The needless tragedy of big-time college basketball and football today is that a small number of bad actors are tainting everyone--the universities that continue to hire and pay wildly-inflated salaries to renegade coaches, the college presidents who turn a blind eye to recruiting abuses, and the image of the National Collegiate Athletic Association itself. This tainting of college sports is unnecessary because intercollegiate sports ordinarily serve an invaluable role on campus--I know they did for me and my sister; both of us played intercollegiate basketball and went on to play for several years overseas after graduating for college.
As Bill Bradley points out in his book, Values of the Game, student athletes learn lessons on courts and playing fields that are difficult to pick up in chemistry lab. Resilience in the face of adversity, selflessness, teamwork, self-discipline, and finding your passion are all values that sports can uniquely transmit. Many of those character-building traits are every bit as critical to succeeding in life as sheer book smarts.
More than 410,000 student athletes participate in NCAA championship sports, including more than 161,000 student athletes in Division I alone. For the vast majority of student athletes, intercollegiate sports enrich their college years and build a well-rounded student experience. My father, a professor at the University of Chicago, was the faculty representative to the NCAA for more than a quarter century. He believed passionately that sports help universities fulfill a dual mission, to educate students and prepare them for life.
Yet the valuable role of sports on campus has a shadow cast over it these days because of ongoing abuses, especially in Division I men's basketball and big-time college football programs. About a quarter of the 64 teams in last year's NCAA men's basketball tournament graduated less than 40 percent of their players. Four teams graduated zero percent of their African-American ball players. By contrast, Wake Forest, Florida State, Robert Morris, Utah State, and Western Kentucky all graduated 100 percent of their players, black and white.
You cannot explain away that kind of variation--zero percent versus 100 percent--by reference to the usual suspects. The institutions and coaches have to play a role. There are still too many coaches who care more about getting a student athlete out on the court in a uniform than about getting them in a cap and gown four years later.
Only a small minority of renegade coaches and institutions are running programs that cast a cloud over intercollegiate athletics but their stories are well known. Players at one football powerhouse were charged with 24 criminal offenses in the last four years, including nine felonies. Players on a division rival racked up 30 arrests in four years. If the number of players arrested each year on a team exceeds the team GPA, that program needs a house-cleaning.
Yet, instead of being sanctioned or suspended, rogue coaches are landing lucrative coaching positions at new institutions--while the schools and players left behind suffer sanctions and loss of postseason opportunities. Players who, through no fault of their own, lose the right to play in postseason play, should be able to transfer out of their school immediately.
How can we protect men's basketball and football from abuses? Here are three ideas. First, slow down. Right now, coaches can make scholarship offers to elite athletes in eighth grade. One fan web site joked that coaches would soon be making college offers to embryos. At minimum, coaches should be obliged to wait to make offers until after the sophomore year of high school.
It's time as well to reform the NBA's "one-and-done" rule, which requires NBA recruits to "attend" college for a year or be 19 before they are drafted. One-and-done is a mockery of college education. Star athletes arrive on campus and take just enough credit hours to retain their eligibility during their first semester in school. In the second semester, they drop out as soon as the season is over and start working out with agents in anticipation of being drafted.
Major league baseball has a much better system. Baseball allows players to be drafted straight out of high school. But if a high school baseball player is not drafted and heads for college, they cannot be drafted again until after their third year. If college men's basketball adopted a similar system, a handful of budding basketball superstars--the Lebron James's and Kevin Garnett's--could jump directly to the NBA. But the vast majority of players would go on to college and get some real education and maturity under their belt before they contemplate going pro.
Second, boosting low graduation rates should be part of a coach's job. I would suggest that, at minimum, teams with less than a 40 percent graduation rate be prohibited from post-season competition.
Finally, it's time to re-empower coaches but at the same time hold them to a higher standard of accountability. I would propose a grand bargain: When a program has a clean record and good outcomes, coaches should have more leeway to increase their contact with players in the offseason. We don't now cap the amount of time that a star violinist practices with the orchestra or the lab time of a budding scientist.
But when programs show the wrong values and have terrible educational outcomes, coaches should be held personally responsible for their lack of leadership. They should be suspended, sanctioned, or barred. And if the coach jumps ship to a new team, the penalties should follow the coach--rather than punishing innocent players left in their wake.
