As a member of the University of Tampa cross country and track team, I cringe at the thought of being referred to as a “jock” because of the stigma that comes along with the word. However, I can say UT does a good job of making sure we know we are student-athletes, with academics coming first.
Earlier this month, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill learning specialist, Mary Willingham came forward to CNN with claims that about 60 percent of the athletes she tutored had reading levels between fourth and eighth grade and eight to ten percent of them read below a third grade level. With numbers like these, it’s hard to tear down the stereotype of jocks being dumb.
This isn’t always the case though. With a wide variety of schools and with big time Division I programs, it seems the word “student” has been lost somewhere between the intense overload of scheduled competitions and the billions of dollars of revenue brought in by ticket prices and network television programming. Through the research Willingham presented and the statistics CNN was able to receive, the lag in academics is mostly apparent in men’s basketball and football, which are usually the hottest ticket games with the Bowl Championship Series National Championship and March Madness.
For student-athletes coming from low-income homes, athletics offer a way for them to receive an excellent education that might have otherwise been impossible. On the other hand, this appalling information presented by Willingham begs the question as to whether or not it’s worth it to let athletes admitted into top performing institutions with ACT test scores 10 points lower than their peers. How can it be possible for a student to thrive, or better yet even survive in a UNC classroom, when they can’t even read or understand high school material?
The statistics that CNN presented were staggering. According to test scores released by the University of Louisville, the threshold for a student-athlete is a 16 on the ACT while the average test score of their non-athletic peers is a 25. Even with a score almost 10 points lower than average, 12 percent of the male basketball and football players scored even lower than that. These scores were taken from student records from 2007 to 2012.
After University of Louisville made a $26.9 million profit in 2012 from its men’s basketball program, is it really such a surprise to see this much leniency in its academic standards for athletes? Of course not, and an obvious correlation can be made that further promotes the idea of NCAA Division I athletics being a business, not an after-school program for students who can throw or bounce a ball.
In 2009, Florida State athletics was sanctioned by the NCAA after an investigation found that the university had tutors writing papers and giving answers to the athletes. But recently, they have been gracing the headlines for winning the BCS tournament where they defeated Auburn in a game that aired on ESPN and drew in over 25.6 million viewers.
University of Tampa athletics director Larry Marfise, who has been at UT for over 14 years and has enjoyed tremendous success both on and off the field. Under Marfise’s leadership, UT has won six NCAA II national titles, but that’s not the only thing Marfise is proud of. Last year, 60 student-athletes were honored as Academic All-Americans with a 3.5 GPA or higher.
He expressed his disdain for the academic gap we often see with admitted athletes and their non-athletic peers, but also recognized that under certain circumstances, exceptions may be made.
“You might have an extremely talented football player who just cannot test well and scores a few points lower than the accepted standards of an institution,” Marfise said. “If we’re going to make that exception, though, it should also be made for non-athletes who have exceptional talent in other extracurriculars, whether it be art, music or writing. But at the end of it all you have to really believe this student will succeed in the classroom, because if you admit a student who will ultimately fail their classes and not be able to graduate, you are doing a great disservice to them.”
Marfise made a great point that the ultimate goal for a student-athlete should be to walk at graduation with a degree that will help them earn a job after school. With less than two percent of college athletes going pro, according to an article published by Business Insider, a diploma is necessary for college athletes when they realize that their dreams of a profession in athletics will come to an end after they use up their college eligibility.
Some of the most prestigious universities such as Stanford, Notre Dame and University of Southern California boast top performing athletic programs. But with such high standards to be accepted, they are forced to be lenient when it comes to accepting athletes with poor grades in order to remain competitive. However, a ten or more point gap in test scores seems not only unfair to the higher performing students that are losing spots in the incoming class to athletes, but also unfair to the athletes who lack the skills to get through the courses and may not be able to even graduate.
The NCAA is the governing body for all universities that play under its banner, and while they may have certain power to initiate investigations and sanction programs, it ultimately comes down to the university itself to be ethical when it comes to the academic success of its student-athletes.
Vanessa Righeimer can be reached at vanessa.righeimer@spartans.ut.edu
Vanessa Righeimer, an opinion columnist for The Minaret newspaper of the University of Tampa, claims that the universities that are lowering their academic standards for student-athletes are at fault for the stereotype assigned to the word “jock.” I can see why Righeimer, a student-athlete herself, does not want to be stereotyped for being a student-athlete. However, the information provided by her shows that 60 percent of the athletes at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill have reading levels between fourth and eighth grade. The failure of these students academically is not the Universities fault. The fault rests solely on the student. The University may accept their application, but it is the student who has the final decision on whether or not he or she attends that school. If the students are that worried about being stereotyped for being below average academically at that university then they should choose a less demanding academic institution.