Fumbling on Reform

...In all, three million inner city youths between 13 and 22 are dreaming of careers as professional athletes, many squandering their educations on basketball courts and football fields...

...Every member institution was mailed an "Institutional Self Study Guide" with step-by-step directions for self analysis in areas like "Institutional Purpose and Athletic Philosophy," "Finance," and "StudentAthlete Profiles...

...Maryland is as guilty of "exploiting" its athletes "as everyone else is," said Slaughter...

...The presidents wanted to take charge...

...Last year, for instance, school basketball star Cedric Henderson and the University of Georgia both were found guilty of recruiting violations...

...In August, Slaughter announced a plan to cancel three to six Maryland basketball games...

...As a result, the NCAA tries to make a big splash on petty, but clear violations...

...He concedes, however, that because colleges have been guaranteed confidentiality, no school names will be mentioned when the NCAA publishes the statistics...

...I've had a feeling for a long time that one of the problems with academic advising in athletic departments is that it is managed by athletic departments...

...A better reform might be the one suggested by Rep...

...In fact what they do is penalize athletes for their high school records while doing nothing to improve their athletes' education once they've entered college...

...FUMBLING ON REFORM by Malcolm Gladwell You may have thought college presidents were going to save the NCAA In reality, they are John Slaughter, University of Maryland's chancellor, strode into the college athletics crisis at his school like a newly elected reformer on a rampage to clean up city hall...

...I hope we will emerge as a stronger, more caring institution ." Slaughter's reaction to the Bias scandal begs one rather large question...

...Previously, scholarship athletes only had to post a 2.0 high school grade- point average...

...All of the data will be added to our research base and then will be made public," says Ted Tow, an assistant executive director of the NCAA...

...How many more would join them if college athletes were paid...

...The lethargic reaction of the nation's top college athletic reformer illustrates the weakness of the NCAA's entire approach to reforming intercollegiate athletics...

...But the approach is destined to fail, for most presidents have as much, if not more, interest in seeing a successful—i.e...

...James Howard of New Jersey, who introduced legislation last year requiring colleges to graduate 75 percent of their athletes on scholarship or lose the tax-deductible status of donations to their athletes...

...In 1984, a group led by the American Council of Education (ACE) and Derek Bok of Harvard, suggested that a special board of college presidents be set up within the NCAA with the power to suspend any NCAA rules that affect academic standards, finances, or the reputation of member colleges...

...The idea, says Harry Edwards, a sociologist at Berkeley, is a "cruel hoax ." Athletes on high school teams have about a 3 percent chance of getting a college scholarship...

...Every one of these measures boils down to a transfer of power from athletic directors to central administrators...

...Well that's not necessarily true...

...The bill set what were described as tough new standards for incoming student athletes...

...No other activity in our universities," says Harold Enarson, a former Ohio State University president, "not the liberal arts, not the science programs, and not our libraries, commands such deep and widespread public support ." There is one key difference between the athletic director and the president: while the athletic director has to think only about the win-loss record of the teams, a president must think of the "image" of the entire institution...

...I don't really care for those things," he says...

...And according to a 1984 NCAAcommissioned study, had the new requirements been around in 1977, 70 percent of black athletes who had graduated or were still trying in 1983 would never have been admitted to college in the first place...

...Cynics have even suggested that academic officials have used the "integrity crisis" to get their hands on previously autonomous athletic department budgets...

...It's no accident that the leaders of ACE's original reform proposals were the colleges with the most lucrative—and the most corrupt—athletic programs in the country: UCLA, Southern Methodist University, University of Southern California, University of Miami in Florida, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and University of Georgia, all of which were suspended by the NCAA for recruiting and academic violations...

...Slaughter proudly told reporters at the time, Malcolm Gladwell is a contributing editor of The American Spectator and a writer for Insight magazine...

...And little has changed since then...

...This is what happens when you let athletic departments run amok, he said...

...Almost a month before Bias died, Dick Dull, Maryland's athletic director, was short with reporters asking about the drug situation at Maryland...

