NCAA shows academic inconsistency

For many college students across the nation, three words were pounded continually into their heads so that they would never forget them until they passed them on to their own children. School comes first. School comes first. School comes first. But for others, academics took a backseat to athletics. The field came before the classroom, the ball before the books. \nNow, as those students have entered college to play for some of the most storied programs in the history of college sports, some are struggling academically. Hence, NCAA president Myles Brand recently announced the formation of a team that will research and make recommendations for the current academic climate in men’s basketball, the sport which has the lowest academic prowess of all Division I athletics programs across the nation. \nBrand’s Division I Men’s Basketball Academic Enhancement Group, which will begin meeting in August, will no doubt have a positive affect on the lives of many student athletes as well as improve the image of major sport athletes. This is especially true at our own IU, where the men’s basketball team had one of the lowest ranking (277 of 325) on the NCAA’s Academic Progress Report, which measures the ability of colleges to retain academically eligible student athletes. If Brand’s group proposes reforms that improve such statistics, then he no doubt will deserve praise for its creation and his concern for the academic lives of student athletes. \nHowever, Brand’s announcement of this program in early June 2007 brings with it some inconsistencies with comments he made in a letter to Congress in November 2006. Why was the president of the NCAA writing to Congress? Just weeks before, then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Bill Thomas demanded that Brand justify the NCAA’s federal tax-exempt status on grounds that it has an educational purpose. A major question was the necessity of federal taxpayers to subsidize expenditures on things such as rising salaries for coaches and costly new athletics facilities. Brand responded with a 25-page letter defending the academic inclination of the NCAA, listing several reasons that the NCAA should remain tax-exempt, including scholarships provided for economically disadvantaged students and that lessons learned in the athletic arenas are just as important as those in the classroom. \nUnfortunately, given the professional atmosphere that is growing around major collegiate athletics and the recent admission that athletes in those sports are struggling academically (baseball was recently reviewed by a similar committee), it seems that the NCAA is failing in its academic duty. Brand’s committee will likely improve the academic status of major college athletes, but at the time he delivered his defense to Congress, the NCAA was sub-par academically. \nThe assertion that athletes are students first seems to lack much-needed support. Rather, the lights and fame that come with men’s basketball programs distract from the primary purpose of a student at a university. \nIt seems unfair, therefore, that the NCAA should receive federal tax-exempt status if it is failing in its professed goals. Such status should be stripped until such time as the NCAA can show a legitimate link between collegiate athletics and academic progress, independent of reform.