Admission door shuts out a few

PULLMAN — Lawrence Ball signed a letter of intent to play football for Washington State University in February. But he was denied admission in August, and he’ll watch his would-be Cougars teammates from the sideline on Saturday.

From the other sideline.

The defensive tackle from Fresno, Calif., is on scholarship at the University of Arizona, a school that snapped him up within a week after being rejected by WSU.

“I was frustrated about as much as you can be frustrated,” said assistant coach Ken Greene, who recruited Ball for the Cougars. “If you take the same format the other Pac-10 schools use, if you’re a qualifier you’re admitted into the school. Washington State is not the easiest school to recruit. It’s an awesome place, what you get here is just incredible, but initially it’s a little difficult.”

WSU — such as athletic programs around the country — can and will spend thousands of dollars recruiting players, urging them to sign letters of intent in February, with one catch: There’s no guarantee they will be admitted, or even cleared by the NCAA.

In fact, WSU signed 28 players to letters of intent in February this year. But just 19 are playing for the Cougars. Eight of those players were academic casualties.

It is Ball’s situation, however, that seems to be the most difficult for the coaches to accept. While the others who didn’t make the academic cut were red-flagged by the NCAA Clearinghouse, Ball’s transcript was passable by NCAA standards. But the Admissions Subcommittee of the Faculty Affairs Committee, which is in charge of hearing appeals, turned him down.

“It’s very disappointing to know you spent all the time, effort and money to recruit a guy and then he’s not admitted when he’s qualified,” Greene said. “He’s an awesome kid, and that’s what hurts me as much as anything.”

But the appeals committee stands by its decision.

“Athletics does not wag the dog. The dog in this case is academics and athletics is the tail,” said professor Wesley Leid, a committee member. “Some of these other schools don’t have the same concern.

“As a former college football player, I don’t give a damn if he’s the best quarterback in the world. … We are not doing (the players) a service by just letting them in.”

This scenario could become a continuing problem in Pullman, where skyrocketing enrollment has improved the academic credentials of the average WSU student. With student-athletes in the same pool as everyone else when it comes to the appeals process, it’s possible that the bar is being raised. Competing in the classroom, a standard the committee uses to judge appeals, is harder than it was five or 10 years ago.

“It is (a learning experience) for the university, what the parameters are with increased enrollment and where that’s going to affect not only the football program but the entire athletic department,” WSU recruiting coordinator and assistant coach Robin Pflugrad said.

“We need to know how we can spend the money recruiting and who we can get admitted and those things before we go out. It should always be that way. In any business, that’s how you should run your business. You shouldn’t have to tell a guy that he can’t get in after the fact.”

The committee

Incoming students are graded by a formula that combines grade-point averages and test scores. If a student-athlete or any student doesn’t meet the requirements for admission, the case goes to the committee if an appeal is entered.

Many schools set up a separate pool for student-athletes or other subsets where students can be granted admission even if they don’t meet the regular school standards. For instance, an athletic department might have 20 slots, another department 10, and so on.

But at WSU, the athletic department has no such fallback in place.

“WSU’s process for handling athletes, generally, is the same as it is for every other student,” said professor Chuck Madison, the current chairman of the Admissions Subcommittee. “And that’s not the way it’s done at many other schools.”

Madison estimated that 75-100 prospective students who are turned down go through the appeals process in the course of a year. It’s not unusual that at least a few of those are student-athletes.

“They’re all kids who didn’t have the qualifying (numbers) to get through the front door,” Leid said. “You look at everything you can – personality, motivation, grades.”

The committee, which comes from a pool of faculty members and administrators, generally hears cases in which extenuating circumstances may have hampered a student’s ability to post grades worthy of immediate admission.

In addition to the original transcript and some additional information provided for the appeals process, each individual is granted an optional interview, done in person or over the phone.

Leid said students are given 10-15 minutes, sometimes as much as a half-hour, to talk to the committee members and make a case.

“In a general sense, the kid either makes it or breaks it themselves,” Leid said. “We talk to kids around the world. Some kids will drive over to make their case, and sometimes they are turned down as well.

“I won’t deny it. It’s a judgment call in the end because they don’t meet the standards. You’re taking a chance.”

The case

Ball’s situation, however, wasn’t all black-and-white. The Fresno, Calif., native was denied admission by the committee in the first week of August after it reviewed his case. According to WSU coaches, his phone interview did not go well.