...One out of every five Maryland athletes had either been given an academic warning or had been dismissed by the end of the 1984-85 academic year...

...Hey, we're all working our fannies off wrestling with drug problems...

...So a penalty would only be imposed if a president reported statistics that demonstrated a violation of existing NCAA regulations...

...But it is not a violation to have, say, only 8 percent of black athletes graduating, as the University of Georgia does or 18 percent of basketball players graduating, as the University of Texas does...

...It allows college presidents to make a strong stand for academic excellence, while imposing no new academic burdens on college athletes...

...A plan proposed by Slaughter and the NCAA president, Jack Davis, required colleges to pinpoint problems in recruiting, athletic finances, and academic standards...

...And Georgetown's 1981-84 stretch as one of the top basketball teams in the country coincided with a $34 million increase in alumni giving...

...Tow admits as much...

...In 1982 13 of the 17 schools on NCAA probation were there for what were relatively trivial recruiting violations...

...So it is unlikely any schools will be punished for their most important failings...

...Earlier this year they suspended Indiana basketball star Steve Alford for posing for a sorority charity calender...

...A teaching assistant, Kitty Saylor, claimed that she had been approached by athletic department officials who asked her to change an athlete's grade last year...

...The NCAA only asks that presidents give their word that they have completed the report and keep the document on file in the event of an actual investigation...

...Under Proposition 48, that requirement was boosted to a 2.0 average in 11 designated "core" high school courses and a minimum Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score of 700...

...During the suit, Tom Murphy, the speaker of the Georgia assembly, demanded a speedy resolution of the scandal to "get us off the front pages of all the nation's papers ." The postman dunks twice The NCAA has taken some actions against troubled schools...

...But he pledged that Maryland was going to reform...

...The private booster club at Clemson University, South Carolina's football powerhouse, raises about $5 million a year for the football team...

...That's not the best way to go...

...But Maxsom says he opposes any tougher national standards requiring higher graduation rates...

...That adds up to seven very undemanding quarters— in fact, seven quarters free of ever having to pass a course—and three years of NCAA-approved eligibility...

...Hell, 50 percent of doctors who graduate from medical school fall into the lower half of their class ." The University of Nevada-Las Vegas has taken many of the same steps...

...The already frayed myth of the role-model student-athletes and the caring schools that nurtured them was unraveling further...

...That would make schools sit up and listen, especially if it were accompanied by an across-the-board limit on playing and training time that would allow real academic work...

...Amid charges of improprieties by the NCAA, Southern Methodist University opened a $250,000 "athletic study and support facility" otherwise known as a "study hall," with rooms for football players to read books, use computers, and receive counseling...

...We're kidding ourselves, trying to make it more palatable to the academicians...

...When Jan Kemp's $2.5 million law suit uncovered a persistent pattern of academic abuses and gradefixing for athletes at the University of Georgia, Fred Davison, the school's president, indignantly stood by the football coach...

...Almost a month before Bias's death, Slaughter, as chairman of the Presidents' Commission of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), had announced a new plan to reform college sports by paying attention, at long last, to academic quality...

...The only thing going for Proposition 48 is its public relations value...

...winning—athletic program as anyone...

...The NCAA is not about to discover presidents eager to clamp down on those problems...

...Today, the typical college football player spends 49 hours a week during the season preparing for, participating in, and recovering from football games...

...Bill Atchley, the president of Clemson University, lost his job last March when he tried to fire the school's athletic director and reorganize the athletic department in the wake of a drug scandal...

...People always say that raising standards will automatically be good," said university spokesman Larry White...

...At the level we play, the boy is really an athlete first and a student second ." Outside the fraternity of college presidents and NCAA officials, there have been some radical suggestions about how to reform the business of college athletics...

...The chancellor of the University of Missouri at Columbia, Barbara Uehling, came under pressure from alumni to resign because she picked an athletic director who didn't live up to their expectations...

