A simple proposal designed to strengthen college admission standards for athletes caused a firestorm in the athletic community last week. It exposed some of the hypocrisies in big-time college sport, underlining again the potential contradictions in the term student-athlete.
The controversy put the spotlight on American universities` practice of admitting many talented athletes by a different standard than that used for other students. This practice has been supported by many coaches and administrators because, they contend, it offers the only opportunity for some children of low-income families to attend college.
The proposal, known as Proposal 42, appears sure to die when the National Collegiate Athletic Association has its next annual convention a year from now. What will not die, however, is the question of whether athletes who are not qualified under normal admissions standards should attend universities.
”In my judgment, the purpose of American universities is to educate, and they should not be admitting any student who potentially cannot do the work,” said James Crouse, a University of Delaware education professor.
The NCAA`s member institutions thought they were addressing the issue of whether students were ready for college-level work when they passed both Proposal 42 two weeks ago and its related predecessor, Proposition 48, in 1983.
But both have been seen as tinged with racial overtones, which raised emotions and resulted in the rhetoric still flowing from the nation`s high school and college campuses.
The furor surrounding Proposal 42 obscured issues that will most certainly linger long after the current controversy recedes from the headlines. Paramount among them is whether standards must be lowered to admit the athletes who become the backbone of NCAA Division I football and basketball teams. These students, an estimated 300 a year in the two major sports alone, get what is in effect a remedial year to reach par with their classmates and gain eligibility to compete in sports.
”It is not unusual for colleges to lower standards to admit a group of students. If no women applied, colleges would certainly change standards to attract them,” Crouse said.
”It is not unreasonable to expect universities similarly to lower standards to get a better football or basketball team, but should they lower standards so low that these people have a poor chance of getting a degree? I think that`s wrong.”
The national champion football team, the University of Notre Dame, has a quarterback who sat out one year because his high school academic credentials fell short of the standards established by Proposition 48. The University of Illinois basketball team, No. 1 in the nation, has three players who were sidelined a year by failure to meet those standards. The remedial year worked for them.
Nevertheless, their credentials may have been affected by the quality of inner-city high school education and the alleged bias of the American College Testing (ACT) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).
Defining who should be in college is, outside of sports, left to the discretion of each university. In the case of sports, universities agree to abide by NCAA standards in the interest of maintaining competitive balance. Even those standards have been frequently dismissed as laughable.
Such criticism led the NCAA to pass Proposition 48, which took effect with the class entering college in 1986. It stated that an athlete, to be eligible as a freshman, must (1) be a high school graduate; (2) have a 2.0 (C) grade point average in an 11-course core curriculum; and (3) have scored 700
(out of a possible 1,600) on the SAT or 15 (out of a possible 36) on the ACT.
If he (or she) failed to meet those standards, he would not be eligible to play or practice with a college team his freshman year. He would, however, be eligible for a scholarship if his overall high school grade point average was 2.0.
As a group, these student-athletes came to be known as Prop 48s, and NCAA statistics show that 1,056 of them were admitted to universities in 1986 and
`87. With the jury still out on their total collegiate performance-and therefore on Proposition 48-the NCAA voted to tighten the requirements.
That was the intention of Proposal 42, introduced by the Southeastern Conference at the recent NCAA convention in San Francisco. When first voted on, it failed by 8 votes (159-151). Reconsidered a day later, it passed by nine (163-154). It is scheduled to take effect with the class entering college in 1990.
It states, simply, that while a student failing to meet all the requirements of Proposition 48 could still be admitted to school, he would no longer be eligible for a scholarship. He could pay his own way, but that was an option many felt would not be available to a majority of Prop 48s.
”I would have to say that big-time, Division I, revenue-making sports are beyond redemption,” said Robert Negronida, the head college counselor at Evanston Township High School. ”I think the proposal is merely to take the heat off of them by saying, `We are not supporting using up disadvantaged kids and then throwing them on the societal junk heap.` ”
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Some people felt that Proposal 42 would dump more student-athletes onto that junk heap. Three prominent black basketball coaches took particularly tough stands.
