NCAA Suddenly Cares About Grades
Written by Bob Whalon, Saturday August 13 2011
NCAA President Mark Emmert made a big show this week about wanting to make immediate changes in the world of college sports. Since the NCAA usually moves at a snail's pace on everything, his pronouncements were met with a healthy does of skepticism. Surprisingly, the NCAA finally followed through on something immediately.
The NCAA board of directors just approved a measure that would include postseason bans if college teams don't meet the new Academic Progress Rate (APR) cutline.
The APR is a complicated way of determining if student-athletes at every university are actually being students. It has been used for years, but the NCAA is raising the minimum score by 30 points. It's a points-based system where a team gets rewarded for players who perform well academically, but they also lose points when players don't do so well. The NCAA is also changing the system so that each school's team will not be judged solely by their score each year. Instead, they will use the four-year rolling average of the team's APR to determine postseason eligibility. That way schools have time to correct any problems that their student-athletes may be having.
It's a nice idea in theory, but there are some issues with this process.
First of all the point system doesn't seem to match up with the reality of what college sports are really about these days. College sports are big, money-making enterprises more than anything else. To say otherwise is naive and disingenuous. Sure, the women's water polo team won't make any money, but that's not who the APR is really for.
The APR is for the high-profile men's college sports that generate millions of dollars for the big universities. It's the NCAA's way of at least making a show of trying to pass off their athletes as students as well.
NCAA statistics show that athletes actually graduate at a higher rate than other students. The most recent numbers, released in May, show that the overall score for athletes jumped three points to 970 out of a possible 1,000. But some of the lowest scoring sports are the sports that generate the majority of the revenue for a university. Men's basketball (945) and men's baseball teams (959) both increased by five points over the last year. Football teams (946) increased by two points.
The problem with those numbers is that it penalizes the reality of major college athletics these days. The best athletes in each of those sports rarely attend their university for the full four years and even less actually earn their degree. NCAA basketball and football programs might as well just call themselves minor leagues for the pros. The APR penalizes a team if a player transfers out or leaves before graduating. Heck it even penalizes a team if a player doesn't graduate within six years.
An even bigger issue with this system is that it gives an unfair advantage to the bigger schools that have much greater monetary resources available to them due to their success and popularity. If you see a parallel here to the BCS, then you're starting to get the idea that college athletics is anything but fair.
Yes, just like the larger universities control college football by excluding the smaller schools with the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the APR isn't a level playing field.
Eight schools were banned from the postseason this coming year: Cal-State Northridge, Chicago State, Grambling, Southern and Louisiana-Monroe in basketball and Idaho State, Jackson State and Southern in football.
As you can see, all those schools are low-level athletic programs with limited budgets and resources. The NCAA is saying that they will provide funding for low-resource schools, but it will never level the playing field with the big conference schools that generate millions with their programs.
A perfect example is that at a big-money program, the players would have access to multiple tutors and a large academic support staff. At a smaller university, the staff is much smaller and the teams often have to share that limited staff with other teams at the university. As a matter of fact, the big universities even have tutors that travel with the team. That kind of thing doesn't exist at the lower levels of college sports because there isn't the money for it. In essence, the rich get richer.
Another problem is that the smaller schools don't have the same amount of easy academic majors that they do at the bigger universities. You older readers might remember a cartoon called "Rocky & Bullwinkle". In one episode, Bullwinkle Moose was discovered to be a great quarterback. He was quickly given a scholarship from Whatsamatta U. to play on the football team. When he arrived on campus, he was given his class schedule which included classes like Personal grooming, Basket weaving and Reading the Modern Classics. When Bullwinkle objected to the reading class he was told that it was simply reading "classics" like "Dick and Jane at the Seashore".
The sad part is, that's not that far off from the reality of major college athletics.
Now that's not to say that the APR is all bad. It is an honest attempt by the NCAA to ensure that student-athletes at least try to be students during their time in school.
"I think it's everybody's responsibility to go to school and get an education," Alabama football coach Nick Saban said. "I really don't see it being a big issue that players are held accountable relative to what there responsibility is to get an education."
That's a noble sentiment from the coach of a major college football program, but unfortunately there are far too many coaches who only look to cheat the system in order to get wins and the big money that comes with those wins.
The NCAA needs to do a better job of holding coaches, university personnel and agents accountable for misdeeds, not just the players. After all, the adults should know better. But that's an article for another day.
The NCAA should be applauded for their swift action in this instance. They identified a problem and are working to correct it. The system may not be perfect, but nothing about college sports is perfect these days. Money rules the day and it always will.
At least the NCAA is trying to put the student back in student-athlete. And for that they should be commended.
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