The NCAA is telling Division I baseball teams to come up with a plan to improve academic performance or face a substantial cutback in games. As a group, Baseball’s graduation rates and Academic Progress scores are the third-worst, ahead of only football and men’s basketball, and the sport’s graduation rate is second-worst to men’s basketball…
Correspondence Courses Spell Concern A number of schools are currently under NCAA investigation for allowing student-athletes to use an inordinate amount of correspondence courses (courses by Internet or mail) in their course loads. According to a special report in the Salt Lake Tribune, Brigham Young University’s independent study program has been employed by coaches and…
While men’s collegiate sports programs are being trimmed for budgetary reasons – such as tennis at Colorado – women’s sports are added as universities keep pace with Title IX compliance. Athletic directors are looking to fulfill complicated compliance formulas, involving everything from scholarships and “proportionality” mirroring the male-female student enrollment ratio, at a minimum of…
Whether it’s a good idea would be debated vigorously if the proposal reaches the NCAA football rules committee, the first step in creating legislation. It has been kicked around for a while now; Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany said he first remembers hearing of it 20 years ago, and Gophers coach Glen Mason thinks…
WASHINGTON—The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics today named R. Gerald Turner and Clifton R. Wharton Jr. co-chairmen. Wharton was a member of the Commission at its founding in 1989 and Turner joined in 1991. Both men have been leaders in the effort to ensure that college athletics programs are conducted according to the educational missions…
Under NCAA rules, text messages to recruits are considered to be more like letters than phone calls. That is, coaches can send unlimited messages to high school seniors they are trying to recruit, and some messages to juniors. And they can respond to any message from a recruit at any time. According to an ESPN…
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (registration required) that most colleges lack policies for athletes who become pregnant. Tara Brady, a student at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, sued her former basketball coach for discrimination, claiming that she was told to “go home . . . because her pregnancy would be a ‘distraction’ to the…
Probably the major issue involving college athletes in the news right now is hazing, and specifically the pictures that have emerged of team-bonding nights at Northwestern University, the Catholic University of America. Now, someone identified as a former University at Albany compliance officer has posted a blog about hazing, calling on the NCAA to pass…
The NCAA recently passed a rule allowing student-athletes to transfer to any college after graduating if they still have eligibility remaining without sitting out a year, as required of other student-athlete transfers. The rule, which passed without fanfare, recently drew the ire of coaches from the Southeastern Conference (SEC), who are worried that star players…
A good document on the governance of intercollegiate athletics for trustees and other interested parties was published by the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities in 2004.