Taking on the NCAA

Abstract

After four years of debate, the National Collegiate Athletic Association agreed in January 2000 to accept what high school principals said about their courses, rather than to continue judging courses through the clearinghouse. Mr. Nathan presents several lessons we can learn from this experience. EDUCATORS and students recently won an important and instructive victory. They succeeded in convincing the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the organization that runs college sports, to change procedures that were frustrating high school educators, parents, and students throughout the nation. Here, after some quick background, are seven lessons from this struggle. For many years, college sports has been a quagmire. Accompanying news stories about dramatic victories in football or basketball have been stories about college athletes who have modest academic skills. At one point, newspapers focused on a star college athlete who, when asked what he would do with a large professional contract, said he intended to hire someone to help him learn to read. Members of Congress warned university presidents that they needed to clean up their sports programs or Congress would intervene. College sports is a huge business. 1997 budget of the NCAA included more than $247 million in revenue, much of that money coming from television contracts.1 Neither universities nor the NCAA wanted Congress stepping in. So the NCAA adopted new regulations, requiring that prospective college athletes attain certain grade-point averages and scores on standardized tests. organization decided that it would determine which high school courses met its new standards. NCAA awarded a multimillion- dollar contract to the American College Testing (ACT) Program to establish a clearinghouse to deal with high school students and to review courses in English, social studies, math, and science at every American high school. NCAA/ACT collaboration did not do a stellar job. It told some National Merit Scholars and class valedictorians that they were not eligible for participation in college sports because they hadn't taken enough high school courses deemed acceptable by the NCAA.2 Superintendents and principals across the nation found that the ACT staff treated them with disdain and disrespect. One superintendent wrote: As disagreements surfaced and became more severe and as clearinghouse representatives became more arrogant in their dealings with school leaders, we began to question their practices. . . . NCAA cost us money, frustrated deserving students, and confused the community.3 Dozens of articles have described the problems created by the NCAA and its ACT-operated clearinghouse. And many educators asked, Who are the NCAA and the ACT to judge our courses? Indeed, that became a central question for those challenging the NCAA. After four years of debate, the NCAA agreed in January 2000 to accept what high school principals said about their courses, rather than to continue judging courses through the clearinghouse. Here are several lessons we can learn from this experience. 1. Journalists can be marvelous allies for school reformers. Based on documented problems throughout the nation, the New York Times and USA Today featured editorials challenging the NCAA. Times editorial concluded, The NCAA should be promoting educational innovation, not obstructing it.4 USA Today insisted, Until the NCAA gets out of the business of deciding course content, all high school students will continue to lose out.5 Other newspapers from New York to California carried stories about local students with stellar academic records who were encountering problems with the NCAA. These articles bothered the NCAA in a way that almost nothing else did. NCAA officials are sensitive about bad publicity, and journalists are eager to write stories about deserving young people being mistreated by a giant bureaucracy. …