Ncaa Must Find A Better Method

Now the real test begins for the NCAA.

A Philadelphia judge ruled last Monday that the NCAA’s requirement for a minimum standard test score is unfair and therefore, illegal. If the ruling survives an appeal by the NCAA, all 302 Division I schools could be on their own in determining which freshmen are eligible to play college sports.

NCAA officials were right to implement rules that would protect student-athletes from being exploited. But they were wrong to assume standardized testing would be the answer.

“A test score is not a way of measuring your desire, your heart, your character, because, for a lot of folks, they start at a disadvantage,” says Perry Clark, head basketball coach at Tulane. “You can’t put a formula on some people.”

The test score requirement has never been a fair measuring tool for students. Many educators have long said the tests are racially and culturally discriminatory toward African-American youths from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

NCAA statistics support these claims. While 20.6 percent of black athletes failed to qualify as freshmen, only 3.7 percent of white athletes failed, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Last week’s ruling arose out of a lawsuit filed in 1997 by lawyers on behalf of two black athletes at Philadelphia’s Simon Gratz High School. A year earlier, Leatrice Shaw and Tae Kwan Cureton finished in the top 10 percent of their senior class and had grade-point averages of 3.5 and 2.8, respectively. But each failed to achieve the minimum NCAA-mandated test score and were unable to get college scholarships.

Under Proposition 16, student-athletes are required to score at least 820 on the SAT to compete as college freshmen, plus achieve a 2.5 GPA in 13 college preparatory courses.

The NCAA is appealing the judge’s decision declaring Proposition 16 illegal. Rather than fight it, the NCAA should look at this as a great opportunity to create a better system, one that would give hard workers a chance, while preventing the Jerry Tarkanians of the world from exploiting players who have no academic intentions.

Instead of worrying about pre-college test scores, the NCAA should be more concerned with situations like the one at the University of Minnesota, where student-athletes have had their homework done by an academic adviser supervised only by a basketball coach.

That’s the real tragedy.

The bottom line is, if students can’t pull their own weight in the classroom, that’s the time to remove them from their teams.