TDG News 3-20-08
Wow—lots of great stuff the past couple weeks. If you have not read the outstanding reporting of the Ann Arbor
news regarding the University of Michigan athletic department and eligibility maintenance—you must when you have
a chance. There are so many articles I am only providing the link. There are also some other great articles, many in
response to the Michigan stories. Don’t forget the upcoming CSRI conference and RMH Awards Dinner. We look
forward to seeing everyone at the annual meeting on Friday April 15th where we will vote on the new dues structure,
revised proposals, and a new Executive committee and Executive Director as I am stepping down to ex-officio. I am
off to spring break.
Keep up the fight.
Dave
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www.mlive.com/wolverines/academics
Coleman: We did nothing wrong
Report questioning use of independent study courses drives infighting among professors
By Jacob Smilovitz, Daily Staff Reporter on 3/18/08
In an interview yesterday, University President Mary Sue Coleman said she was "disappointed" with a story in a local
newspaper that said University officials steered hundreds of student-athletes toward taking independent study
courses taught by Psychology Prof. John Hagen.
The story, which was published in the Sunday's edition of The Ann Arbor News, suggested that Hagen's classes
weren't rigorously graded and that little work was required in them.
"I'm disappointed in the story because I think it's pretty clear that the University's been very proactive," Coleman
said. "If anything comes to our attention, of course, we always investigate it."
The report found that of the 294 independent study courses Hagen taught between fall 2004 and fall 2007, 251
were with student-athletes. The News also reported that student-athletes averaged higher GPAs in Hagen-taught
courses than in other classes. The article reported that 21 student-athletes averaged a 3.63 GPA in 32 of Hagen's
courses - 25 of which were independent study classes, while the same student-athletes carried just a 2.57 GPA in
other courses.
Coleman said she stood by Hagen despite the story's suggestions, citing two University investigations of his classes
that found no wrongdoing.
"When the Provost's office was alerted that The Ann Arbor News had an interest in Professor Hagen, there was
another investigation by the LSA and by the Executive Committee of the department," Coleman said. "In both cases,
it was that he followed all the rules and everything was fine. And I believe that. I think that he's a distinguished
professor and I don't think there's any evidence that he's done anything wrong."
When asked whether she had any concerns about Hagen's independent study courses, Coleman said she didn't.
The Ann Arbor News story has also spurred discussion and infighting within the Department of Psychology.
Psychology Prof. Scott Paris, who first brought Hagen's courses to the department's attention, has drawn scrutiny
from some colleagues for bringing the issue to light. Paris was also quoted in The News's story.
The Michigan Daily obtained an e-mail message yesterday sent by Bill McKeachie, professor emeritus of the
psychology department, to the entire department, saying he was "aghast" that Prof. Paris would allege academic
misconduct by Hagen. He called the allegation "a crazy destructive thing."
Paris then responded to McKeachie's message in an e-mail visible to the whole department. In the message, he
wrote that he perceived a "'crazy destructive thing'" happening within the department, leading him to raise questions
about Hagen's independent study courses.
"I did not reply to those reports, I never said a disparaging word about John, and I did not write the story in the Ann
Arbor News," Paris wrote. "If being concerned about academic integrity in the department, and following standard
procedures for reporting those concerns, 'burns my bridges' at UM, it will be unfortunate, but I chose to follow my
principles about teaching at UM. I can live with that, and hope my colleagues can also."
Contacted by phone last night, Paris declined comment, saying he wanted to distance himself from The Ann Arbor
News' story.
Theresa Lee, who chairs the Department of Psychology, said she thought McKeachie might have sent the e-mail to
the entire department by mistake, hitting "Reply to all" instead of "Reply."
Nonetheless, Lee sent an e-mail after the exchange between McKeachie and Paris to say "that this was not an
appropriate forum for this argument to take place" and that "the rest of the department doesn't want to see flames
thrown between professors."
- Daily News Editor Andy Kroll contributed to this report.
Diverging routes
Karl Stampfl, U. Michigan Daily, 17 March 2008
What if this were the schedule for the 2008 Michigan football team?
Kenyon, Wabash, Elmhurst, Oberlin, Macalester, Denison, Case, Washington (Mo.) and Carnegie Mellon.
Of course, it isn't. It's the schedule for the Division III University of Chicago Maroons, which used to be one of college
football's powerhouses.
Chicago also used to be one of Michigan's biggest rivals. The two teams competed at the turn of the century in the
Western Conference (does "champions of the West" sound familiar?), which was later known as the Big Ten
Conference. They traded conference championships for decades. In 1898, a Michigan student composed "The
Victors" on the way back from a one-point victory over the Maroons.
Chicago was the Ohio State of the early 20th century - albeit with a better academic reputation. The two
heavyweights competed in the classroom and on the gridiron. They were a perfect match in both arenas.
Football was a serious pursuit at Chicago. Almost two years before the school held its first class, it hired a football
coach and athletic director, Amos Alonzo Stagg. Stagg pioneered the center snap and the "T" formation, now
common in sports vernacular. On the day of the school's first class, Oct. 1, 1892, Stagg also held the Maroons' first
football practice.
From 1899 to 1924, Chicago team captured six conference titles in football. It won the 1905 national championship.
In all sports combined, the school won or shared 71 Big Ten championships. It produced the first Heisman Trophy
winner, Jay Berwanger, in 1935.
So why are the Maroons opening their 2008 season with Kenyon - a slightly lesser known Ohio football team than
the one in Columbus - when Michigan is opening its campaign against Utah, which produced the top pick in the 2005
NFL draft?
Because in 1939, Robert Maynard Hutchins, then-president of the University of Chicago, decided to eliminate the
football program. He saw it as a distraction from the true mission of the university. One of higher education's most
idealistic figures - his seminal work is titled "The University of Utopia" - Hutchins had the vision seven decades ago
to anticipate the goliath distraction that Division I athletics would soon become.
When Hutchins made the unpopular decision to cut the football team before it became too powerful to control, the
fates of the universities of Michigan and Chicago began to diverge. Today, both are easily among the Midwest's
premiere colleges. But at Chicago - which is considered to offer the superior education, especially at the
undergraduate level - athletics don't share the spotlight with academics in the same way that they do at Michigan.
There's a different culture.
University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer does not have to deal with the same issues that University of
Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman does, for instance. Wouldn't it be nice if the central administration spent
more of its time worrying about whether professors are concentrating on undergraduates and less about whether
the Big House remains the largest college football stadium in the country?
In Ann Arbor, the talk of campus this week will be The Ann Arbor News's report about how athletes are funneled into
an independent study course taught by Psychology Prof. John Hagen, which offers them an easy A for minimal work.
In Hyde Park, what will they be talking about? Probably not Terrelle Pryor.
The Division I athletic program has given this university a lot. It's a wonderful thing for the Michigan community to
come together seven or eight Saturdays a year, and a lot of athletes get unparalleled educations in the classroom
and on the field.
But I'll leave you with a couple of questions: Why is it that when average Americans think of one of the world's top
higher institutions of higher education, the University of Chicago, most think of economics or the Nobel Prize?
