NCAA Scholarships change!

[profudge]

This doesn't directly apply to Ivy's,  but may hurt us in competivieness in long run.

[Q]  The NCAA's Board of Directors has approved a proposal that would allow schools to avoid counting superior academic student-athletes against the team's scholarship limit.

A player who, after one year at the institution, has a grade point average of 3.3 or better, and who is receiving an academic scholarship from the school, would not count towards the team's NCAA athletic scholarship limit. In ice hockey, that limit is 18, which is utilized by most Division I schools.

The ruling will allow teams to ostensibly have more than 18 scholarship players on the roster.

The proposals â€" Nos. 02-82 and 03-23-A â€" had been on hold for about six months. ... [/Q]

Any thoughts folks on how this will or will not impact the Big Red recruiting in the future ?  
p.s. details see http://www.collegehockeynews.com/news/2005/11/08_scholarship.php

[billhoward]

Law of Unintended Consequences says student-athletes (the NCAA's preferred term) hovering at 3.2 will take basket weaving or history and theory of the 3-pointer instead of political science for the A instead of B ... and you'll be dumbing down the university.

Maybe it's more an issue for football or hoops. With hockey it may be that some schools even if they could give 2 extra scholarships might opt not to fund them. Maybe.

[KeithK]

I can see the reasoning behind this - encourage student-athletes to be students first and give the coaches real incentive work toward this goal.  But man, this sounds like a proposal that is ripe for abuse, or at least gaming the system.  It could result in coaches actually discouraging the more academically inclined from taking a solid course load, because this might result in a drop in GPA below the cutoff.  Also, how does the NCAA monitor to check that players are only getting the academic scholarships that they truly merit, compared to the student community as a whole?  Sounds like they're simply going to use GPA, which might be a good proxy but I'm not sure.

In theory this could allow some stickpiling of talent beyond the current scholarship limit, as long as you have a sufficient number of smart kids.  This could hurt the more academically rigorous schools playig D1 hockey (e.g. RPI, CC, Clarkson) because it will be harder at those schools to achieve the necessary GPA cutoff  and come off of the athletic budget.   It could also impact the Ivies in that there might be more competition to recruit the "smart" kids.

This sounds like a well intentioned change that might end up doing some good.  It's not earth shattering either way though.

[billhoward]

You got it right. The opposite might happen.

I'm waiting for the big bang, ultimate blowup, where college sports at the football / hoops level at least is found to be so corrupted that all the presidents decide to tone it down, take away scholarships, reign in the alumni, ... at which point Cornell and Harvard win NCAA titles in just about everything that Stanford doesn't win.

Stanford is the fly in the ointment. Them and Cal, showing a superior academic school can play big time (with scholarships) and also be academcially inclined.

[Trotsky]

I TA'ed at Stanford.  The athletes there would be hard pressed to tie their shoes.  The "student athlete" rep there is a complete joke.

[kaelistus]

This is retarded. Anyone who can't see how this will be abused needs to be removed from the premises.

You know I read this and I see the opposite of what they see: We give you the right to draft 18 complete idiots who have no right to be here in the first place. I know that's what they do now (Hence why I love cheering for my scholarship free alma-matter), but why make it more and more obvious?

[CowbellGuy]

On the other hand it's not like you can recruit people hedging your bets that some of your athletes will maintain a GPA. "Yes, 20 of you will get a free ride as long as Mungo and Cletus over there can hold a 3.3 in basketweaving. If not, two of you will be sent packing." That's not exactly the best way to woo recruits.

[Trotsky]

It is funny that for years one of the excuses for athletic scholarships was that they enabled schools to admit athletically talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds who had suffered from bad neighborhood high schools, but who would then go on to succeed at the university level.  This completely destroys that rationale.

[Trotsky]

Not the mention, can you imagine the pressure now on a grad student or an untenured professor not to grade athletes accurately?  it used to be you only got fired if you flunked the quarterback because then he couldn't play in the big game.  *Now* you'll get fired if you give the second string cornerback a C because it screws up his GPA and costs the school another Dumb Jock Slot (tm).

