For a while, at least, it looked as though student athletes might be required to behave like students.
Now that’s in jeopardy. A federal judge has thrown out the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s minimum test score requirement for athletic scholarships.
For now, at least, Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia has disrupted the NCAA’s efforts to force athletes heading for the NCAA’s top two competitive levels–Division I and Division II–to attend classes and crack open a book now and then.
Back in the early ’80s, a bunch of investigative reporters and other busybodies began to raise a fuss because a lot of student athletes were receiving high school diplomas that they couldn’t read and they were completing their college eligibility without being anywhere close to graduating.
That’s because many of these athletes were attending colleges where no one seriously expected them to attend a class.
It’s an old story, but this time the horror captured the public’s imagination. After all, the vast majority of student athletes end up back on the streets unemployed and, in too many cases, uneducated.
Some of the busybodies even suggested that if universities were not going to require their student athletes to behave like students, the institutions should pay their athletes like professionals, especially since the universities are making millions off of their talents.
Forestalling that potentially expensive prospect, the NCAA rode to the rescue with new rules commonly known as Proposition 48 or, in their latest incarnation, Proposition 16.
These new rules required–get this!–that students who wanted to play sports as college freshmen have a high school diploma!
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And, as if that were not enough, the NCAA also wanted a minimum standardized test score and grade-point average in 13 core academic courses!
The test score and the GPA were indexed against each other on a sliding scale, meaning you could get away with a lower test score if you had a high GPA or vice versa.
Either way, you had to have at least an 820 out of a possible 1,600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or a 68 (for a composite score of 17) on the American College Test or you would have to sit out your freshman year. You could practice with your team, but you couldn’t play.
Thanks to Judge Buckwalter’s ruling, our high schools and colleges can get back to doing what they do best, which is making money, which they call “revenue,” off the talents of semi-literate athletes, many of whom are too busy chasing a dream to chase an education.
Opponents of the new rules could hardly have asked for a more sympathetic pair of plaintiffs. Leatrice Shaw and Tai Kwan Cureton, were black seniors in Philadelphia’s Simon Gratz High School in 1996. They had GPAs of 3.5 and 2.8 respectively and finished in the top 10 percent of their 305-student class.
But neither scored above the minimum SAT score. The Washington-based Trial Lawyers for Public Justice sued the NCAA, charging that standardized test scores were racially discriminatory. They backed up their argument with statistics that showed African-Americans score disproportionately lower than whites with comparable grades and class standing.
Nevertheless, the judge agreed with the plaintiffs that the goal of raising student-athlete graduation rates probably could be accomplished without the SAT requirement. I hope it happens. But it sounds to me like the judge is giving up too easily. Call me naive but I still cling to the belief that black youths can compete with others in the academic arena as well as they do in the athletic arena, if they are given enough encouragement.
Unfortunately, too many of us give up too easily. We dumb down the standards instead of trying to smarten up the kids. The NCAA rules may not be perfect, but they were trying to raise the academic bar and challenge young athletes to achieve it, the same way their coaches challenge them to superhuman achievements on the courts and playing fields.
For a while, the new NCAA rules were causing good things to happen. High schools, their alumni and their athletes of all colors actually were starting to get serious about academics. The national culture that feeds high school athletics into the huge sports entertainment machine was slowly changing.
Who knows? Maybe something might have been done to attack the real problem, which is the substandard education too many African-American kids get in public schools.
Now all that’s been thrown into disarray until the judge’s ruling is stayed or overturned or the NCAA comes up with new rules.
Until then, universities are free to race to the academic bottom in their pursuit of new student athletes.
Too bad, but I guess that’s what happens when the NCAA tries to let a good education get in the way of playing games.