And why is it that when they think of another of the world's finest schools, the University of Michigan, most think of
sports?
Some question NCAA's ticket-market ties
Profits from trading reservations online make some question firstdibz.com partnership
By Mark Alesia, mark.alesia@indystar.com, March 17, 2008
It's like playing the stock market, or, some economists say, gambling. It's also sponsored by -- and profits -- the
NCAA, which takes a firm public stance against gambling.
It's an online trading market that offers a novel way to buy tickets to the men's basketball Final Four -- or rather,
"reservations" for tickets. The reservations are tied to particular teams, and if the team makes it that far, the
reservation holder can buy tickets at face-value prices.
The NCAA, in its first year of a formalized partnership with firstdibz.com after two pilot years, says the goal is to get
Final Four tickets into the hands of true fans, for a reasonable price.
Some reservations start as low as $20 this year, and even though the money isn't applied to the cost of the tickets --
and isn't refunded if the team fails to reach the Final Four -- that's a tiny markup compared to what scalpers
demand. For instance, fans who bought a $16 reservation for LSU in 2006 effectively ended up getting a $140 Final
Four ticket for $156 when the surprising Tigers made it that far.
But it's another facet of the system that raises eyebrows: a 24-hour online trading market, where people can sell
their reservations -- for profit -- "as the games take place and as baskets are made," firstdibz.com president Daniel
Lotzof said.
Trading continues until the Final Four teams are determined, and the money can get steep: The last trade on those
$16 LSU reservations went for $800. Firstdibz.com collects a total of 17 percent of each trade, and the NCAA
benefits "depending on economic activity," according to Greg Shaheen, senior vice president for basketball and
business strategies for the Indianapolis-based college sports organization.
In other words, the more trades, the more money that goes to firstdibz.com -- and, to an extent it wouldn't divulge,
the NCAA.
There's another player as well: CBS. In June, the network, which pays the NCAA more than $6 billion over 11 years
to televise the NCAA tournament, announced an investment in the ticket company, then called Ticket Reserve.
Clemson University economics professor Raymond Sauer, who founded The Sports Economist blog, said playing the
market on firstdibz.com is gambling. That's because, he says, people trading for profit win or lose based on a team's
performance on the floor, and firstdibz..com takes a cut of each trade.
"There's no difference whatsoever," Sauer said. "It may be the vigorish -- (firstdibz.com's) take on the action -- is
maybe bigger than what a bookie would take. But fundamentally, the transactions are only different in that the end
point is the right to buy a ticket.. Through the rest of the trading period, it's money transactions, which is exactly
what happens with a bookie."
Kevin Lennon, the NCAA's vice president for membership services, said the "motives have been pure" in the
relationship with firstdibz.com, and that the NCAA is using a lawful business to keep up with an evolving ticket
market. Yet he acknowledged "potential abuses," including reservations being used "as a commodity, for profit, to
sell in a systemic way that runs against the principles we tried to establish by getting into this arrangement."
After first being contacted about this story last month, Lennon said, the NCAA notified schools that athletes and
athletic department staff should not sell ticket reservations for a profit.
He said he will bring up the issue to the NCAA's rule-makers for more guidance.
"Gambling is an important issue for the NCAA, there's no question about that," Lennon said. "But I don't know if
we're ready to make that leap and say this is in fact gambling, or violates (NCAA rules). . . . We'll respond to the
membership's wishes."
For alma mater, or cash?
The seeds of the partnership were planted around 2004, according to Shaheen. That year, an NCAA study
estimated the scalping, or "secondary," market for Final Four tickets to be $30 million. The NCAA made $5 million
from ticket sales.
"Unsanctioned methods were earning six times what we were to stage the event," Shaheen said.
That helped spark an effort that continues to this day to find innovative ways for the NCAA to earn money while
keeping tickets affordable. A pilot program with Ticket Reserve started in 2006, using 1,000 tickets, according to a
company executive.
Neither side would say how many tickets are in play this season, but the arrangement has evolved into a formal
agreement, with firstdibz.com. being linked to from NCAA-sponsored Web sites.
Shaheen is staunch in his opinion that this has nothing to do with gambling. He also said feedback from fans has
been extremely positive, largely because it's an NCAA-sanctioned program and fans aren't "worrying about whether
or not they were going to get tickets" and wouldn't have to "buy them on the street." People who purchase tickets
through firstdibz.com have to pick them up at will call on the day of the semifinals.
Yet firstdibz.com, located in Chicago, has been referred to as a money-making vehicle, not simply a means to get a
ticket to watch the dear old alma mater. Some of the references have come from the company's own employees.
In 2006, Executive Vice President Andy Leach said in Penn State's student newspaper, "About 15 percent of our
users are traders. They don't necessarily buy teams they have a passion for. They just buy teams they think maybe
are a little underrated . . . and sell them.."
In a Boston College student newspaper story that was posted on firstdibz.com, Robert Hamilton, the vice president
of marketing, is quoted, using the example of someone buying a George Mason reservation for $5 in 2006 before
that team's unlikely run to the Final Four.
"Someone else out there might determine that they're willing to pay $75 for a chance at tickets," he said. "So the
original holder could sell it at a substantial profit."
The stakes can go much higher.
This year, reservations for several teams already have traded for more than $200. As of Sunday, lower-level
reservations for No. 1-ranked North Carolina had sold for $488 after starting at $250. Should the Tar Heels reach
the Final Four, that $488 would bring the right to buy a $220 ticket, which is good for the semifinals and finals.
And there's plenty of trading time left..
Playing on fans' emotions
On the bottom of this year's official bracket for the NCAA Tournament -- the king of all events for low-stakes office
pools -- it says, "The NCAA opposes all sports wagering. This bracket should not be used for sweepstakes,
contests, office pools or other gambling activities."
That's just one way the NCAA makes its anti-gambling stance public. The organization devotes a department to
gambling, amateurism and agent issues, and lobbies Congress for anti-gambling legislation.
A Web site called dontbetonit.org, targeted toward athletes and sponsored by the NCAA, features CBS commentator
Clark Kellogg giving a spirited warning about the dangers of gambling while explaining NCAA rules on the subject.
One of the warnings: "No wagers for any item -- money, dinner, T-shirt, hat, whatever else you might use in a wager
-- on any professional or college sports event, even those that don't involve your college."
Does promoting a business that lets people play the ticket market, and then profiting from their transactions, square
with that?
Michael Wenz, an economics professor at Winona (Minn.) State who has blogged about firstdibz.com, said, "There
certainly is a gambling component to it, especially since you can buy and sell contracts all the way up until the
event."
But, Wenz added, "I think the NCAA can make a case that this is a way to make the Final Four more affordable for
more fans." He also said, "If I were a gambler, I think I would find some other way to place wagers."
Not everyone agrees.
Allen Young, 41, a real estate investor in California's San Francisco Bay Area, gives advice to firstdibz.com traders
on his blog, mralyoung.com. He says other sports events -- firstdibz.com has markets for many -- are more
profitable, particularly the Super Bowl and Bowl Championship Series. But the guiding principles are the same.
