On the Roster:Coming Events in Black College Sports

By Craig T. Greenlee

T  he college sports scene for this academic year promises the usual mixed bag of on-the-field triumphs and woes. But those high-profile events are likely to be accompanied by some unique off-the-field celebrations and disappointments. Here's a look ahead at
developments likely to occur during the course of the school year.
Full-Court Press
The legislative courts have ruled that the National Collegiate Athletic Association can keep its freshman eligibility requirements intact, in spite of litigation asserting that the rules discriminate against Black student-athletes.
In January, a team of Washington, D.C.-based lawyers were hopeful they could convince a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the NCAA requirements should be altered. The panel ruled otherwise.
Even so, Adele Kimmel, an attorney with the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, has renewed hope that the NCAA eventually will be forced to alter its bylaws. Kimmel is one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in a lawsuit, Cureton vs. NCAA, challenging those eligibility rules.
"The only way to get the NCAA to react is to get a fire lit underneath it," Kimmel says. "And that fire is a lawsuit. Without pressure from a suit, the status quo will continue, so we're going to keep pressing the issue."
At issue are the academic eligibility requirements for incoming freshman athletes at Division I schools. The requirements stipulate that students must successfully complete 13 core courses in high school, keep a prescribed minimum grade-point average and score at least 820 on the SAT or a minimum combined total of 66 on the ACT. Those who fail to meet these requirements are prohibited from playing college sports as freshmen.
"It's amazing to me that the NCAA continues to ignore its own research," Kimmel says. "They know that using minimum test scores is not a good predictor of academic ability. They also know there are other effective alternatives they can use that are not discriminatory."
Kimmel says she is confident that proposed U.S. Department of Education regulations, now under review, will help plaintiffs in future cases. Finalization of these new rules is expected by the end of 2000, and Kimmel says future suits filed under these rules would provide a wider scope of coverage under federal civil rights law.
The proposed regulations would mandate that federal civil rights laws apply to all facets of an organization's operations and not be limited strictly to those programs receiving federal dollars. These proposed regulations resulted from January's appellate court ruling, which noted that under federal civil rights law, the NCAA could be sued for discrimination, but only as it relates to its programs that receive direct federal funding. In this interpretation, the judges ruled that only the federally funded National Youth Sports Program could be legally challenged.
"Assuming those proposed regulations become final by the end of this year, freshmen in the fall of 2001 can take action," Kimmel says. "This will provide recourse for the next class, giving them a way to force the NCAA to change their rules."