Cash, check, or charge?

Sporting News, The, July 1, 1996 by Douglas S. Looney

10 Allow recruiters to offer athletes scholarships that might include graduate school, law school or medical school.

Surely nobody would object to this change with its strong and serious educational bent. Currently, athletes are given scholarships one year at a time for a maximum of Eve years. This idea would appeal enormously to any serious student.

Beyond these 10 points that basically relate to financial concerns, there are a bevy of tangential issues that simply make sense when it comes to how universities should deal reasonably, fairly and honesty with their scholarship athletes. For example:

* Stop requiring scholarship athletes to take full academic loads.

No regular student is so burdened. Educators and others revel in talking about "what is best for the kids." What is best for an athlete is not taking a fur load during the season. Ifs too much. Frankly, what is best for an athlete might web be taking one course each fall-in the case of a football player--and graduate in seven years. And, again, the fall-load silliness invites cheating--or at least a course schedule unworthy of being called higher education. The old educational dodge of letting athletes major in physical education has largely given way to the likes of criminology, communications, sports administration, American studies. Same thing' Different names.

What universities should do is tailor the academic regimen for athletes in a proper manner. They do it all the time for others. Schools offer special arrangements for single mothers. They offer night and weekend classes for those whose work schedules prohibit weekday attendance. There is nothing wrong, and indeed, everything right with a university taking into consideration the needs of constituents.

Structured this way, the old, tired problem of trying to get athletes to attend classes and, with luck, even learn something, becomes less onerous. Oh, yes, and why is it that in many if not most cases, regular students attend class only if they want to, but at many schools, a cadre of athletic department flunkies runs around making sure each scholarship athlete is sitting in class?

Finally, it's time to address the issue of whether a scholarship football or basketball player--who, in almost every case is in college not for the education but to play the games--should be made to masquerade as a student in the first place.

* In order to entice a good athlete, allow schools to offer academic scholarships to brothers or sisters. What a splendid opportunity to do good.

* Allow scholarship athletes to play immediately at another school, if they decide to transfer.

Currently, the rule generally requires athletes to sit out a year--thereby forfeiting a year of eligibility--if they transfer between major schools. It's neither fair nor right. After all, coaches move from school to school with impunity. Why not athletes? Allow them to transfer once without losing any eligibility. If the athlete is lured by big bucks from another school, that, is free enterprise at work in an its glory.