A main one, Young counsels, is that some fans will panic after losses and sell their reservations at low prices, such
that they can be scooped up cheap and resold for profit when the team gets hot.
"The way the (real) stock market works, there aren't many inefficiencies, because of professional traders," Young
said. "In this case, with sports, people's emotions get the best of them. I haven't made a lot of money with it, but I'm
learning how the system works."
What's this, academic mischief at Michigan?
Sean McClelland, Dayton Daily News, 20 March 2008
Next time somebody tries to tell you about Michigan's academic superiority relative to Ohio State, just laugh.
And then direct that person to a recent four-part series in the Ann Arbor News detailing how UM football players
earn academic credit for doing little or nothing.
Yes, we've all heard about such shenanigans at different schools, including OSU. But this is Michigan, which over
the years has smugly insisted its academic standards are more rigorous than most of its competitors.
Not that anyone actually believed that, but now there might be actual proof that it's false.
Seems UM athletes are routinely steered to a grandfatherly psychology professor, a "friend of the program." The
newspaper says some football players earn three or four credits for meeting with this guy for a few minutes every
couple of weeks.
In these so-called independent study "classes," athletes say they are taught how to take notes and make calendars.
A bigger disgrace? According to the newspaper, neither Michigan's president nor its athletic director would respond
to any of these allegations other than by e-mail.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Taking to the streets at the Final Four
Allen L. Sack
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
In 2004, a year in which academic corruption in college sports was making the news on a daily basis, a group of
college faculty to which I belong decided to hold an educational protest demonstration in San Antonio, the site of the
NCAA's 2004 Final Four.
At first the idea seemed crazy. But we needed to do something edgy to get people to at least look at our proposals
for reform. The NCAA spends millions to pound its message into the public consciousness. Our fledging
organization, known as the Drake Group, had no paid staff and a meager budget derived from our $10 annual
membership fee. Taking to the streets seemed like the only option.
March Madness, fueled by a $6 billion deal with CBS, is academic capitalism on growth hormones. When the Drake
Group rolled into San Antonio, the streets around the Alamo Dome were full of scalpers hawking $800 tickets, and
merchants selling every kind of licensed product imaginable. The logos of big-spending corporate sponsors such as
Coca-Cola, General Motors, and Cingular were prominently displayed. The Drake Group figured that if the
corporations could use the NCAA's Final Four to hawk everything from Buffalo wings to cellular phones, we could
exploit the tournament to sell education and academic integrity.
The next day, we held a press conference in a hotel not far from the Alamo Dome to announce four of the proposals
the Drake Group was trying to implement, all of which are consistent with educational best practices. One of the
proposals was to require a cumulative C average (2.0) to remain eligible for sports. This proposal had already been
adopted by Drake University, a school that this year is making its first trip to the NCAA's since 1971.
Another was to restore freshman ineligibility. This proposal has been supported by former coaches such as Dean
Smith, John Wooden and Terry Holland. Our third proposal was to replace one-year athletic scholarships with five-
year scholarships that can not be revoked because of injury or poor athletic performance. And finally, we supported
public disclosure of data needed to determine if athletes are getting a legitimate education.
Following the press conference, we took our message inside the billion-dollar beast, carrying signs listing each of
our proposals as we walked back and forth in front of the Hyatt, the hotel where the Division I basketball coaches
were staying. Drake Group member, Bruce Svare, likened our protest demonstration to a scene from a Michael
Moore documentary. At one point I saw him, picket sign in hand, chasing University of Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim
to get his views on five-year no cut scholarships.
Some of the coaches-such as Jerry Tarkanian whom I asked about freshman ineligibility-responded like deer
stunned by a car's headlights. Others were incredibly candid. Among the coaches' responses to our proposals were:
"We need to win. I need to put food on the table. This [these proposals] won't allow me to do it."
"If it's a five-year guarantee, how will I get them to perform? You're taking away my hammer."
"Make freshmen ineligible and they won't come to school at all. They want to play right away. The better ones will go
to Europe."
"Freshman ineligibility is fine in theory. But sometimes I need a kid to play right away if I am going to win, and winning
is how I keep my job."
While the Drake Group's protest received some limited media coverage at the time, the NCAA's over-reaction
attracted more attention to our organization than if they had merely ignored us. A few weeks after the tournament,
Myles Brand, the new NCAA President, attacked the Drake Group in a column he wrote for the New York Times,
labeling us as "self-anointed radical reformers and incorrigible cynics" for questioning the efficacy of the NCAA's
reform efforts. We had obviously touched a nerve by bringing our message to the site of college basketball's
premiere event.
Over the past couple of years, athletes have become more isolated from mainstream student life than ever. A recent
survey by the NCAA reported that the majority of athletes view themselves more as athletes than as students, and
that football players spend an average of 44.8 hours a week practicing. Athletes in several other sports reported
similar time expenditures.
The NCAA's own data strongly suggest that despite student-athlete rhetoric, big-time college athletes are becoming
more akin to professional entertainers than amateurs using sport to round out their educations. If the NCAA
continues to stonewall even moderate efforts to reverse this trend, the next round of protests at the Final Four will
likely be staged by athletes demanding a bigger share of the revenue they generate, not college professors seeking
academic integrity.
Allen Sack, a professor at the University of New Haven, played on Notre Dame's 1966 National Championship
football team. His new book is "Counterfeit Amateurs: An Athlete's Journey through the Sixties to the Age of
Academic Capitalism." This article is an excerpt from that book.
Hypocrisy 101
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports Mar 19, 12:08 am EDT
Down in Florida, Dr. Richard Lapchick rails against the pathetic graduation rates for players who compete in the
NCAA tournament – barely more than 50 percent for African Americans, according to his latest study. It’s far worse
when you consider the players on just the good teams.
Up in Ann Arbor, Mich., a stinging four-day newspaper investigation shows that one of college sports supposed
academic bastions, Michigan football, might turn out decent graduation numbers but might be doing it by
institutionally steering players to easy majors and sympathetic professors. You might get a diploma, but do you get
an education?
Out in Omaha, Neb., the NCAA prepares for the first round of its billion-dollar men’s basketball tournament with a
marquee prime-time game featuring two freshmen – Southern California’s O.J. Mayo and Kansas State’s Michael
Beasley – who are unlikely to finish the semester, let alone their degrees any time soon.
They are only serving out their college purgatory because back in New York, NBA commissioner David Stern says
they have to. If Stern has his way, it soon will be two-year college tours for all future phenoms. College
administrators will celebrate; keeping the money train going is well worth playing the fool.
Talk about your March Madness – one part playing basketball, one part playing charades.
It isn’t so much that all of the above is happening, it is that over the next three weeks so many people will either
pretend it isn’t or ignore that it is. It’s that universities will make small fortunes while bastardizing everything they pay
lip service to being about.
Obviously few people care. Most fans just want to watch the action. The diehards convince themselves their school
is different. The administrators just want to keep the alumni happy. The coaches are rich. The television networks
richer.
And too few of the players even grasp the golden educational opportunity handed to them.