But after the fact, it was discovered that a clerical error from his high school had caused his transcript to change dramatically. Fixing the error boosted Ball’s GPA significantly, nearing the point where he would have been admitted without the appeals process.

As a result he was given a second appeal, something which committee members said they have no obligation to do.

In his second appeal, WSU coaches expected that Ball would be given another telephone interview. They had told the defensive tackle and his mother, Jacklyne Hardamon, to expect a call.

But in its deliberations, the committee — at least three of the present members were also at the first appeal, according to Leid — decided that Ball had been given his opportunity to interview the first time around.

In the end, the committee decided that the updated information wasn’t enough to change their minds.

“They were supposed to call, do another phone interview, and no one ever called,” Hardamon said. “He was real disappointed. I had packed his clothes and everything.”

Arizona’s coaching staff refused to make Ball, who is redshirting this season, available for this story.

Both Leid and WSU coaches said it would be ideal if the interview could have been conducted in person. Madison said about two-thirds are face-to-face. But there is no mechanism in place to bring students to Pullman if the family can’t afford the trip.

“Had Lawrence Ball been able to come up and sit in front of that committee and meet with them face to face — just like our motto, ‘World Class. Face to Face,’ — maybe the odds go up,” Pflugrad said.

The loss of a player at such a late stage can also be difficult on coaches who have worked for more than a year to maintain a relationship with that player.

Greene visited Ball’s house on at least three occasions, and one of WSU’s 2005 verbal commitments, quarterback Arkelon Hall, is Ball’s friend and former high school teammate at Fresno’s Edison High.

“When you recruit a kid and spend that much time with him, you love the kid,” said Greene. “He’s from a very challenged background, so he’s not the most articulate communicator. He doesn’t trust people always. It takes him a little while to get rolling. And the committee’s initial reaction — over the phone, not in person because he can’t afford to come up and do it in person — it’s a disadvantage. It’s too bad.”

The committee members said they are dedicated to doing the best job they can in screening potential students and assessing their chances for academic success at the university, be it a student-athlete or anyone else.

“We bend over backwards to find out who and what that kid is,” Leid said, speaking about the committee’s work in general. “If somebody has a better way for us to do it, I’m willing to listen.

“We have been as fair as humanly possible. I sleep fine at night.”

The future

The greater question for WSU football, perhaps, is how Ball’s case and those of the seven others who ended up failing to make the grade will affect their recruiting in the future.

Even in head coach Bill Doba’s first public comments of the season, when he addressed the Pac-10 media at a preseason event in Los Angeles, he said the academic casualties would probably cause a change in this year’s recruiting strategies.

Doba’s words are reinforced by the scholarship math any program must do from year to year.

The 28 that WSU had available last fall is an unusually high number. This season, the signing class shouldn’t be any larger than 17 to stay at the NCAA limit of 85.

The Cougars aren’t yet sure of the number of scholarships they’ll have available because they’re still waiting to see if some of 2004’s recruits can pass the necessary tests and gain entry in January.

If that’s the case, then they will count against the 17 slots for 2005.

If some of those student-athletes manage to gain admission and enter the program as grayshirt freshmen in January (see box), it’s possible that the Cougars will have just 12 football scholarships available.

So if they were to take a lot of risks — as in 2004 — the Cougars would run the risk of having a freshman class too small for their own good.

“We cannot take as many gambles as we did this year,” Pflugrad said. “We have to (look at) our numbers and say, ‘Hey, we got to have guys who are going to be here.’ So that really will affect the academics and who we bring in even on official visits.”

Still, the experience of losing so many from one class doesn’t mean the Cougars won’t take more risks once they have another big senior class on the roster.

Pflugrad said the formula, so to speak, remains intact. When you have more scholarships to play with, you accept more risks. When you’re limited to a few open roster spots, you offer them to those more likely to get into the university.

“There (are) a lot of schools in the nation that are doing the same thing,” Pflugrad said. “An example is just with Lawrence Ball. Arizona has already gobbled him up. And that’s how competitive recruiting is. He turned down a lot of schools to say yes to us in February.

“It’s fair to let him walk instead of waiting until after camp starts and then he goes and plays against you. That’s not good. That’s not good for morale, that’s not good business, all those things.

“Again, the more information you have, the better off you’re going to be.”