NCAA's Emmert cautions schools about academic 'mismatches'

Steve Berkowitz | USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS — NCAA President Mark Emmert told a gathering of high-ranking university officials Sunday that they have an “ethical responsibility” to address what he termed academic or admissions mismatches that result in Division I athletes struggling in the classroom and having trouble completing meaningful degree programs.

Emmert’s comments come against the backdrop of an impending increase in the high-school academic requirements that athletes must meet to be eligible to play Division I sports as freshmen and as Division I schools contemplate a proposed NCAA rules change that would redefine how the association and its enforcement staff deal with academic misconduct.

Over the past 10 to 20 years there has been “a significant — and, in some cases, dramatic — increase in the academic preparation of your student body,” Emmert told a session at the annual meeting of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, a nearly 240-member organization that includes the large public research universities in every state. “I don’t mean your student-athletes. I mean your whole student body. … At the same time, we have a number of cases where the profile of student-athletes hasn’t changed much.

“So, we wind up with a lot of cases on a lot of campuses with what we can just call an academic or an admissions mismatch. … Yes, (the athletes) met the NCAA eligibility requirements. Yes, they’ve taken the core curriculum (in high school). But when they walked into a classroom with some very, very high-achieving students that are now coming to each of your schools, they are playing their sport — which is a very, very demanding thing to do in a Division I program. They’re taking a full load of classes. They have a set of demands that the NCAA and conferences put on them that, frankly, are higher in terms of their progress toward their degree than the regular students on their campuses. That’s a real struggle.

“That’s an issue that we’ve got to stop and talk more about and think about, so that we make sure that we’re allowing our student-athletes to have every crack at being successful in the classroom. And we’ve got some work to do there. No question about it.”

Discussing the NCAA’s role in schools’ academic affairs, Emmert made a plain-sounding statement that doesn’t take long to have complex implications.

“We have to make sure that, as we think about academic integrity, we recognize everybody’s role in this,” he said. “The NCAA, as a self-governing organization, may set some minimum standard for admission and set some minimum expectations with progress toward degree and some standards and expectations towards graduation rates.

“But it’s not the role of a national athletic association to go on to your campus and tell you what an English course has to be in order to have integrity. That’s the domain of the faculty. … Some people somehow think that the NCAA ought to walk on to campus and say, ‘Look, let me tell you what this class ought to look like in order to have integrity.’ That’s not our job. That’s your job. But we’ve got to make sure you’re doing it. We’ve got to make sure that we are not cheating young men and young women by not providing them academic programs of high quality that would serve them well over the long run.”

The NCAA’s freshman eligibility standards once included a minimum standardized-test-score requirement. That is no longer the case, but there is an index involving a combination test score and high-school grade-point average in 16 core academic classes. Beginning with athletes who enroll on or after Aug. 1, 2016, the minimum core GPA needed will increase from 2.0 to 2.3. Meanwhile, the NCAA has been monitoring the retention and academic performance of athletes through its Academic Progress Rate program that requires teams to have minimum levels of performance or be subject to penalties that can include the loss of eligibility for postseason play. In addition, the NCAA closely tracks athlete graduation rates, which have been rising.

But Emmert said schools have “the ethical responsibility to say (to recruits), ‘You can be successful here.’ Why would we say, ‘We don’t care whether you’re ready or not (to succeed academically at the given school) — just hit the NCAA numbers.’?”

Emmert put the issue in another context — the issue of athletes’ success once the leave college and the expectations with which many enter.

“The thing that troubles me the most and this is a societal issue it’s not just our issue, but what we’ve got to take the lead in is we have students who come to your schools who want to be athletes and believe that they’re going to be professional athletes and they have wildly unrealistic expectations.

“In our last survey, 75% of Division I men’s basketball players believe that they are going to play professional basketball. Seventy-five percent. It will be about 2%. Fifty percent of Division II men’s basketball players think they’re going to play professional basketball. Even more amazing, 24% of Division III (men’s basketball players) believe they’re going to play professional basketball. Zero are going to play professional basketball.

“If you believe that your future is going to be in professional sport and the probability of that occurring is extraordinarily low and you’re not paying attention to what’s really going to change your life, a degree from one of your universities in a meaningful subject matter, that’s a mismatch that we need to help them understand.”

Editor's note: The reporter of this story served as moderator for the meeting session at which Mark Emmert made the remarks contained in this story.