All of this would be fine if it weren’t for the endless claims to the contrary, the syrupy coverage of the purity of
college sports and the forever apologists when the truth occasionally is exposed.
Remember the feel-good story of the 2002 national champion Maryland Terrapins? Turns out, according to NCAA
and federal government stats, none of the starters or top reserves graduated. None. In fact, no recruit brought in
from 1997 to 2000 has graduated. The Terps’ current graduation rate is zero.
Maryland’s counterargument is that some of those guys are playing pro ball, so what does it matter? Indeed, it
doesn’t matter. A college degree isn’t everything. If none of the particulars care, why should we?
But “what does it matter” wasn’t what the NCAA was selling the public six years ago. You didn’t hear anyone admit
that Maryland won the college title with a bunch of kids unlikely to graduate from college.
So will you believe in the champion this time? Lapchick’s most recent report noted that of the four No. 1 seeds, only
North Carolina graduates more than even half its players, which doesn’t exactly reassure you that history won’t
repeat itself.
In Maryland’s defense, maybe a zero graduation rate is more respectable and honest than a high one? Michigan
football has been held up for decades as an example of integrity with a graduation rate of about 70 percent.
But how much of that was the result of the institutional steering of athletes into easy majors?
Over the past seven months the Ann Arbor News did what too few media outlets will – especially in college towns
where publishers and editors are so often compromised by country club relationships. When former Michigan
quarterback and current Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh made critical statements about the Wolverines’ academics
rather than just repeat the party line, they took a long, hard look.
The result has been fascinating not because Michigan has been exposed as the worst cheater in the world. It hasn’t.
Rather, the stories have cut open the underbelly of college athletics and showed how things really get done in major
college sports.
In this case it means the vast majority of football players appear to be pushed into majoring in “general studies.”
That includes 16 of 17 scholarship players in the recent Chad Henne/Mike Hart class.
Michigan athletes make up only three percent of undergraduate students but 49 percent of general studies majors.
Athletes used to overwhelm the kinesiology department until 2003, when fed up kinesiology professors decided to
strengthen the course work. Immediately the athletes shifted, en masse, to general studies, in which the News shows
an athlete easily can maintain eligibility through potentially cake courses.
You have to be a myopic Wolverine fan not to acknowledge the truth – this can’t all be a coincidence. It isn’t cause
for disbanding the team, but it certainly isn’t what the program claimed to be. That the same thing is happening
everywhere (this is quite similar to a recent New York Times exposé of Auburn) is certainly noteworthy but not really
much of an excuse.
If the Michigan players don’t take advantage of a world-class education, that’s their own fault. But if it’s the academic
advisors of the football program betraying them by systematically pushing empty eligibility, then the shame is on U of
M, too.
But that’s college athletics, one big circle of situational ethics.
So now Thursday we get Mayo and Beasley, their last stop before the NBA draft, the two of them stuck in this
netherworld of pretending to really care about attending college.
This isn’t to blame them. They’re just playing the part the system says they must. While we’re sure each found
something positive during his brief time on campus, neither would be here if he didn’t have to be.
They are in this tournament because Stern wants the NCAA to market his would-be rookies with saccharine stories
from academia, the NCAA wants to make big money off them regardless of the hypocrisy and CBS is more than
willing to placate both parties while selling ads to Chevy.
All the adults gladly will play charades so we can watch these kids play ball.
Dan Wetzel is the co-author of Glory Road, the story of coach Don Haskins and the history-making 1966 Texas
Western Miners.
Congress must take on NCAA deceit
Published: 3/12/2008 12:13 AM
"Seriously, college athletics have started to make the pros look like a Mother Teresa clinic on sportsmanship." So
writes Mike Imrem in his revealing Feb. 10 column, "Blame adults for lawlessness in college sports."
It appears to be a message lost on Capitol Hill where Congress remains focused on the Mitchell Report covering the
use of steroids in Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Roger Clemens/Brian McNamee side show.
The issues surrounding the NCAA cartel and its detrimental effect on America's educational system, its youth, and
its future position on the world stage, never seem to rise above the clutter on the national radar screen.
The NCAA has yet to be held accountable for its lack of transparency that effectively covers up cheating in college
athletics via performance enhancing drugs and academic corruption in a system rift with deceit, deception, and
fraud.
Congress could follow up on previous investigations with a hearing on an unheralded national scandal -- cheating in
college athletics driven by an ocean of tax-free money generated by the NCAA's participation in the college sports
entertainment business.
However, many, if not most, members of Congress consider taking on the NCAA to be political suicide -- no matter
the long term harm to our nation resulting from the high-jacking of its education system by this business.
In the end, tolerating cheating in college athletics via performance-enhancing drugs and academic corruption
appears to be preferable to confronting the formidably resourced NCAA and its member institutions.
Frank G. Splitt
Has Serious Academic Reform of College Athletics Arrived?
By Mark Yost, Wall Street Journal, 3-19-08
Nathan Tublitz is like the IRS. People hate to see him show up on their doorstep.
When Dr. Tublitz isn't teaching neurobiology at the University of Oregon, he's co-chairman of the Coalition on
Intercollegiate Athletics, a group of 56 Division 1 faculty senates whose primary mission is to remind college
presidents, athletic directors and coaches that the kids at center court during March Madness are supposed to be
students first and athletes second.
It's a quaint notion in an era when CBS is paying $6.1 billion for the broadcast rights to the college basketball
tournament that will draw far bigger ratings than any of the presidential debates. And while Dr. Tublitz and his
colleagues spend much of their time howling into the wind, they're gaining traction these days from a historically
unlikely ally: The National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The college-sports sanctioning body is toughening up on schools that fail to meet minimum academic standards.
The NCAA has long had its Graduation Success Rate (GSR), a six-year rolling average that measures how
successful schools are at graduating athletes. And this is the fourth year of the Academic Progress Rate (APR), a
more real-time measure of an athletic department's academic progress. When the new APR numbers come out in
May, schools that fall short will, for the first time, suffer increasingly harsh penalties, including lost scholarships and,
if they're chronic laggards, banishment from the postseason tournaments and bowl games that are their financial
lifeblood.
This is all good news for Dr. Tublitz and others who've long argued for serious academic reform of college athletics.
"The GSR and APR are, potentially, very effective tools to improve academic standards and to allow student-
athletes to achieve their educational goals," Dr. Tublitz said in a recent phone interview. "The key, of course, is in
the implementation and enforcement of penalties that follow from schools that don't meet the standards."
In short, Dr. Tublitz is concerned that the APR -- like many of the rules that govern recruiting, scholarships and
eligibility -- will become for schools just another game of "catch us if you can." Furthermore, he worries that as the
APR's true consequences are realized, schools will lobby the NCAA to water it down or make exceptions.
"Last year, when the data came out and the trends were becoming clearer, the NCAA pointed out publicly that they
were expecting 45% of basketball teams, 40% of football teams, and 35% of all teams in Division 1 to be penalized
under APR," Dr. Tublitz said. "The question is whether the NCAA will penalize all those teams that do not meet
minimum APR benchmarks."
