In The Penalty Box
The push for academic reform leaves some schools lagging
By Kimberly Davis
In the world of big-time college athletics, academic reform is now a mandate. Why? Because the National Collegiate Athletic Association says so. And what the NCAA says for its member institutions goes. The same is true for smaller, less profitable programs and schools. But with less money, small schools, including most historically Black colleges and universities, have fewer resources to allocate to the NCAA’s academic reform goals.
Recent sanctions and scholarship losses at some HBCUs have led to questions about the disproportionate impact of academic reform on current and future student-athletes at those schools. Because of the historical mission of HBCUs — educating Black students when no other schools would — some experts have suggested that the NCAA allow for exemptions, protecting HBCUs and other minority learning institutions from unequal punishment under the new rules.
The NCAA is the umbrella organization that governs almost all intercollegiate sporting events in the nation, ensuring standardized rules enforcement and fair play, among other things. With the exception of college football’s postseason bowl games, the NCAA controls the championship games of every collegiate sport, including the immensely lucrative men’s basketball tournament. In 2005-2006, the NCAA’s budgeted revenue exceeded $521 million. But part of their mission is making sure the student-athletes who bring in all that money are actually getting their money’s worth, both academically and athletically.
Before the passage of Proposition 48 in 1983, coaches and athletic administrators seemingly had carte blanche to exploit top athletes. The “student-athlete” designation was, and to some degree still is in many cases, a misnomer, as colleges regularly recruited prized athletes who had no real hope of succeeding in the classroom. As long as the programs were winning, it didn’t matter to many athletic departments that the students were not going to class or graduating. Proposition 48 changed the landscape by adopting eligibility requirements and tracking graduation and retention rates for the athletes. Although “Prop 48” has dramatically changed the nature of intercollegiate athletics, compliance problems still persist. At many big-name institutions, little advancement has been made in the graduation rates of Black and low-income student-athletes. Men’s basketball programs like the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Runnin’ Rebels in the 1990s and the University of Cincinnati Bearcats this decade became notorious for recruiting — but rarely graduating — top-flight players, most of them Black. Many schools circumvented Prop 48 guidelines by offering majors like “Turf Management” and “Recreational and Leisure studies.” Courses in some programs are actually taught by assistant coaches. Three years ago, the University of Georgia suspended men’s basketball coach Jim Harrick and fired his son, Jim Harrick Jr., in part because the younger Harrick, then an assistant coach, taught a class to three players. All three of the players received As, even though none ever attended the class. The senior Harrick resigned amidst an NCAA investigation.
