New NCAA Academic Standards

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/s...igibility-standards-division-student-athletes

with the new rules today, this would be the result:

Clearly this will hurt a lot of football programs. Kids better get in the books, because this seems pretty easy to me.

 

Don't remember if all the other conferences tightened up like the SEC did (25 signees only for current class numbers) but this just made recruiting a lot harder. With raised standards as you highlighted from the article, 35% of football players back then wouldn't make it in an upcoming class 3 years from now (if the academics of the guys now are similar to then). Now coaches are going to have to make decisions well before signing day how likely guys will be to qualify in order to replace them or risk the chance you sign them in February out of your 25 and you end up with 21 or 22 guys who show up in fall. Good luck to Coach Miles on this. His job just got a lot harder, along with the major programs. I think this will help the mid level ones who probably have a few scholarships to gamble with so will sign a guy hoping he ultimately makes it.

 

good. now if we could just get the ncaa to ban athletic scholarships.

 

yep that has to be the solution.

 

I "liked" the first paragraph but disagree with the 2nd as far as the smaller schools getting hurt. IMO, they will get helped by this. LSU for example is going to pull money off the table (meant figuratively in regards to taking less chances on players when the standards are now even higher). That should benefit the La Techs, etc. They probably don't sign 25 each year to begin with so they can take chances. Having said this, I DO agree that LSU should be the only 1-A university around...MAYBE La Tech (Toolame ULL ULM ). How do you and I know this? Because many of these schools are just around for "rent-a-games".

 

I agree that there are certainly those that make a mockery of the term student-athlete. However, I would hate to see a farm league for the NFL. College football is a glorious sport because of the caliber of athlete that is on the field. By far, it's my favorite sport, and it wouldn't be if the incredible athletes were not on the field.

Look at it this way, there will always be guys who have trouble qualifying, but that is often the fault of the school systems from which various athletes hail. Many school systems, especially in the deep South, inadequately prepare students for college. Add to that the problem a person has if their parents are uneducated and, therefore, little help in understanding the rigors of higher education. An athletic scholarship is a way out of poverty for some college athletes. Whether they graduate or not, often the cycle of poverty is broken for those athletes.

Is there not benefit in that for students who may not meet standards upon entering a university? I think there is.

Because of a college athletic scholarship, my dad became the first person in his family to attend college (actually, the first to finish high school) in his family. He was ill-prepared for college, to say the least--both by his high school and by his family, who knew nothing about higher education. He also didn't graduate from college in 4 years. He went back in his late 20's to finish his degree.

However, because of his exposure to college, he broke the cycle of poverty in his family. It made college not an option for me, but an expectation. Now, my children are also expected to go to college. This happens all of the time for today's college athletes, as well.

I feel like it's a beautiful thing when a young man can have athletic ability and use it as an opportunity to educate himself--whether he completes a degree or not.

 

Of course, he is saying college football would still be around but without some "student-athletes" who never should have been there to begin with. Dexter Manley (former Redskin/Okie State player) comes to mind. How in the hell did Manley stay eligible at Oklahoma State when he admitted after he ended his Redskins career that he couldn't even read English. Uuuuuhhhh, doesn't that cut down his chances of passing tests! I don't thinks standards for admission should be lowered for athletes. They should not get special treatment. There are always trade schools, etc but college is not a right IMO but a privilege...I'm not talking money, I'm talking minimum academic achievements.

If you can't make a 17 or 18 on an ACT, you don't belong in college...even if there might be some cultural bias in it. If you can't have a middle C averge in core classes in HS, how in the world are you going to make it in college? Like I said, go to a trade school or just start working if you can and slowly try to get up to college standards. But when you have Dexter Manley going to Oklahoma State and playing football and he can't read, something is very wrong. And I bet there are a bunch of players out there just like him who never got in front of a microphone and admitted it.

 

I'm sure that there are many guys out there who brazenly disregard their opportunity of getting a college degree because they are good athletes.

Maturity and 18-year-old male is an oxymoron, to begin with. A farm system for college football would water down the sport dramatically. I'd hate to see that. To me, it's the best sport in the world. If there were an option to opt out of college, many guys would--but to their detriment and to the detriment of the quality of the sport.

As a teacher at a public school, I just feel that as many folks as possible should get an opportunity to better themselves by any means at their disposal. Kids can learn to take the ACT, but many schools don't prepare their students for them. Add to that how some students have learning disabilities that go undetected because their parents are simply unaware until their children are in middle school or beyond, and that 17 or 18 on the ACT becomes not so automatic.

I was counseling some 8th grade athletes who love LSU this past spring to take honors classes in high school to make it easier for them once they get to college and to make them more attractive to major college coaches. Both boys were choosing honors math, though I told them to add honors English by their sophomore years. Academics are really important to them, and boys like the two I was teaching are definitely the type that could be exemplary student athletes in four years. But they are in a school system that actively prepares kids for college.

Many of the public systems in Louisiana, for example, simply do not do this as well as they should. Perhaps a kid that leaves a poor system can still bloom in college, given the opportunity. Athletics IS that opportunity for many a disadvantaged kid. And almost always, it's good for the kid and his future family.