On average, Division 1 schools graduate about 77% of their athletes, according to the latest numbers from the
NCAA. But the numbers run the gamut. For instance, looking at the Associated Press Top 25 for the week of March
10, No. 1 North Carolina graduated 86% of its basketball players using the NCAA's GSR measure, while No. 2
Memphis graduated just 40%.
Looking at the APR, the more real-time measure, North Carolina scored 993, well above the minimum requirement of
925, which the NCAA said translates into a 60% graduation rate. Memphis, by contrast, has an APR of just 916,
which would result in penalties under the NCAA's new rules.
The NCAA insists that it's serious about enforcing the new standards, regardless of a team's national ranking. "This
is a real-time measure that has a component of accountability that's tied to consequences," said Kevin Lennon, the
NCAA's vice president for membership services. "That's unique. We have not had this before."
Mr. Lennon also said that the new penalties will carry "a broader recognition" for teams that perform poorly in the
classroom. "We feel that under these new measures, they'll want to avoid being labeled as underperforming," he
said. "And they want to avoid the penalties that will impact their ability to compete."
Dr. Tublitz concedes that there's only so much that the NCAA can do. The bigger problem is with a sports-mad
American culture that doesn't care how college athletes are admitted, if they graduate, or if they ever make it to the
NBA. All most fans care about, he says, is winning championships -- whatever the cost.
"You have to stop the drift away from academics, and our universities are the standard-bearers for maintaining
academic standards," Dr. Tublitz said. "Thus it seems appropriate for our universities to be the first in line to say we
should reverse this cultural trend and not continue to look the other way when students are accepted primarily for
their athletic prowess."
More important, schools aren't doing these kids any favors by admitting them when it's unlikely that they will succeed
academically. "We bring in 17-year-old kids, some of them from the inner city," he said. "We wine and dine them.
They have female chaperones. We put them up in fancy hotels. They come here and see an incredibly fancy locker
room with individual TV screens, air conditioning and videogames. They go in and see the new football stadium and
the new $200 million basketball arena. They see a medical training facility that is stunningly beautiful with waterfalls,
treadmill pools, and state-of-the-art medical and dental equipment.
"They come here and are treated like royalty. Until they break a leg or get put on the second string and then they
get set aside. Many don't earn a degree. They don't have the training or the skills to be independent after they
leave the university. They're lost."
Indeed, only about 3% of high-school basketball players will get a Division 1 scholarship. And less than 3% of those
who do will have a meaningful NBA career. "What about the 97%?" Dr. Tublitz asks. "We need to give them the tools
to succeed beyond athletics, and we're not doing that."
And, of course, many of these kids are African-American. "It's no coincidence that basketball has the lowest APR,"
Dr. Tublitz said. "One of the major determinants of college success is socioeconomic status. Kids from privileged
backgrounds, on average, do better. As educators, we need to make sure that those kids from underprivileged
backgrounds are given the skills to achieve their potential. We need to put more resources into that group of
students."
In fact, the trend is just the opposite. According to a report last year in the Journal of Sports Management, alumni
giving at the nation's 100 biggest athletic departments was up significantly, while academic giving at the same
schools remained flat. That's a significant shift. In 1998, athletics gifts accounted for 14.7% of all donations. By
2003, the figure had increased to 26%.
With these increased donations, often comes increased pressure to win. "There's a correlation between Oregon's
attempt to have winning teams and the quality of students that they have to attract in order to achieve that goal," Dr.
Tublitz said of his own campus. "This is not rocket science. It's not neuroscience. There are many extremely talented
athletes for whom academics is not their primary goal at university. The fact that many people are OK with that says
a lot about who we are and what we value."
Grade woes cost KU 2 football scholarships
Rick Plumlee, Wichita Eagle, 18 March 2008
LAWRENCE - Kansas football has taken another hit on scholarships and will lose two more for the 2008 season for
failure to meet NCAA academic standards.
According to figures released by the school Monday, KU football had a four-year academic progress rate of 919 and
had two players leave the program during the 2006-07 school year who were not in good academic standing.
The combination of the two cost the Jayhawks their scholarships.
The academic progress rate (APR) is a calculation meant to measure the success of athletes in the classroom and
the progress made toward graduation. A team is subject to scholarship penalties if its APR is less than 925 and if an
underclassman leaves school the previous school year while in poor academic standing.
In football, a team under 925 is docked one scholarship for each player that leaves school who was in trouble
academically, though no more the than three scholarships can be taken away in one year.
KU declined to release the names of the two players. But redshirt freshman Brandon Duncan, a linebacker from
Garland, Texas, and freshman Jason Thompson, a defensive end from Dallas, are the only two scholarship players
to leave KU during the 2006-07 school year, and both had grade troubles.
KU's appeal of the NCAA ruling was denied, associate athletic director Paul Buskirk said.
The Jayhawks anticipated losing the two scholarships, so they signed only 20 players for this year's recruiting class.
KU had already lost three scholarships for the '07 and '08 recruiting classes as the result sanctions from a two-year
NCAA probation handed down in 2006.
Buskirk said KU based its appeal on the "steady progress" football has made in recent years.
The graduation rate, which measures results over a six-year period, was up to 56 percent last year from 41 percent
in 2005. KU set a school-best team GPA for football last spring with a 2.69. When the APR was instituted in 2003-04,
KU football was at 899.
The NCAA extended a grace period from taking away scholarships, but that period ended last year.
Buskirk said football's APR was still paying the price for a number of academically-marginal junior-college transfers
that Mark Mangino signed in 2002 in his first year as coach.
"The profile of our team has changed drastically over the years," Buskirk said. "Next year, we will absolutely have
925 or higher. The ship is standing and rising."
All of KU's other sports met the APR requirements. That included baseball, which Buskirk called "a miracle." Baseball
is right at 925 after being below the mark in previous years.
Baseball teams at most schools have a particularly difficult time hitting the 925 mark because so many players
transfer. To help alleviate that problem, starting with next year's freshman class, baseball players transferring
between Division I schools will have to sit out a season before they can be eligible to play.
As of now, the NCAA requires athletes in only four sports -- men's and women's basketball, football and hockey -- to
sit out a year.
The NCAA will release its full APR report on all schools in late April.
Top NCAA seeds falter in classroom, survey finds
Travis Reed, Associated Press, 18 March 2008
North Carolina was the only school among the four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA men's tournament to graduate at least
50 percent of its players.
A report released Monday found 86 percent of Tar Heels men's players earned diplomas during a six-year period.
The other top seeds were far worse: 45 percent at Kansas and 40 percent at UCLA and Memphis.
The study was conducted by Richard Lapchick, head of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and
Ethics in Sport. It evaluated four different freshman classes for a period beginning in 1997-98 and ending with 2000-
01. Though the players evaluated are no longer on campus, the report intends to provide a snapshot of academic
trends.
Lapchick's primary concern was the disparity between black and white players. Thirty-three schools graduated at
least 70 percent of their white men's basketball players; only 19 graduated that many black players. At least 50
percent of white players earned degrees at 45 schools, but black athletes had that much success at only 36 schools.
