Posted on Fri, May. 09, 2008

COMMENTARY | TIM DAHLBERG

NCAA errs in focus on graduation rates

Do easy courses, lackey instructors aid cause?

Associated Press

The people who run college athletics took time off the other day from counting the millions of dollars top athletes make for their schools to pat themselves on the back because more athletes are actually going to class.

Not only are they going to class, but they're getting degrees. At least that's what the NCAA's latest report on athlete academics suggests.

Simply put, the graduation rate for athletes in most sports is rising, thanks mostly to a program that penalizes schools if they don't graduate a minimum of six out of 10 athletes in every sport. Apparently the threat of lost scholarships and bans on postseason play has prompted new interest among coaches in making sure their players study.

NCAA President Myles Brand trumpeted the new Academic Progress Report figures as evidence of just that. He noted that scores are up in 26 of 29 sports since the program began four years ago, and that schools have been especially good at upping graduation rates for baseball and football players.

Brand acknowledged that basketball remains the one sport where efforts to improve academics haven't had much effect. Even with 53 Division I basketball programs facing the loss of scholarships and other sanctions this year, there hasn't been much progress in improving graduation rates. The NCAA is so concerned that it has appointed a special panel to find out why basketball players aren't graduating.

One reason might be that there aren't enough good instructors to go around. Schools facing sanctions might think about putting someone like Jim Harrick Jr. in front of a class of eager student-athletes to solve their graduation problems.

It was Harrick who taught a class called "Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball" while his father was the coach at Georgia in 2001. Three players on the Georgia team got As in the class, but only after acing a final that included the questions:

• How many points does a 3-point field goal account for in basketball?

• How many halves are in a college basketball game?

The real problem with basketball graduation rates, though, isn't that they're so low. It's that expectations are so high.

So there's 53 Division I schools that don't graduate 60 percent of their basketball players. So what?

It's not like they're not trying, because the first thing every new coach does is take the academic advisers out to dinner to make sure they know that general studies is the best degree any athlete can get.

No need to mess around with anything too specific when there are practices to go to and games to be played.

Michigan has that one down. According to a series earlier this year by the Ann Arbor News, just 176 of 26,000 students at Michigan were pursuing a general studies degree, but nearly half of them were athletes.

Instead of focusing on graduation rates, the NCAA might want to take a look at what kind of classes athletes sign up for and who helps them outside the classroom.

Shocking as it might seem, not every athlete enters college looking for an education. To many, going to class is nothing more than a necessary evil so they can play ball and, hopefully, one day play ball for money.

That's not going to change just because a few more of them might be getting degrees.