ESPN’s series, Outside the Lines, cast a critical eye on the state of athletic scholarships on today’s broadcast raising some seemingly never ending questions about how major athletic programs handle their student athletes and the abuse of a system which still claims to be educational at heart. Clearly, the well-being of the young people whose young lives are held in the balance is not job one.
The ESPN program focused on John Calipari’s taking charge at Kentucky releasing players who had received athletic scholarships under the previous coach, Billy Gillispie, who were let go and their scholarships terminated to make room for players he could import from his tenure at Memphis.
NCAA regulations allow scholarships to only be granted for one year at a time. There is some logic to this as schools should not commit unconditionally to students who may or may not fulfill their responsibilities to maintain their award. Yet when players do all that is expected of them and are dumped for no other reason than not fitting the team’s plan, something is very wrong. To call these scholarships might not be accurate. They are conditional grants awarded for basketball play. Think of this if these were regular academic scholarships. While they might be awarded in a similar manner, if the student achieves academically and adheres to the rules required by the certificate, a school would not revoke the student’s scholarship. This whole issue points to the inherent contradictions that are implicit in the world of “student athletes” in the glamour sports playing for the big name programs.
All the requirements of professional sports are likewise expected of top college programs. They must sell tickets, attract sponsors, and get TV ratings. The way to do that is win, often at any cost. The universities have so much leeway to promote their programs. Sure there are some tough restrictions on recruiting, practice time, and other activities away from the scheduled practice and games, but when the television cameras are on, everything plays almost exactly the same way NFL and NBA games do.
Who pays the price? The student athletes. Look at the restrictions on their ability to earn income, gifts, or any kind of special favors where just getting a ride to practice or be driven home off campus are seen as unauthorized privileges. The message is, you’d better be careful if you even treat a ballplayer to a burger and fries at the burger joint because that might violate the rules of alumni contributions. Look at some of the behaviors which drawn sanctions for teams and coaches and see how silly the whole system is. Likewise, naughty students can on their own get involved in things that benefit them against the rules. The school gets punished perhaps because it didn’t have a nanny on the student’s tale 24x7x365.
How many programs graduate their players? It seems like if a player does not leave the team for the pros, every effort should be made to make sure the player receives all the benefits of being a college student resulting in a transcript that certifies a candidate worthy of landing a decent career upon graduation. How often have investigative reports focused on former Division One players featured in some hardship case, a life of crime, mishaps, poverty, or unemployment revealed to have essentially no functional skills, not only reflective of no college background, but not even ones expected of the most basic requirements of a K-12 education.
Sadly, the jock culture overlooks the person in favor of the performance. From when a young athlete first starts exhibiting significant athletic skills, hoards of admirers start elevating his status based on baskets, touchdowns, and homeruns. In the school setting, teachers are encouraged to play soft making sure that a student’s lack of academic prowess never keeps him off the team. By the time the player is a varsity player in high school, he has been processed through a system where little more than winning games has any priority. High schools too want county and state championships and love the attention of being mentioned when their players make it to the NCAA Promised Land.
The writer of this blog once taught high school having the school’s top basketball student in a Speech I class, one the student had no interest in taking, but needed the class to fill out his schedule though not required to graduate. The class was the last period of the day, thus this future all-world standout, in fact his nickname was, “World,” missed many classes for games. Students could not participate in interscholastic sports with failing grades. World did absolutely NOTHING in his class, completing no assignments, and not participating in class activities, often sleeping or reading sports magazines when in attendance. As such, this teacher recorded a failing grade for World as testimony that the student produced no results indicative of any academic progress whatsoever in the class. Before the grade sheets for submitted to be fed to the computers that would produce the report card and establish the official record, this teacher was visited by the Guidance Chairman, also the school’s assistant athletic director and wrestling coach. Every request short of demanding the teacher change the grade could not have been made more explicit including, “I don’t have the authority to change World’s grade, but…..” Realizing this was not English just an elective, this teacher simply said he would not formally protest if World’s grade were changed to the desired grade requested, but this teacher would not initiate that change or initial the paperwork or do anything to show his consent for World to get a free ride. Needless to say, World’s record posted a grade of “D” and he remained on the team allowing him to go on to a national program in basketball where he did nothing to distinguish himself and was soon history. Who knows what World’s world is today?
How often are teachers still implicitly or explicitly pressured to pass students for the sake of their status on a school’s team?
Of course once in college, student athletes are supposed to be provided tutoring and much academic assistance since they miss substantial class time and have been granted omission not having the academic accomplishment of academic students. Some tutors and their programs provide great opportunities for a team’s players taking a personal interest in their growth and learning. Others are just formalities that allow the school to cover their bases indicating they are addressing academic requirements.
On the eve of the College Football National Championship between Alabama and Texas at the Rose Bowl and the College Hoops season kicks into full gear on the road to March Madness, we will cheer for our favorite teams the same way we cheer for the pros. We’ll cheer the victors. Boo the bad guys, and curse the players who lack hustle or make obvious errors. From a fan’s standpoint, it’s all about the game, and how we want our teams to win.
What does not materialize for our fans’ experience, the pros are paid huge salaries even millions for their play. College players can’t even legitimately earn two cents. The fans in the stands can be every bit as rough on these young people taunting, jeering, and cursing them just as if they were making Kobe Bryant or A-Rod kind of money. While some might moralize we should behave differently toward college sports, that’s not going to happen. Even before the media age, college rivalries were every bit as hot as the pros.
While the select few, a very small percent of top players will go on to reach the pros, only a small of them will be up to the highest level for more than a cup of coffee. The hard reality is all but the rare few will go on to other options in life. Some will suffer from life-long chronic conditions resulting from on-the-field injuries. While players do not receive compensation in the traditional sense, cannot we at least expect their compensation should be an adequate education? Should they not be given every opportunity to complete an academic major and graduate? If they have been recruited not meeting the academic requirements the university would have for most students, if they are truly not intellectually capable of a school’s rigorous academic requirements, can there be some accommodations working with other schools, vocational programs, or internship programs so the student-athlete gains some benefit for his contributions to the his team and its school?
While we look at the weekly rankings and conference standings to determine a school’s athletic program’s success, we must remember that all of them have “college” or “university” in their names. If we want to see how effectively these schools are living up to the second part of their name, we should have those metrics available too. As a taxpayer and citizen of one of the fifty states, this writer expects my state universities to make sure the student part of student athlete is just as important as University should be as important as Maryland, North Carolina, Miami, Michigan, or any other school.
What becomes of the Kentucky players dismissed by a coaching change should not disappear from our sight. Clearly, these were not young men NBA bound. Where will they be in two or three years?
Such questions cannot go answered.
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