"Higher education's greatest failure is the persistent gap between African-American and white basketball student-
athletes in particular, and students in general," Lapchick wrote. "The good news there is that the gaps are narrowing
slightly."
Graduation rates for black men's players have improved 14 percent overall since 1984.
Two of the No. 2 seeds, Tennessee and Texas, graduated only 33 percent of their players for the period studied.
The other second seeds, Georgetown and Duke, had success rates of 82 percent and 67 percent, respectively.
If the Final Four were determined academically, it would be Drake's first-round opponent Western Kentucky (100
percent success), Butler (92 percent), Notre Dame (91 percent) and Purdue (91 percent).
Current Bulldogs hit the books
Academic progress among current members of Drake's men's basketball program is well above average when
compared to the rest of the Division I teams, the school's most recent NCAA academic progress report says.
Department officials pointed out that Drake has reported a 969 academic progress rate over the last three years,
placing it within the top 68 schools of 341 in NCAA Division I.
"We have not had a team grade point average below 2.45 since Tom Davis started here and have had several
semesters when the team has come in with a 3.0 team average or better," said Jean Berger, Drake associate
athletic director.
Berger also said Drake has reported a 958 APR rate for the last four years, but wouldn't know how the program will
compare with others until this spring.
NCAA rules mandate that sports programs maintain a 925 APR rate or face a scholarship reduction.
Bulldog officials pointed out Drake's above-average performance in response to the release of the most recent
graduation success rate figures by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida
for all 65 NCAA men's basketball tournament teams.
Drake's 2007 graduate success rate is 50 percent, placing the school with 41 others, or 64 percent of the
tournament field. Drake also had a zero graduate success rate for black athletes on the team. It was not clear how
many black athletes were included in the report.
The 2007 graduation success rate represents the percentage of athletes graduating within six years of entering
school between 1997-98 and 2000-01, when Kurt Kanaskie was head coach of the Bulldogs.
Kanaskie's successor, Tom Davis, joined Drake during the 2003-04 season and was succeeded this season by his
son, Keno. Drake's current APR number is based on the number of athletes maintaining athletic eligibility and
remaining in school since the 2003-04 season.
Berger said Drake had as few as one athlete entering school in a year.
"When you are dealing with such small numbers, just one or two athletes could make a program look bad, unfairly,"
she said.
- Tom Witosky (DesMoines Register)
The artist and the athlete
Sophomore forward Joevan Catron may face questions concerning his eligibility if his plan to declare a
major in art goes awry
Kevin Hudson, UO Daily Emerald, 17 March 2008
Joevan Catron, sophomore forward for the Oregon men's basketball team, has a passion for art and design. He
even comes up with his own shoe designs, which he applies to white-on-white Nikes, and has said that he had Nike
in mind as a possible future employer when he chose to attend Oregon. Earlier this year he said that he had hoped
to pursue an art degree.
Unfortunately for Catron, the numbers might not add up.
Art majors are accepted by application and selection, and the number of open-enrollment undergraduate art classes
is too limited for Catron to meet his NCAA-required academic progress percentages should his spring term
application be denied for fall term enrollment as a full major.
Catron is left with a tough decision: Follow his heart and risk his eligibility or find another major?
Neither scenario is ideal, but this is a common situation for student athletes under today's guidelines for academic
progress.
Steve Stolp, director of the University of Oregon's Services for Student Athletes, said that the best thing that players
can do is try to pick their majors early, especially high-credit majors, but that can be problematic as well.
"That's so hard to do with someone who's a freshman, trying to make a decision about what it is you think you want
to do with the rest of your life," said Stolp. "A lot of them are really focused on their sport, or they haven't really
taken enough courses here yet to know if there's something that really interests them."
Kim Durand, associate athletic director for human development at the University of Washington, said that one of the
biggest challenges advisers face is striking a balance between what athletes are passionate about and what fits
realistically into the NCAA's required percentages.
"There are some unintended consequences (with the current percentage requirements) that force us to be in a little
bit of an awkward situation with a student that is really passionate about something (with high credit requirements)
like architecture, but because of NCAA restrictions can't retake a class that he needs to or needs to make progress
at a set or certain speed," she said. "So I think sometimes, in the trenches, there are some awkward situations, but
overall the concept is really where we need to be."
The crackdown
Among NCAA Division I sports, men's basketball ranks dead last in graduation rates. According to current NCAA
graduation success rates, 70 percent of male student athletes graduate. In basketball, that rate is 61 percent.
The sport's poor academic record was one of the main reasons behind NCAA academic reform packages that
include penalties for teams who fail to graduate their athletes. Now, teams that fall below the NCAA's standards face
losing scholarships - a high price in a sport that relies on a handful of players to win games.
The standards have seemed to help improve the rate of academic success at schools nationwide, as the numbers
have been moving steadily upward over the last three years.
But even at Oregon, a program that graduated five seniors before the season began, the NCAA's new academic
requirements have created a new challenge: Meeting the deadlines for NCAA compliance while allowing athletes the
time to explore and choose an appropriate major.
Currently, an athlete who wishes to remain eligible to play must declare a major by the end of their seventh term in
college, and show progress toward that major in 20-percent increments: 40 percent going into their third year, 60
percent going into the fourth and so on until graduation.
Here is where regulations meet reality for Catron. If he declares an art major and then isn't accepted into the
program, there aren't enough open-enrollment art classes for him to keep up with the 20 percent increments,
meaning he won't have enough time to work toward full-major status in the art program, and he'll just have to move
on.
Contrast this situation with a typical student, who might re-take classes and build up his or her portfolio after an
initial denial into the program, and end up getting in later. There is no such option for an athlete who wishes to
remain eligible.
And while most would agree that having benchmarks to meet (and consequences for not doing so) is a step in the
right direction for men's basketball and college athletics in general, Catron's situation illuminates one of the possible
negative side effects.
The Stolp solution
Amid this atmosphere of academic emphasis and regulation reform in college sports, the Oregon men's basketball
program is one of many programs seeking practical ways for their players to adhere to the guidelines. Stolp and
coach Ernie Kent sat down four years ago and drew up a three-year plan for their athletes to earn their degrees,
and with the success of this year's senior class at graduating early, heads are starting to turn in Oregon's direction.
Kent sits on the college basketball board of directors and the basketball issues committee, which includes a mix of
athletic directors, conference commissioners and coaches from conferences around the country, and said that the
members of both groups are very interested in the Oregon academic plan.
"Between the two boards, we've been able to have a lot of impact," said Kent.
One way that Oregon's three-year plan deals with the issue of the NCAA's percentage requirements is by front-
loading the plan with required "general education" classes, so that no matter what major an athlete chooses he's
likely to be ahead of the percentage requirements. This can also serve as a useful tool to get athletes motivated to
graduate, according to Stolp.
"We have to be ahead of the curve," he said. "If you can convince (players) early on in the first two years to take as
much credits as possible and work as hard as they can, then when they get to that junior year and they see 'Well, I
only have 40 credits left and I can actually finish this year,' there's a different motivation there than with somebody
who can't see the light at the end of the tunnel."
And while this may seem rigid, Stolp and Kent insist that by recruiting the right athletes, the program has avoided
any backlash or burnout from the intense nature of the accelerated plan.
