On the court, Anthony was an A student.
He was a starter in one of the country’s top college basketball programs, helping his team earn three bids to the prestigious National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament. In 1991, his final season, he was an all-conference selection.
In the classroom, Anthony was anything but a star. During the same academic term he earned all-conference recognition, for example, he also was earning a grade-point average of 0.6 on a 4.0 scale.
That’s one C, one D, two F’s and one incomplete for the ’91 spring quarter. It dropped Anthony’s cumulative grade-point average below 1.7.
He spent his last two years of college on academic probation, receiving five F’s and three incompletes.
His struggles in the classroom apparently didn’t hinder his athletic career. He remained eligible for basketball and started every game his last two seasons.
Anthony first majored in physical education, then changed to criminal justice. His transcript suggests his true area of concentration was eligibility. His stated goal was to enter the business world after graduation, yet he never took a business course.
He also has yet to get his degree.
Anthony is a fictitious name. The Tribune obtained a copy of his transcript on the condition his identity not be revealed. His case, however, is all too representative of the abuses that have created an awkward alliance between higher education and big-time sports.
The NCAA is in the midst of a campaign to make “student-athlete” more than a contradiction in terms. In 1983, it passed legislation toughening the requirements high-school athletes must meet as freshmen in Division I, its highest level of competition.
The association since has required, among other measures, Division I schools to disclose the graduation rates of their scholarship athletes and has instituted rules requiring athletes to make progress toward a degree.
While the NCAA pursues reform, however, events indicate that forging a harmonious relationship between colleges’ athletic and academic sides remains an elusive, if not impossible, dream:
– Last December, University of New Mexico basketball star Steve Logan was dropped from two courses, making him ineligible to compete in intercollegiate contests. Although less than two weeks remained in the semester, he enrolled in two new courses the next day in time for him to compete in a game that evening.
The New Mexico student newspaper later reported Logan did not pass a course that semester.
– In October, 1992, 11 officials of Southwest Missouri State University met to approve course schedule changes one of the basketball team’s top players needed to play in the second semester. The meeting took place after a dean objected to an earlier revision.
The meeting included Southwest Missouri’s acting president, athletic director and basketball coach. After the second revision, the player’s schedule consisted of 14 credits in eight different courses. Prerequisites were waived in two of the new courses.
School officials said they hadn’t done anything that hadn’t been done for other students.
– In March, University of Nevada at Las Vegas officials suspended basketball All-American Isaiah Rider amid allegations a tutor had written an English paper for him in a course he had taken the previous summer at a local community college. The course instructor claimed UNLV officials pressured her to pass Rider. The officials denied that charge.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the three-hour English course was among 15 hours Rider had to pass to be eligible for the 1992-93 season. He had passed nine hours the previous two semesters, including a class called Prevention and Management of Premenstrual Syndrome.
Critics of big-time sports doubt reform ever will eliminate such stories because of the incongruity of placing a mass entertainment medium in an academic setting.
The result of that coupling is dozens of athletic departments that have multi-million-dollar budgets yet face the constant threat of red ink. Those departments lose money unless their revenue-producing sports-usually football and men’s basketball-play to full houses.
Keeping the stadiums packed and the alumni and other fans happy takes victories, and winning requires talented athletes. If many of them enter college less academically prepared than fellow students and have scant interest in education, that’s often accepted in the name of success.
Critics say it fosters a double standard that erodes the integrity of institutions whose mission includes the pursuit of truth. Citing graduation figures, they accuse colleges of turning themselves into apprenticeship programs for professional football and basketball, even though an athlete’s chances of being paid to play approximate his odds of winning a lottery.
Among Division I student-athletes who enrolled as scholarship freshmen from 1983 through 1986, 47 percent of football players and 41 percent of men’s basketball players graduated compared with 53 percent for all sports and 54 percent for all students. For blacks, the rate was 36 percent in football, 32 percent in basketball.
In football, 10 of the top 20 teams in the final 1992 Associated Press poll had four-year graduation rates of less than 50 percent. In basketball, that was true of 13 of the top 20 teams in the final 1993 AP regular-season poll.
National football champion Alabama had a 35 percent graduation rate. In basketball, Massachusetts had an 8 percent rate and Cincinnati, 19 percent.
Tom Kowalski has reviewed an estimated 1,000 transcripts as director of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports, which helps pro athletes complete work on their college degrees. Education, he says, often takes a back seat to athletic eligibility.
“I see a lot of transcripts where players took courses to remain eligible,” Kowalski said. “A lot of schools have developmental courses to stay eligible, elemental math and reading. Some schools give credit for playing on the team.
“Often I see courses that are really irregular in someone’s curriculum. They bring someone up from a 1.7 to a 2.0 so he’s eligible.”