...These self studies are also confidential...

...College presidents are not, however, the great balancers of interests, but rather the chief cheerleaders and fundraisers...

...I see this as a major development that not only will assist presidents and chancellors in assuring control of their own programs, but also that will reemphasize their desire to clean up questionable practices, in general, in college athletics ." After the Len Bias affair and the new academic revelations, Slaughter was again reassuring...

...This has been talked about enough ." Even Slaughter's belated and limited response (he canceled just a few basketball games and didn't touch any other sports) came only after a month long barrage of negative press in Washington and Maryland that was deeply embarrassing to his administration and his school...

...The theory is that presidents are less subject than coaches and athletic directors to the pressures that produce cheating...

...It is not surprising, then, that the presidential reforms have been little more than cosmetic...

...The NCAA's enforcement division polices its 700 member-institutions with 12 full-time and 25 part-time staff members and a tiny $1.9 million budget...

...The NCAA knows this...

...The NCAA does have minimal course-load requirements and mandates that an athlete be moved toward a specific degree in his last two years...

...If anything, recommitment to that principle is needed...

...If you're talking about moral abuses, like inappropriately low graduation rates, well that's not against any rule so there's not much we can do about it ." The "self-study" required by the Presidents' Commission is equally ludicrous...

...Five out of the 12 players on the basketball team had flunked out last semester...

...Take the plan offered by the Presidents' Commission...

...Why has someone who over the past few years gained a national reputation as a reformer, taken until now to make any changes at his own school...

...Once there the average players play three years...

...He told the Board of Regents that the charges were a "myth" arising from widespread ignorance of university regulations...

...The players "will be counseled regarding their future conduct," Slaughter said at the time...

...When the University of Michigan pulls in $1.5 million for a soldout football game, it finances a bevy of less lucrative sports programs...

...We've got some hard work ahead...

...They studied ways to reform the organization and finally threw up their hands and said, 'there isn't any way to reform...

...But we'll have this review body independent of the lobbying that goes on in the NCAA and monitor what it does...

...Commission members swore they had the headaches and scandals of college sports licked...

...The scandals Slaughter says he abhors have, by all accounts, been going on for some time...

...But generally they benefit anyway...

...Schools are required to file an annual, independent financial audit with detailed information on The president of the University of Oklahoma proudly pledged last year to "develop an institution that the Oklahoma Sooners football team can be proud of...

...Slaughter entered with impeccable credentials to attack the problem...

...It's not uncommon," says Allen Sack, project director for the Center for Athlete's Rights and Education, "for football players to start practice in August, play their last game in January, begin pre-spring practice in February, finish spring practice in May, and immediately start weight training and running to prepare for August again ." Slaughter's plan to slightly trim the basketball schedule is a step in the right direction but curiously doesn't apply to football...

...The top 85 or 90 football programs in the country pay not just for themselves but for their school's entire athletic budget," says Chuck Neinas, president of the College Football Association, which represents the largest schools in setting up TV contracts...

...Those requirements only seem sensible...

...Bob Heddleston, University of Pittsburgh's athletic fundraiser, points out that "there is a direct relationship between winning programs and fundraising for the entire university...

...Let it sit for itself," he told them...

...Most of them have centered on the NCAA's pretensions toward amateurism...

...University presidents—many of them strapped for funds because of declining enrollment or shrinking government assistance—are not indifferent to this kind of money...

...But shorten the season...

...Once on a college team, the odds of making the pros drop to 1 percent...

...Hale Almond, attorney for the University of Georgia, argued that "we may not make a university student [out of an athlete], but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbage man" Cruel Hoax The NCAA can never properly address the problems of graduation and educational excellence until they pass strict limits on the scope of athletic programs...

...At the NCAA's 1984 convention in Dallas, a slightly watered-down version of that resolution established the 44-member Presidents' Commission, which has the power to review and recommend action on new rules and rules interpretation...

...Only once has the attention of the reform movement really gone beyond catching wayward boosters and college coaches, and that was in the recent debate over Proposition 48, which passed in January...