"You are putting pressure on the students to basically go to school all year round," said Kent. "But if it's not a priority
to them, I don't know if they should be in your program in the first place."
"It's a credit to Ernie that this is what we're recruiting with," said Stolp. "The guys that come here with their families,
they know from day one that the expectation is that you are going to come here and you are going to perform. If
that's not them, they probably won't come here."
Kent said he also has no problem using extra running or limited playing time as a motivational tool for his athletes
when it comes to academics if necessary. He disciplined freshman guard Kamyron Brown this year with limited
playing time for slipping up academically.
"Sometimes guys have sat, and guys have missed practice because of academics as well," he said. "It's a thing
where people have not started because you have two people competing and one's not taking care of their academic
responsibilities. So we try to keep focus on it, and then also the penalty is there when you don't get your job done."
And despite the commitment to academics that Kent makes sure his recruits have in place, Catron said that Kent
and his staff's emphasis on academics was still a little bit surprising for him when he arrived at Oregon last year.
"Every little thing they were yelling at me about, and I was wondering like, 'Why are these guys yelling so much?'
because it seemed so small," he said. "But those small things add up to big ones and when they hold you
accountable for the little things then you don't have to worry about the big ones that can accumulate later."
Stolp admitted that the plan could never be perfect, and the reality is that no matter how well supported the athletes
are academically and how well planned their path to graduation is, in college sports it still comes down to how badly
the athletes want their degrees.
"We don't always get it right. We're human. We try and help kids explore and find ways to get through, and to be
honest with you, the kids that really want to do it end up doing it and getting their degrees," said Stolp. "The kids
that come here that have no real interest in school and they don't want to do it and they're here to play their sport, it
becomes much harder to convince them to get their degrees."
For Catron's part, he said he will apply spring term for admittance as a full major in the art program despite the high
credit requirements of the major. This application will be his one and only chance to avoid having to pick a different
major; if he is denied he will have no choice but to switch majors to meet the NCAA's academic progress guidelines.
"I just have to go to the art department and talk to them and show them a little bit of my work to get their
recommendation and get in," he said. "It should work out. Hopefully everything will go well."
The Scholarship Divide
It’s Not an Adventure, It’s a Job
Bill Pennington, New York Times sedition, 12 March 2008
A few months into her first year at Villanova, Stephanie Campbell was despondent.
As a high school senior in New Jersey, she had been thrilled to receive a $19,000 athletic scholarship to play field
hockey at Villanova University, a select, private institution outside Philadelphia. But she had not counted on the 7 a.
m. start of every class day, something required so she could be in the locker room by noon to prepare for four-hour
shift of afternoon practices and weight-lifting sessions. Travel to games forced her to miss exams and classes.
There were also mandatory team meetings, study halls and weekend practices.
She was overwhelmed.
“Plus, her roommate had a typical college student’s social life, while Stephanie was in her room on weekend nights
trying to sleep because she had a game the next day,” her mother, Kathleen Campbell, said last month. “She came
home crying.”
So Kathleen Campbell sat her daughter down, waited for a break in the sobs and said: “Villanova costs more than
$40,000 a year to attend. They’re paying you $19,000 to play field hockey. At your age, there is no one out there
anywhere who is going to pay you that kind of money to do anything. And that’s how you have to look at this: It’s a
job, but it’s a great job.”
Campbell, 22, kept at it all four years, serving as a team captain last fall while majoring in marketing. She is expected
to graduate this spring.
“I’m missing the sport terribly already,” she said last month. “But it was a ton of work. Receiving an athletic
scholarship is a wonderful thing, but most of us only know what we’re getting, not what we’re getting into.”
Dozens of scholarship athletes at N.C.A.A. Division I institutions said in interviews that they had underestimated how
taxing and hectic their lives would be playing college sports. They also said others share a common misperception
that athletes lead a privileged existence.
“You know, maybe if you’re a scholarship football player at Oklahoma, everything is taken care of for you,” Tim
Poydenis, a scholarship baseball player at Villanova, said. “But most of us are nonrevenue-sport athletes who have
to do our own fund-raising just to pay for basics like sweat pants and batting gloves. We miss all these classes,
which obviously doesn’t help us or make our professors happy. We give up almost all our free time. Our social life is
stripped bare.
“Friday happy hour or spring break? Forget it. I haven’t had a spring break since I was a sophomore in high school.”
The athletes were interviewed over several weeks from a cross section of sports at two representative Division I
institutions, Villanova, a charter member of the Big East Conference, and the University of Delaware, a state-run
institution that is a member of the Colonial Athletic Association. None of the athletes asked for or expected
sympathy. They know there are many overscheduled college students who devote extra hours to academic,
extracurricular or part-time jobs and internships.
“We love what we do, and it is worth it,” Poydenis said. “But everybody thinks every college athlete is on a pampered
full ride. The truth is a lot of us are getting $4,000 and working our butts off for it.”
The life of the scholarship athlete is so arduous that coaches and athletes said it was not unusual for as many as 15
percent of those receiving athletic aid to quit sports and turn down the scholarship money after a year or two.
“I came in with 10 recruited girls,” Stephanie Campbell said. “There are four of us left as seniors. Not everyone was
on scholarship, but maybe half who left were getting money.”
Campbell said she had a teammate who wanted to be an engineer but that the classes and off-campus projects in
that major clashed with field hockey practices and trips.
Katie Lee, a senior softball player at Delaware, said at least one scholarship player had quit the team in each of her
seasons. Of her former teammates, she said, “I see them around campus, and they look happy.”
Emily Schaknowski, a sophomore lacrosse player on athletic scholarship at Delaware, said 5 of the 12 women she
entered with were no longer on the team. Most had relinquished their scholarships.
Joe Taylor, a junior soccer player at Villanova, said he was one of four left from a freshman recruiting class of 10.
“You wonder if you should try to talk them out of it,” Taylor said. “But for most of those guys, it probably is the best
decision to walk away.”
At Villanova, Poydenis said he thought the defections resulted from the shock that set in after a youth sports culture
ethos collided with the realities of college athletics.
“Kids who have worked their whole life trying to get a scholarship think the hard part is over when they get the
college money,” he said. “They don’t know that it’s a whole new monster when you get here.”
His coach, Joe Godri, says he tries to warn recruits before they accept athletic aid. He tells them that being a
Division I student-athlete is a full-time job. “It’s not even close to being a normal college student,” Godri said.
The Division I athletes interviewed indicated they devoted at least four hours a day to their sport, not counting the
time it takes to play or to travel to games. Classes must be scheduled in the early morning to free the afternoon for
practices and games. Practices often last from 4 to 6:30 p.m., although several athletes talked about how they had
to arrive early for treatment of injuries or to have old injuries taped or harnessed. Highly competitive, demanding
practices come next.
There is often a team dinner, perhaps a short meeting and a mandatory study hall in some cases. Weekday away
games, which are common, can mean a bus ride that begins at 1 p.m. and a return trip that reaches campus at 10 p.
m.