With the exception of the military, few institutions do more to build leadership and character in our nation's young men and women than collegiate sports. It is time for universities to burnish that legacy and recall their True North: If a college fails to educate all of its students, if it fails to give them a chance to learn and grow, then that university has failed. It is time to clamp down on the bad actors.
Arne Duncan is the U.S. Secretary of Education
The NBA rule in no way requires kids to attend college for a year. They have a minor league just like baseball. There are also pro teams all over the world where they can play. They aren't recruits either. The NBA has a draft just like the NFL, and MLB. The NBA is a business and reached a legal deal with the players union for the so called one and done rule. Is the Secretary suggesting that government should step in and dictate employee requirements for just one entity. The Sec of Education should have done some homework before writing this article.
My alm mater's men's team just completed a week in which they played one home game followed by two road games-all during the first 10 days of the new semester. Can anyone seriously keep a straight face and pretend that anyone is actually concerned with the amount of class time the players missed during this week? I doubt it.
What cliched, anti-intellectual tripe.
Look, I was a working class kid who put myself through college and graduated with honors while working fulltime and being seemingly constantly sleep deprived the entire time. And you're saying that kind of determination, discipline and striving for excellence is somehow of a lesser nature than what some overcelebrated just out of high school basketball player taking P.E. and "rocks for jocks" classes while receiving special academic help often not available to other students experienced? Thanks for the insult.
One player on my college's basketball team was admitted even though HE COULDN'T READ by mere dint of his being able to skillfully manipulate the roundball. It echoed the infamous case at Creighton University with Kevin Ross several years earlier. When said player was found out it was a huge embarrassment to everyone on campus. The fact is that the sports tail often wags the academic dog and it degrades the value of a college education.
"Let the football team become frankly professional. Cast off all the deception. . . . Let the teams struggle . . . with no masquerade of amateurism or academic ideas."
David Starr Jordan, President of Stanford University 1905.
Will these questions ever get the attention they deserve, Mr Secretary?
Please.
But Arne is right on the mark regarding his critical observations about Division I football and basketball. The NCAA is a joke. It fosters and encourages the ongoing corruption that surrounds the high profile football and basketball mills because of money.
With all due respect to Margaret Spellings, Arne is a step in a better direction.
But those who are offered jobs before graduation--NBA, NFL, whatever--should be allowed to go. We have no reason to stop them! Isn't the purpose of college to train us up in a career where we can be productive, make money, raise a family? Do you know how many years a teacher has to teach to equal one year of the NBA league minimum? (FYI: it's about the same number of years as our last president was in office.)
If Wall Street offers an underclassman a million dollars to leave school and go to work, should the law prevent it? If Hollywood offers a nineteen-year-old a lead in a movie, should we force the kid to turn it down until he or she finishes college?
I loved college, my wife loved college, our kids will go to college, but let's not forget that it's primarily a means to an end.
Eliminate the one and done rule. Reestablish a four year requirement for collegiate football players. For those 'ready' to earn a salary, let them move on to a developmental league - expand the CFL and reestablish the European league - rather than have them wear the colors of a university. The great bulk of them have no intention of earning a degree and are there simply to make use of a stage to demonstrate their talent. There is already a D-League, and many professional BB leagues in Europe and Asia, for young roundball studs to earn a good wage. These guys should matriculate from high school directly to a pro team and leave collegiate programs for STUDENT athletes who sign on in order to get an education.
I doubt this will happen.
In the process, more resources could be directed towards more students and more people being able to attend college.
Colleges sport are nothing but farm teams for the sports industry anyway, might as well treat them as such.
And the general public is suppose to be "concerned" about conscusions ? and the long term afftects of men running into one another.
Hear very little about concusion grenades and the life long disabilities inflicted on US soldiers.
Lets get our priorities straight people.
This coming from the US Secretary of Education no less.
I would like to see what specifically you are doing for Military Dependents abroad and at home in the public schools?
Stop wasting education dollars on game playing. Eliminate college sports altogether and make schools teach classes for a change.
Mr. Duncan may have received great benefits from collegiate athletics, apparently his current boss didn't need that experience. I myself quickly found out that I couldn't hack playing baseball and keeping my scholarship. Are we even close to serious about pushing athletic programs to produce graduates? Don't we sort of owe that to the young people? (After all, we are supposed to be the adults involved here.)