 6,000 Division I teams in all sports.

If a team then falls below a certain standard, which will be determined when data is collected from 2004-05, incremental penalties would include a warning letter, loss of scholarships, disqualification from NCAA tournaments and loss of money from NCAA championships. The penalty would increase each year, meaning a school would have to produce substandard results for four consecutive years to face the harshest penalty: loss of money.

If a school falls below the standard, and players who would have been academically ineligible the following year leave school, those scholarships would be lost for one year. Turner said there would be no limit on how many scholarships could be lost, although there would be an appeals process.






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© 2004 Star Telegram and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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[EastStang]

I have long hoped for some reform linked to graduation rates and hours passed by athletes. Hopefully, the NCAA will pass this. I would love to see OU, LSU, A&M, etc. just get hammered for this type of thing. This would get current non-qualifiers back into the JUCO system.

[ponyte]

Assume a miricle happens and some form of academic success is required of athletes in big name programs (Or any program). All the new rule would do is create a new wave of creative grading. New, advanced "Current Music Culture " majors would pop up in seconds.

The NCAA can't even enforce its current regulations much less a whole new wave of regulations.

[EastStang]

Perhaps you would get some creative majors, but generally changes to curriculum are tougher for schools to get through the academic and administrative types. Dumbing down the curriculum or having creative grading gets you much worse press than having losing a scholarship for poor graduation rates. No schools want to water down their diplomas. Which do you think would be worse press. "OSU loses a scholarship for not meeting graduation projections". Or "Student X, a graduate of OSU, is functionally illiterate".

[ponyte]

Lost scholarships and headlines of poor athletic performance affect donations and alumni support. Functionally illiterate athletes do not make the headlines. What is the difference between the now abysmal grad rate and a future improved grad rate with worthless majors?

Which has more implications for a program is of course up to the programs to decide. But based on the quality of grads non grads from many institutions, one would be hard pressed to see dramatic changes in academic improvement vs. a dumbed down curriculum. One can already see many creative majors that have little functional use. Why would a university feel compelled to limited worthless majors?

[Water Pony]

Do you mean other than academic credibility and the value of the diploma? We better hope that some of the playing field is leveled.

[gostangs]

ponyte is right - they will just work around it with more basketweaving (now offered online - no need to go to class!!). I have less then zero confidence in the NCAA to do anything - they have incentive to look like they are doing something and no incentive to do anything with teeth. And by the way - most football programs (especially the big money programs)already turn out only idiots - it will not make news if they set up more degree watered down majors - only an slight extension of what we have now.