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Council on Intercollegiate Athletics meets at Vanderbilt
by Jim Patterson

Recommendations for new principles and rules to promote the academic integrity of college athletic programs will be finalized by faculty senate representatives from 28 Division IA colleges and universities during a Jan. 6-7 national meeting hosted by Vanderbilt.

The Council on Intercollegiate Athletics will debate and revise a draft document dealing with five areas: admissions, scholarships, curricular integrity, scheduling of competitions and academic advising. The proposed document can be read at the COIA Web site, www.math.umd.edu/~jmc/COIA/. Revisions made at the meeting will be presented to the full 43-senate membership of COIA for a final vote by e-mail.

“None of the values ascribed to college sports can be realized if we abandon the principle that personal development through athletics participation and academic achievement are linked,” COIA members say in the draft of recommendations. “Yet experience suggests that in many sports programs, academic goals are treated as subordinate, and in a variety of ways students are encouraged or enabled to let their athletics commitment undermine their academic work. To the degree that athletics undermines academic integrity, it reflects a cynical attitude toward the ideals of college sports and of higher education.”

COIA was formed in 2002 as a coalition of faculty senates from Division IA schools. It seeks to be a faculty voice in the national debate over the future of college sports. The meeting is believed to be the first time that representatives of elected faculty senates have joined together on a national basis to act on an issue of pressing concern. Voting representatives from the following institutions will attend: Alabama, Arkansas, Arkansas State, Cal State Fresno, Colorado, Connecticut, Duke, Georgia, Hawaii, Houston, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi State, Missouri, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Oregon, Penn State, South Carolina, Texas Christian University, Tennessee, Texas, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest and Washington State.

COIA members may propose that a small number of about 80 specific recommendations be adapted as NCAA bylaws. The majority are offered as “best practice” guidelines to be considered on a school-by-school basis.

Coverage of the conference will be posted Monday, Jan. 10.

well that's definitely the fox guarding the hen house!

Update from Meeting:

Reforms would monitor classes and grades
Teresa M. Walker / Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Members of the Coalition for Intercollegiate Athletics endorsed a proposal Friday that would protect time for classes by limiting sports seasons and fight academic fraud by monitoring student-athletes' courses and grades.

The plan also suggests changes to policies regarding admissions, scholarships, curricular integrity and academic advising of athletes.
"The student-athletes are sometimes victims," said Candace White, the faculty senate president at the University of Tennessee. "It's not that we're anti-athlete or anti-athletics. We're universities first, and the student-athletes are students first. From that perspective, I think these two days have been a great success."

The coalition, founded in 2002, is a group of faculty from 44 Division I-A colleges who are trying to reform college sports. Representatives from 26 universities, including Alabama, Ohio State, Wake Forest, Colorado and Texas A&M, helped fine-tune the proposal Thursday and Friday in a meeting at Vanderbilt University.

A final vote on the draft proposal by all the member schools is set for Feb. 27-28.

Robert Eno, co-chairman of the coalition's steering committee, said they have nearly 40 percent of the 117 Division I-A football schools in the coalition, with more to join soon. Working with presidents, the NCAA and athletic directors, Eno said faculty can help handle problems constructively.

"We took a step in that direction in the conference that we had today," he said.

The plan endorses three changes to NCAA bylaws that would allow individual colleges to collect information on which classes athletes are taking and their grades, eliminate divided competition seasons such as in baseball and replace one-year athletic scholarships with five-year scholarships reviewed annually.

Eno said he believes tracking class information will prove colleges do not have problems with academic fraud. But having the information will allow schools to investigate any cases, especially if they follow the plan's suggestion of setting up a system.

Scholarships is another big issue. Currently, athletes are given a scholarship for one year, which can be pulled if a coach finds a better candidate for the team.

The proposal would change NCAA bylaws and make it a five-year scholarship renewable on a year-by-year basis. Eno said the difference is that a student could expect the scholarship to continue each year and would only lose it after a decision by a school's top academic officer instead of an athletic department official.

Other proposals would prevent coaches from talking to instructors directly and instead would use academic advisers to avoid any intimidation.

The group postponed a couple issues for future discussion, including the idea of paying athletes. Still, White is happy with the progress already made.

"We can't continue in this direction, or we're going to have in effect semiprofessional teams being run by college campuses, particularly football," she said.