...The "reform," in other words, puts a roadblock in front of the group college presidents should be encouraging most: athletes with disadvantaged backgrounds who care enough about educating themselves to struggle towards graduation...

...Georgia's Fred Davison was fired as a result of the Jan Kemp controversy—not because he allowed corruption—but because he failed at public relations...

...Academic eligibility requirements need not be tightened, schools aren't forced to increase graduation rates, and the issue of educational excellence among college athletes can go back into hibernation...

...At Florida State University, the "Big Chiefs" booster club has, in just the last few years, picked up the tab for a student-athlete dorm, three stadium expansions, a swimming pool, a new track, and an athletic center, as well as a $100,000 bonus for football coach Bobby Bowden...

...Coaches and athletic directors are quick to justify this kind of academic fraud...

...On top of that, some were allowed to audit the same course up to three times before actually signing up...

...Only a few days after Len Bias died of cocaine intoxication in June, revelations about academic problems of University of Maryland athletes had hit the press...

...Sports should be bound to the university system as a means of subordinating athletic accomplishment, reminding both those on college teams and those yearning to be on them that their brains are, in the long run, more important than their brawn...

...The unit is so small that it rarely initiates investigations itself, relying instead on the press to bring scandals to its attention...

...Those educational leaders who try to take strong action run into a fierce front line: the regents and the trustees...

...Big chiefs, long seasons Ever since reform fever hit college athletics two years ago, college presidents all around the country have warmed to the idea that scandals are caused by athletic departments beyond academic supervision and therefore the key to reform is to take control of college sports away from the coaches and athletic directors...

...Today disadvantaged groups within American society—in particular the black community—are looking to athletic achievement as a means of social and economic advancement...

...But the actions haven't been across-the-board...

...Some have advocated that the NCAA admit that the athletes are semi-professional and pay them...

...Tighten eligibility rules...

...When the group called a meeting in New Orleans last year, college and university presidents turned up in droves, and pledged to pass stiff regulations governing recruiting, amateurism, academic standards, and ethics...

...They don't like the way the NCAA operates," said one ACE official...

...Many of Georgia's scholarship athletes were hidden away in non-credit, remedial programs where they were given as many as four chances to pass their classes...

...Just last spring Slaughter dealt with an investigation into drug use and shoplifting by two members of the women's basketball team by burying it...

...Given all the scandals that have plagued their basketball program," says a sportswriter with the Las Vegas Review Journal, "they can't afford not to have their nose clean ." Last year President Robert Maxsom, dismissed six football players for misconduct ranging from purse-snatching to burglary...

...That's more than a full-time job, and it goes year round...

...A few years ago, for example, they nailed UCLA for unlawfully giving a potential recruit a free T-shirt...

...revenues and expenditures for their athletic programs, as well as data on student-athlete admissions standards, academic progress, and the graduation rates...

...Yet there is a reason to keep trying to preserve the student-athlete...

...Perhaps if these steps were taken, the climate would be such that the president of the University of Oklahoma would have been laughed at, instead of cheered, when he pledged last year to "develop an institution that the Oklahoma Sooners football team can be proud of...

...Georgia's coaches were barred from off-campus recruiting for a year, and the school was forced to return 90 percent of its tournament proceeds from the previous season—a total of $254,880...

...Bear Bryant, the legendary Alabama football coach, once said: "I used to go along with the idea that football players on scholarship were student athletes...

...But Georgia took advantage of a loophole that allows remedial courses to count toward degree requirements...

...Tigers Unlimited, the Louisiana State university booster club, gave the school's administration $500,000 last year for faculty salaries...

...The operating principle of current reform strategies is that a college president is in the best position to balance the interests of academics and athletics...

...The association's president, Jack Davis, admits that high school test scores are not an accurate predictor of college performance, "especially among black males...

...Following Louisville's NCAA championship in 1980, alumni contributions to the school increased three- to four-fold...