Temple`s John Chaney, asserting that most Prop 48s are poor blacks, characterized the proposal as racist. Georgetown`s John Thompson walked off the court before his Hoyas` game with Boston College and did not return until NCAA officials agreed to postpone implementation of Proposal 42. Minnesota`s Clem Haskins declared that supporters of the proposal ”don`t know what it`s like to go to school with their bellies growling.”
Frederick P. Whiddon, president of the University of South Alabama, reacted to those charges with equal emotion.
”The opposition makes it appear that all those who supported the proposal are totally insensitive to the education of minorities,” Whiddon said. ”I voted for it because I don`t want to see illiterate people carried along as a subculture within a university made to play for people`s amusement and then cast out to wind up back at the carwash.
”Those people who would exploit youngsters in that way-I call them racist.”
Former black tennis star Arthur Ashe echoed Whiddon`s sentiments. Ashe and prominent black sociologist Harry Edwards are among those who insist that raising standards is the only way to help educationally deficient students, as long as they are provided the means to meet the newer standards.
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Scandals have long surrounded college sports, and tales of cheating and chicanery are now as familiar as box scores. Many of them detail the educational deficiencies of supposed student-athletes who are admitted to college, spoon-fed meaningless courses and then discarded on the ash heap once their eligibility is up.
That is, however, often just the final stop on a journey that begins much earlier, that begins when the player first flashes a precocious physical talent. For some, that happens as early as grade school. No matter when it comes, the body-and not the mind-is then perceived as the route to fame, glory and riches.
The physical talent is then nurtured at the expense of studies. While that helps the player`s jump shot, it often leaves his reading level rooted at ground level.
”Some of these kids want to be professional athletes, and that`s what they`re going for,” says Bob Hambric, basketball coach at Chicago`s Simeon High School.
”Academics mean nothing to them. They can identify folks from their schools playing in the NBA and NFL. They say `It could be me,` and it could.” The NCAA took half-hearted aim at that attitude with the passage of Proposition 48. The rule`s goal, quite clearly, was to push prospective collegiate athletes to pay attention to their books. Its effect, not surprisingly, was to spark a debate that is still ongoing.
The primary focuses of the debate are the SAT and the ACT, college entrance exams that many feel are biased in favor of suburbia. That contention is made by educators and coaches, high school and college, black and white, and while their charges have never been proved conclusively, statistics seem to affirm their feelings. Last year, black students across the U.S. averaged 737 on the SAT; their white counterparts, 934.
”That test,” says Hambric, ”is a test of life experience. It`s not like studying for a spelling test.”
”I have a concern about standardized testing, particularly as that testing applies to children who have not had access to the best education,”
adds Judith Berry Griffin, president of A Better Chance. The Boston-based program places inner-city students who show academic promise in prestigious private and public schools throughout the nation.
”I am idealistic enough to believe if a student gets an opportunity to go to school, that is better than not getting that opportunity.”
Harvard University President Derek Bok, who favors Proposition 48, but not Proposal 42, disagrees with the contention that the tests are biased. He said there is ”no adequate evidence that the SAT is culturally biased in predicting success in college.”
There is also no evidence that 700 is a magic number predicting a capacity to do college work. The NCAA, in fact, has never explained why it chose that figure as its cutoff point. The seeming arbitrariness of that standard is only furthered by the 30-point margin of error built into the SAT. To meet the 700 requirement, which represents a combined verbal and math score, students have to correctly answer only 21 percent of 145 questions. Though that task may not seem unsurmountable to most students, that figure is just 37 points lower than the average score of all black students.
The average score for blacks on the ACT last year was 13.6, which is 1.4 points lower than Proposition 48 standards and 5.2 points lower than the average score for white students. Only 8 of the 64 Chicago public high schools reported average ACT results of 15 or higher.
”Our high school (ACT) average is 9,” says King High School basketball coach Landon Cox. ”So they`re asking them (his athletes) to do more than what the average kid (at King) does off the bat.”
It is not surprising, then, that blacks have been most affected by Proposition 48. Some fail to achieve the required average in the core courses: three years of English; two years of math; two years of social science; two years of science; and two elective units. But the vast majority of Proposition 48 students failed the test.