Colleges long ago created an athletic monster, and many officials still believe they must feed it. It’s why the history of college athletics is pocked with attempts at reform followed by renewed periods of scandal.
The reforms all failed because they led to changes in rules rather than in attitudes.
“As a priest, there’s a saying you constantly have to reform the church,” said Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, former president of Notre Dame and co-chairman of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. “I feel the same way about intercollegiate athletics.”
Double standard
The effect of the double standard in college athletics is evident at nearly all of the 301 schools that compete in Division I. It, at times, has stood out like an unsightly blemish at New Mexico.
That school has one of the country’s most successful basketball programs, competitively and fiscally. The Lobos have won at least 20 games in each of the last seven seasons. In 17 of the last 18 years, they have drawn an average of at least 15,000 fans a game to University Arena, known as “The Pit” in recognition of the passion of the team’s followers.
The program’s academic achievements have been less impressive. Its graduation rate for players entering as freshmen in 1983 through 1986 was 31 percent.
In November 1979, the school was rocked by revelations several basketball players had received credit for junior-college or extension courses they had not taken. Basketball coach Norm Ellenberger was fired the following month.
In February 1980, former Athletic Director Lavon McDonald told a state legislative subcommittee about the pressure he received from “above and below” to maintain a winning program.
Ellenberger’s successor, Gary Colson, rebuilt the basketball program, avoiding scandal and winning 25 and 22 games, respectively, his last two seasons. Yet Colson was pressured to resign in 1988 because his teams had not won often enough to reach the NCAA tournament.
New coach Dave Bliss got New Mexico into the tournament in 1991 and 1993, its first visits since Ellenberger’s reign; but once again the school seemed to pay a price in embarrassment.
It centered on Steve Logan’s 11th-hour course changes. Logan was dropped from two recreation courses Dec. 2 for failing to meet requirements.
That reduced his course load to six credits, six short of the 12 a player must take to remain eligible. On Dec. 3, the 104th day of a 112-day semester, he added two new courses to his schedule.
The school’s faculty representative to the NCAA ruled later the same day Logan was eligible because he had not violated NCAA rules. Logan started against Texas A&M that night and scored the decisive point in a 71-69 victory.
On Dec. 4, Logan met with Athletic Director Gary Ness. According to Ness, Logan said basketball coaches had helped him find a health education course, while a dean had advised him to enroll in Introduction to Academic Skills.
Ness said coaching involvement in the course changes convinced him they were merely an eligibility-saving device “in conflict with the notion of having academic standards for athletic eligibility.” He ruled Logan ineligible for the rest of the fall semester.
Bliss acknowledged an assistant coach called to see if Logan could get into the health education course but said the player found the course himself. “That doesn’t violate anything,” Bliss said.
Ness’ ruling meant Logan had to sit out two games, but he didn’t miss either one because university President Richard Peck restored his eligibility. Ness said Peck told him the athletic director should not overrule a faculty representative’s decision.
The course changes sparked a storm of protest from faculty members, many of whom hadn’t known students could enroll in courses long after normal deadlines with only the permission of the instructor. Among 112 students who made late course changes that semester, only Logan added a class he had not been attending previously.
In a Dec. 9 statement, the six faculty members of the school’s Athletic Council censured Logan, the dean who advised him, Bliss and the instructors who allowed the late enrollments, charging the course additions were permitted “only to preserve (Logan’s) eligibility to play basketball.”
Logan retained that eligibility for the entire season, even though his first-semester grade-point average, according to the New Mexico Daily Lobo, was 0.00.
The newspaper said Logan received a withdraw failing and two F’s in three courses and incompletes for the two courses he added late. (The grade report was through Jan. 5. Logan completed work in both late courses about two weeks later.) Logan could not be reached to comment.
The Daily Lobo obtained the grades for 12 of the basketball team’s 14 members. Four players, including Logan, were listed with cumulative grade-point averages below 2.0, which is a C.
The players’ eligibility was not in jeopardy, however, because the NCAA requires only that players be eligible at the beginning of the academic year and take 12 credits.
“It appears they weren’t serious students, just here to play basketball,” said Michael Dougher, a professor of psychology and Athletic Council member. “Once they meet the requirements, goodbye.
“That’s why the Athletic Council got upset. Do we have student-athletes or professional athletes?”
Bliss agreed Logan did not fulfill his responsibilities as a student, but he blamed the player’s late schedule changes on an academic adviser whose ill-advised agreement with an instructor led to Logan’s being dropped from the two courses. Bliss said the instructor instead should have failed Logan, though acknowledging that would have allowed him to remain eligible.
“I’m not standing up for Steve as much as I’m upset with the advising,” said Bliss, adding most of the players he has coached at New Mexico have graduated.
