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NCAA reforms or not I am proud of SMU for recruiting STUDENT-ATHLETES.

NCAA proposal could take away scholarships in 2005
Jan. 21, 2004
SportsLine.com wire reports

INDIANAPOLIS -- An estimated 10 percent of Division I teams could lose scholarships starting in the fall of 2005 if a broad academic reform proposal is approved by the NCAA in April.

The penalty would be enforced if an athlete leaves school while in poor academic standing. The team could award the scholarship to a walk-on, but would be prevented from recruiting a new player for one year.

"The penalty is that it does not allow you to have a competitive opportunity to recruit a student-athlete," said Todd Turner, whose committee recommended the penalties and rewards based on academic performance.

Turner said during a conference call Wednesday that the NCAA would collect data this year and next year before enforcing any new rules affecting the organization's 6,138 teams.

The NCAA Board of Directors must still approve the proposal at an April 29 meeting before it could take effect.

Teams could also avoid a penalty if their academic progress rate -- a formula used to determine progress toward graduation -- is high enough.

Todd Petr, the NCAA's managing director of research, said about one-third of all teams could be affected by the penalty, based on current figures. But only about 10 percent of all teams would be sanctioned.

"If you lost one kid in five years, you wouldn't necessarily be subjected to it if you were good enough with the annual academic progress rate," Petr said.

The legislation also requires schools to take the penalty at the earliest possible opportunity.

"It affects any team that has a student who decides not to return, turns pro early or leaves to work on the family farm," said Diane Dickman, managing director of membership services.

If the loss of scholarships affects a school's Title IX compliance, a school could file an appeal to be reinstated, said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president for membership services.

Approved in 1972, Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex by any school that receives federal money.

The academic reform proposal now before the NCAA would begin penalizing teams more severely in 2007 for consistently poor academic performances. The standards have not yet been determined because the NCAA is still collecting data.

If the proposal is approved, the NCAA will judge schools on two key components -- graduation success and academic progress.

The new graduation calculation would not count transfers against the success rate but would likely consider whether the student left school in good academic standing.

Under federal guidelines, the school from which a student leaves is penalized, while any school the student transfers to is not credited with his or her graduation.

Schools in violation of the proposed policy could receive an increasingly harsher penalty each year, from warning letters to ineligibility for postseason play and the loss of money from NCAA championship events.

Should the pattern continue for four consecutive years, schools could face the most severe penalty -- the loss of NCAA money -- although Turner has said he didn't expect any school to reach that level.

Turner said warning letters would be sent in the fall of 2007, although the most significant penalties would not be enforced until 2008-09.

But NCAA officials remain hopeful that universities will never face the most severe sanctions.

"What I expect to happen is that there will be a transitionary period," president Myles Brand said. "My full expectation is that behavior will change and academics will become much more important than it is now."

This will never happen. Between academics and arrest, U of Ark would not be able to field any men's teams.

LSU would be in a similar shape. OU, OSU and of course WAC power FSU would be just the tip of the iceberg of academic anemia in NCAA men's sports.

I think it would be a huge boost to SMU as we would move up from crummy to mediocre. And as crummy as we have been over the last 15 years i would be very happy with mediocre.

while there may be good intentions behind this rule, it will only serve to widen the competitive gap between the public and private universities. If the scholarship of an "academic casualty" can be handed to a walk-on, who do you think is going to have the greater number of walk-ons to choose from? The expensive private school or the much more affordable public school? Either that or it will encourage those schools that can afford it to endow more basket weaving majors to ensure continuity in their programs. Advantage state supported universities once again. What a crock!

Charlston Pony -

I thought about some of the points you made.

CP wrote: If the scholarship of an "academic casualty" can be handed to a walk-on, who do you think is going to have the greater number of walk-ons to choose from? The expensive private school or the much more affordable public school?

In this NCAA scenario handing a scholarship to a walk-on means the walk-on is already a matriculated student. With only a handful of recruited players scholarships potentially being transferred to walk-ons size of the student body isn't too significant. Rice is an exception but most D-1A football schools have at least a few thousand male undergraduates.

I'd guess that the top three to five walk-ons from SMU's total undergraduate male population would be as effective as varsity football players as the top three to five at UT or TT.

Walk-ons gaining scholarships would probably be seen as practice squad fillers unless one or two are recognized as exceptional athletes who deserve playing time.

Large state universities could have a minor advantage if they have a strong annual "invited walk-ons" program.

CP wrote: Either that or it will encourage those schools that can afford it to endow more basket weaving majors to ensure continuity in their programs.

My previous searches (out of curiosity) convinced me that "those schools" already have all of the basket weaving type majors they will ever need. As we know, they already use them to keep numbers of their athletes eligible.

Losers could possibly be the recruited players who just don't have what it takes to remain academically eligible at the most lenient of schools in the easiest of "academic" programs. Their loss would be the walk-ons gain.

Overall, I agree with your assessment - What a crock! - the NCAA won't derail the powerful locomotive that the large BCS type schools operate.

well if it really penalized a school from recruiting an additional player for an entire year after he left it could have a significant effect on the number of scholarships a school could give in a particular year. The effect would be much more important if it came off the 85 man limit than it would if it came off the 25 man limit. There are many schools like UT that have been known to "suggest" that as many as 5-7 recruits move along if they don't figure in their plans. The walk-on is not likely to be near the quality of the recruited player a UT might bring in. There's another story out today-I saw it earlier on the MWC board about the new 20-40-60-80% academic progress rules that somethink will devast those schools relying on JUCOs unless they are focused on the academic requirements they need to qualify at a Division 1A school. Those are the big changes that are upon us-but they coincide with changes in the non/partial qualifier rules which promise to make to much easier for these same academic risks to go directly to Division 1A rather than the JUCO route. For example a kid with a 600 SAT but a quaklifier core GPA may now be able to go directly to Division 1A while in the past they were relagated to JUCOs. The equation is changing-no doubt if those measures go into law as proposed.