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Push begins for profound reform
By The Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS — For nearly two
years, Todd Turner has worked to return academic integrity to college
sports. For two months, David Berst has tried to rewrite recruiting rules.
Both are about to face a major
test.
The NCAA Management Council
meets Monday and Tuesday to consider sweeping proposals endorsed by NCAA
president Myles Brand and designed to change the culture and image of
intercollegiate athletics.
"Both are very critical areas
for us," said council chairwoman Christine Plonsky, women's athletic
director at Texas. "Common sense can prevail very, very easily. In the
academic world, we're moving into a new direction."
Turner, the former athletic
director at Vanderbilt and N.C. State, heads a committee that developed an
ambitious proposal to penalize schools when student-athletes consistently
perform poorly in the classroom.
Berst, an NCAA vice president,
oversees a panel examining recruiting rules. That group's ideas also will be
discussed this week.
If the proposal from Turner's
committee is passed by the council this week and approved by the NCAA Board
of Directors on April 29, schools could be penalized as early as next year.
The NCAA would look at graduation rates and general academic progress of
athletes, assigning a score to each of the more than 6,000 Division I teams
in all sports.
If a team then falls below a
certain standard, which will be determined when data is collected from
2004-05, incremental penalties would include a warning letter, loss of
scholarships, disqualification from NCAA tournaments and loss of money from
NCAA championships. The penalty would increase each year, meaning a school
would have to produce substandard results for four consecutive years to face
the harshest penalty: loss of money.
If a school falls below the
standard, and players who would have been academically ineligible the
following year leave school, those scholarships would be lost for one year.
Turner said there would be no limit on how many scholarships could be lost,
although there would be an appeals process.
"I will be pleased when there
is evidence that behaviors have changed and our student-athletes are more
like students than professionals," Turner said. "This is one of the most
significant things we've tried to do to make academics important."
Turner's committee also wanted
to reward schools that exceeded the standards. Adding scholarships and
increasing on-campus visits were both considered before being ruled out. Now
it appears any reward primarily would be additional publicity for the team.
Plonsky said the biggest
concern she's heard from schools, coaches and athletic directors is that
it's not clear where the academic bar will be set.
Still, the package is expected
to pass.
"It's hard not to support
academic reform. We all feel an obligation," Plonsky said.
The other major issue this
week is recruiting.
Berst led a task force
appointed by Brand in February after highly publicized scandals at Colorado
and Miami.
The task force has made
several recommendations to restrict over-the-top wining and dining of
recruits. It also asked universities to implement their own policies.
Berst, the NCAA's former head
of enforcement, said if the schools put a policy in writing, the NCAA could
then hold the school accountable to those policies.
Additional measures could be
proposed at the Management Council's July meeting in Baltimore with the hope
that new recruiting standards would be in place by this fall. Berst will
make the recommendations this week, but a vote is not expected.
The task force ruled out
stricter changes that could have eliminated paid visits by recruits
completely. But the panel might reconsider cutting the number of paid visits
a recruit can take before the final proposal is completed.
"This has exactly the right
kind of teeth," Berst said. "It's the manner in which you show the teeth
that's important. If we have institutions help us design things, it seems to
have a better chance of actually changing the culture."
Copyright 2004
The Associated Press. Bonesville.net contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
02/23/2007 10:41:11 AM
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