In the fall of 1986, the first year Proposition 48 was in effect, 250 colleges responded to a voluntary NCAA survey and reported 400 blacks among their 599 ineligible athletes; of those 400, 342 failed to meet the test score. A year later, when 202 schools responded, there were 297 Prop 48 blacks among the 457 reported; 265 fell short of the test requirement.
The percentages were even more stark in football and men`s basketball, which accounted for 53 percent of all Prop 48s. Of the 410 football players reported, 84 percent were black. Of the 150 basketball players, 92 percent were black.
Since the oldest of these Prop 48s are in only their third year of college, there are no statistics showing whether the policy is successful. But, already, there are opinions.
”The evidence is very clear that Proposition 48 is working,” said University of Illinois President Stanley O. Ikenberry. ”It is sending a clear message to high schools, a more helpful message to young people and exerting a tighter discipline on 3,000 colleges and universities.”
”It has made a distinct difference in the attitudes of our athletes,”
said East Aurora High Principal Gordon Postlewaite, whose school`s enrollment is 60 percent minority. ”There have been far too many who have gone to college for participatory sports rather than education.”
A number of universities, including many in the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conferences, contended they were also concerned about education when-on their own-they decided some 18 months ago not to give scholarships to partial- qualifiers. By a 9-1 vote last spring, SEC members agreed to propose legislation at the next NCAA convention that would impose that standard on the rest of the nation`s universities.
The conference contended it was staking out a higher moral ground. Skeptics contend the conference introduced that legislation, which became Proposal 42, because its self-imposed standard had made recruiting difficult for its schools.
”It was absolutely self-interest,” said Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Gene Corrigan. ”People go to an NCAA meeting and look at legislation from the standpoint of, `What is there that will level the playing field for me and my conference?` They don`t get caught up in social issues. These are practical people.”
Some contend competitive balance is not the only area of colleges` self-interest. Winning games and making money is even more important, this body of detractors says.
”But if the purpose is to make money, it would seem to me a more candid approach is necessary,” said the University of Delaware`s Crouse. ”If these teams are serving as the farm clubs or minor leagues for the NFL or NBA, the schools should simply hire them as professional athletes.”
A majority of Prop 48s are minority students. Minority students are more likely to come from low-income homes. Denying them a scholarship, therefore, effectively denies some the chance to go to the college of their choice-and, for some, to any college at all.
”Enactment of 42 might bring temporary praise from our critics,” said Michigan State University President John DiBiaggio. ”But in the long run, it would open us to legitimate criticism for turning our backs on some who deserve the opportunity to fulfill a dream.”
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Notre Dame quarterback Tony Rice, a Prop 48 who led the Irish to the national title, stands as an example of what is and what could have been. ”It would have been out of the question” for him to afford Notre Dame, said W.L. Varner, Rice`s coach at Woodruff High School in Spartanburg, S.C.
”It would have been a struggle for him to go to school even here. Tony and his grandmother (who reared him) would have scraped and borrowed and found a way to do that somehow. But you`re talking about $500-a-semester to commute to Spartanburg Methodist Junior College.
”I`m sure Tony would have gone to school someplace, but it would have altered everything that has happened to him since.”
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John Thompson, who has not yet coached a Prop 48, spent a week lobbying for future students like Rice. He was supported by a vast majority of his counterparts-including athletic officials at Notre Dame, who, ironically, now say they are no longer accepting Prop 48s.
Some, like Thompson, saw it as legislation that denied opportunities to needy students in the interest of saving schools an estimated $6 million annually in scholarship money. Others contended it would encourage prospective student-athletes to cheat on entrance exams or to find willing alumni to pay their way illegally.
Federal or state aid would be available to nonqualifiers under Proposal 42, but not aid controlled by the institutions themselves, and that created other opposition.
Finally, many felt it was too soon to toughen Proposition 48. ”I think,” said the ACC`s Corrigan, ”the sentiment now will be to let Proposition 48 run five years and then make a decision based on the complete experience of at least one class.”
The lobbying and criticism had their desired effect. Just eight days after Proposal 42 was passed, its implementation was endangered when NCAA President Albert M. Witte and Presidents Commission Chairman Martin Massengale agreed that it was precipitous to change Proposition 48 without evidence of its effectiveness.
But no matter what that evidence shows, and no matter what future proposals are offered, the larger issue is sure to remain.