Academics v. athletics: NCAA, one-and-done

Before this year's college basketball championship fades from memory, here's some news. The Kansas Jayhawks won! Not the actual basketball tourney, of course. Kentucky took the title Monday, beating Kansas 67-59.

But the Jayhawks bested the Wildcats in a place where, in my estimation, it counts more - in the classroom. Annual analysis recently of graduation success rates and academic progress of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament Teams shows Kansas graduates 91 percent of its players and Kentucky just 69 percent.

In a mock tourney, the 2012 Inside Higher Ed Academic Performance Tournament, Kansas was dubbed the winner over its opponent in this championship. That opponent? Davidson College which graduates 100 percent of its male basketball students.
Kansas and Kentucky, the last ones standing for the actual athletic contest on Monday, were both dubbed academically good enough to be part of the mock academic tournament.

Still, Kentucky coach's John Calipari's one-and-done philosophy for winning is nothing to cheer. That philosophy, used to recruit players who plan to go to the NBA in a year, is anathema to the idea of a "student athlete." There is simply no incentive to be a committed student knowing you're not staying to get a degree and will only be on campus a year.

Like Chris Stankovich, a national sport performance expert and others, I think one-and-done should be outlawed. NBA draft rules should be consistent with the NFL draft rules that say NCAA football players aren’t eligible for the NFL draft until they have been out of high school for three years. Requiring at least three years of school for basketballers as well makes sense. Steve Kerr, John Thompson and others talk compellingly about why there needs to be a change in a piece for the Arizona Republic.

The sad truth is that the men's NCAA Division 1 basketball players have one of the worst graduation rates in college sports. According to a study by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, more than a dozen schools didn't graduate at least half their players in recent seasons. The study looked at how many players completed their degrees in six years. Among the more egregious big name schools were the University of Connecticut, which graduates 25 percent of its players; the University of Florida which graduates 38 percent; Michigan which graduates 45 percent, and Indiana which graduates 47 percent.

The numbers are even worse when African American players are separated out. Florida, for instance, only graduates 20 percent of its black players. The University of California at Berkeley only graduates 14 percent.

The gulf between the graduation rates of black and white student-athletes who are basketball players has narrowed a bit, said Richard Lapchick, primary author of the study. But that narrowing has been because the graduation rates of whites has gone down. Geez.

Students deserve better. The NCAA has a lot of work to do to preserve the integrity of the word, student-athlete.

Posted by associate editor Fannie Flono