[ursusminor]

[Q]KeithK Wrote:


In theory this could allow some stickpiling of talent beyond the current scholarship limit, as long as you have a sufficient number of smart kids.  This could hurt the more academically rigorous schools playig D1 hockey (e.g. RPI, CC, Clarkson) because it will be harder at those schools to achieve the necessary GPA cutoff  and come off of the athletic budget.   It could also impact the Ivies in that there might be more competition to recruit the "smart" kids.

[/q]

At least at RPI, there has been a lot of grade inflation in recent years, and this would benefit the school from the point of view of allowing more scholarships. Note how many RPI students have been making the ECAC All-Academic team in recent years. http://www.rpiathletics.com/news/hockey/2005/3/10/mhockey31005.asp?path=hockey

I agree that there is so much opportunity for abuse of this that I hope it doesn't pass.

[A-19]

when does 3.3 or better mean "superiod academic skills?" especially at some schools where the homework is essentially done for the players, or if standards are lower? (see andy katzenmoyer from ohio state: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/college/news/1999/06/09/katzenmoyer_grades/)

-mike

[marty]

[Q]ursaminor Wrote:

 At least at RPI, there has been a lot of grade inflation in recent years, and this would benefit the school from the point of view of allowing more scholarships. Note how many RPI students have been making the ECAC All-Academic team in recent years.

I agree that there is so much opportunity for abuse of this that I hope it doesn't pass.

[/q]

You're oh so right.  At the recent Staff and Faculty night (attendance padded by giving away tickets and holding a staff raffle at the game) there was a trivia contest.  Three of the RPI players were highlighted in the contest because they each had a 4.0 GPA.  This was almost impossible back when "The Tute" was in its nerdiest heyday.  Now the damn hockey team breaks into 4.0 territory.

Ursminor, you may have heard a nut in section seven doing the "grade inflation" chant.

[billhoward]

(Treading carefully here) It's not unheard of for an athlete to be a good student. The goaltender from the late 1960s got into law school, I recall. Travis Lee had a high GPA as an engineer while being just about the best college wrestler in America. A couple hockey players are at Yale Medical School.

I think it's more likely that on average it's tougher to maintain a high GPA as an athlete because you've got such a huge time commitment. But there are many and varied exceptions, so much that you shouldn't be surprised by a smart jock, just envious.

The killer for those of us who are, or were, merely average (beyond beating the odds and getting into Cornell) is when the person is an athlete on a nationally ranked team, has a high GPA, and gets the good looking women. Sort of like Woody Allen in (what, Stardust Memories?) where he's sitting on one dreary train and sees the party train on the next track pull out.

I also think a lot of athletes choose careers where, if they're not the best students, they make use of the skills they're good at: teamwork, competitiveness, persistence, personality. It seems that half the people introduced as seniors at the NCAA lax finals were starting the next week on Wall Street. A neighbor who played football at Princeton in the early 1980s was not by his admission a great student but an exceptionally outgoing person who started in sales and 15 years later runs a big and profitable medical publishing group.

[A-19]

i was not in any way suggesting our athletes or athletes in general are stupid or incapable of getting good grades. i was just saying that alot of schools-- schools to which this new rule will apply-- will use their "perks" to make life easier for people who will achieve "academic excellence" (again, a 3.3? comeon) to free up even more blue chip scholarship money.

[marty]

I would have no problem with a few RIP players hitting the 3.7 - 4.0 range.  Joe Juneau was said to be a real intellect yet his claim to fame was a 3.9 not a 4.0.   Three with 4. averages is just proof that grade inflation is out of control.  An architecture professor emeritus from RPI is a friend.  Before I had half a sentence out of my mouth concerning grade inflation (during a conversation well over a year ago) he told me that much of it can be traced to the students evaluating the professors.

In fact this is most insidious during the pre-tenure period for the young faculty.  In essence they are taught to grade easy right out of the gate. (No aspersions on Toothpaste.)