“You come back to your dorm room ready to crash,” Taylor said. “But you’ve got homework or maybe a test the next
morning. The rest of the dorm is starting to get a little rowdy because those guys have all finished their homework.
They might be getting ready to go out. A lot of them took a nap in the afternoon.”
College athletes routinely said there was one accouterment not often mentioned in recruiting trips but essential to
the athlete’s equipment bag: ear plugs.
“They help you sleep on those nights when you have a game the next day,” Jamie Flynn, a junior soccer player at
Delaware, said.
Many athletes tend to gather together in off-campus housing, so at least their apartment is quieter on the nights
before games. Most teams have a rule prohibiting alcohol 48 hours before a game. The Villanova field hockey team,
for example, pledges to not to drink alcohol for the entire season.
And the players police other teammates who might not be abiding by the rules about partying before games or
practices. Jillian Loyden, a senior All-Big East goalie on Villanova’s soccer team, said it was usually first-year players
who slipped up.
“They get to college and want to be normal college students on a Friday night,” said Loyden, who has raided parties
to usher first-year teammates out of a building so they would head home to bed. “You have to make them
understand that our team is not a social club.”
Athletes from the nonrevenue sports also customarily have to do extra work on campus to raise money to pay for
equipment or apparel not normally financed by the athletic department, like warm-up jackets. Cortney Barry, a
scholarship swimmer at Delaware, cut short her Thanksgiving Day break at home last year because the swim team
had agreed to clean the garbage from the football stadium bleachers to pay for some expenses.
For this and other reasons, college athletes often refer to students who are nonathletes as “normals” or “regulars.”
When asked why, Stephanie Campbell answered, “Because we’re not normal.”
“Look, we are fortunate to be athletes and to get tuition money to do it,” Campbell added. “I have loved my time
here. I’m going to get a prestigious degree, and I know there are a lot of people who would have wanted to trade
places with me. But I’d still say Division I athletics is not meant for everybody. Nobody tells you that.”
Campbell, who was an All-Big East selection in her final season, has gone back to her hometown, Gibbsboro in
South Jersey, to help coach the club team she played for as a youngster.
“I worry about the kids I see now, because they’re under so much stress to get something out of field hockey,” she
said. “You can never lose sight of why you play. Yes, I got a scholarship, but in the end, I put up with the sore
muscles, lost sleep and everything else because I loved playing that much.”
These days, she is trying to make up for lost time on the business networking front, attending vocational seminars
and fairs aimed at easing college graduates into the workplace. It is a new game for Campbell.
“Well, I’m graduating in May,” she said. “I need a job.”
Griffin Palmer contributed reporting.
NCAA witholds scholarships for men's basketball
Ingrid Rivera, OSU Lantern, 7 March 2008
The NCAA has imposed a sanction of one lost full-ride scholarship on the Ohio State men's basketball team for
failing to meet the Academic Progress Rate standard, said John Bruno, faculty athletics representative. The
university is petitioning to overturn the decision.
Bruno said OSU has a two-year time frame to petition the NCAA to keep the scholarship. Bruno did not mention
when the reduced scholarship penalty would go into effect.
"We're optimistic that we won't lose that scholarship because we have a strong petition but that decision is in the
hands of the NCAA," Bruno said.
Bruno said the sanction was triggered by one athlete who left the university during the 2006-07 school year while
academically ineligible. Bruno did not disclose the name. Players Greg Oden, Daequan Cook and Mike Conley Jr.
left the team that year when drafted into the NBA. Bruno did not release information about whether these players left
academically eligible.
A student athlete is academically eligible if he or she has at least a 2.0 grade point average and has completed the
required amount of credits toward their major determined by their rank, Bruno said. The APR tracks only student
athletes receiving scholarships.
The sanction was also based on the latest 2007 APR scores, not available to the public until later this spring, Bruno
said.
A university sports' program is penalized by the NCAA with either reduced scholarships or practice time when both
the team's APR score falls below the 925-point threshold and when at least one player leaves the team before the
end of the school year academically ineligible, Bruno said.
Bruno said this sanction will hurt the recruiting process for the team.
The basketball team's 2006 APR score checked in at 902, well below the requirement. The team in 2007 was able to
avoid penalties when the score was adjusted because of its small roster size.
"Our men's basketball program has a strong academic value with oversight and supportive partners," said Dan
Wallenberg, assistant director of athletics. "Though challenging, we are optimistic (we) will meet the challenge and
have success," he said in an e-mail.
The APR is a four-year average point system for finding whether student athletes have "good academic standing,"
Bruno said. Each athlete receives two points, one for staying at the university and the other for staying academically
eligible.
Report: UConn's bowl trip not much of a windfall
Associated Press
7 March 2008
STORRS, Conn. -- The University of Connecticut's appearance in the Meineke Car Care Bowl may have boosted
the school's profile, but it didn't do much for its coffers.
A report by The Hartford Courant found that the school received $1.2 million from the Big East for the December
bowl appearance and travel expenses, but ended up with a profit of just $25,266.
"When you go to a bowl game of this nature, the goal is to break even," said Michael Enright, UConn's associate
athletic director. "It's really to plant seeds for recruiting and reward the kids for a good season. It's not going to be a
big moneymaker."
Expenses included flying 25 spouses to the game, buying each player a DVD camcorder and giving 13 employees
bonuses.
The school says the bowl was not seen as a profit opportunity, but rather a chance to raise the school's profile,
recruit new players and sell more tickets to home football games.
"There is a myth that exists that going to a bowl game is a financial windfall for the university. The public has that
perception," said Amy Perko, executive director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
Instead, she says, going to a bowl often costs a school money.
All of the expenses were paid by the Big East distributing revenue from bowls, so the trip didn't require any public or
athletic department money.
Enright said bonuses and perks like the camcorders aren't unusual.
"For us to remain competitive in the Division 1A marketplace, it's important not to be spending money wildly, but we
need to remain competitive with other teams at this level," he said.
Along with team and band members, 108 people traveled with the bowl game's official party, including
administrators, secretaries, police officers and student trainers and equipment managers.
"It's the football traveling party. That's how a football team works. All the players have to be taped. Then there's
conditioning after practice," Enright said.
UConn spent nearly $200,000 on bonuses for coaches and Athletic Director Jeffrey Hathaway.
The school also spent $40,000 to buy a DVD camcorder for each player as a team award. The NCAA allows every
team that makes a bowl game to spend up to $350 per athlete for team gifts.
Other expenses included equipment with the Meineke Bowl emblem (UConn lost to Wake Forest 24-10) and
entertainment while the team was in Charlotte, N.C.
Enright said the team didn't spend excessively and saved money where it could, spending just $120,000 to feed 125
people three meals and two snacks a day for a week.
"It wasn't like we were hanging out all night with shrimp cocktail coming through," he said.
Hathaway said the intangible benefits from the bowl trip include fundraising, revenue from licensing fees from UConn
merchandise, and most of all recruiting.
"We like this because, obviously, it puts the university on a national stage," Hathaway said. "This helps in the
recruiting process and introduces more people to the University of Connecticut. Those are the things you can't put a
dollar value on."