Flawed Means To Wise Ends

SCOLDED BY EVERYONE from broadcaster Brent Musberger to college football Coach of the Year Joe Paterno of Penn State, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) vowed last week to clean up undergraduate athletics. An NCAA convention in San Diego produced two rulebook revisions designed to protect the integrity of the student-athlete. The changes drew sharp criticism, however, from certain schools that would be affected. One case directly involves Harvard and its recruiting program, and the other raises sensitive race-related issues about a university's responsibility to educate its athletes. Both new regulations will better serve school and student if the NCAA reconvenes for more fine-tuning.

In an attempt to discourage recruiting violations by over-zealous alumni boosters, the NCAA delegates outlawed personal off-campus recruiting by people not on a university's athletic staff. While the measure may cut down on the number of big-time college football recruits driving free Corvettes, it will hinder schools such as Harvard, which have relatively small recruiting budgets and rely on alumni to push promising quarterbacks toward Cambridge rather than Stanford or Ann Anchor. Unlike national football and basketball powers, smaller scale Ivy League teams traditionally have not turned to illegal recruiting practices. The new rule unfairly discriminates against schools who justifiably wish to limit athletic department budgets and devote funds to other areas, such as general student aid.

Fortunately, there are indications that Harvard's opposition to the restriction may produce an exemption of some sort. At the least it may yield a lenient interpretation allowing the Ivies to continue their current procedures without completely mitigating an otherwise well-intentioned attempt to rein in unscrupulous alums of more high-powered athletic schools.

Similarly, protests from the presidents of predominantly Black colleges will probably force reconsideration of newly approved academic requirements for NCAA athletes. The NCAA convention adopted a rule under which a high school senior, to be eligible to compete freshman year, would have to have a combined SAT score of 700 and a high school grade point average of 2.0 on a 4.0 scale. The rule, scheduled to take effect in 1986, also stipulates that the recruited athletes have taken a "core" curriculum including mathematics, English and science. Students failing to meet these standards would become eligible for athletic participation during their sophomore year if they made "satisfactory progress" toward a degree.

The restriction seeks to guarantee that schools send onto the field only students who have demonstrated at least a minimal ability to handle college-level work. The new vigilance comes in response to charges that the NCAA produces many polished athletes who can barely read or write. In fact, recent surveys have shown that fewer than 20 percent of all National Football League players every graduated from college.

But Black educators argue that reliance on standardized tests distorts the mission of predominantly Black colleges for both athletes and non-athletes. They have once again-called the SAT ethnically biased and inappropriate as a tool in admissions or eligibility decisions for disadvantaged Blacks because the scores do not reflect untapped intellectual abilities or qualities such as leadership potential or personal motivation.

The raw statistics are startling. They seem to indicate a correlation between socio-economic status and SAT scores, which would account for the huge racial discrepancies that exist. According to the College Board, the mean score for whites taking the SAT in 1981 was 442 Verbal, 483 Math. Comparable figures for Blacks were 332 and 362. One Black college president estimated last week that 90 percent of the students in predominantly Black schools would fail to meet the NCAA requirement.

The NCAA should be in the business of insuring that athletes are given a thorough education once they arrive on campus, not dictating to college administrators which measures of academic potential must be used. Black educators have not opposed the "core" curriculum proposal, and the requirement that athletes make progress toward attaining a degree seems equally wise. Many heavily recruited athletes go to college primarily to train for the big leagues; that right should not be taken away from them if they are poor or Black or both. But most of them will fall short of the pros, and they will be better prepared for more conventional careers if colleges are forced to keep them in legitimate classes. It's the least the athletes deserve in exchange for four years of service in uniform.

Plenty of time remains to rethink the new rule before it takes effect, and the NCAA can easily eliminate the SAT provision without squandering the reformist spirit of last week's convention.