Saved by the Bell: Beyond the Back Page

Monday was a travel day for the World Series, granting the players and media enough time to make the grueling seven-mile journey between the two venues. The break provided me with an opportunity to watch the premiere of Fox's "Boston Public," a drama based in a fictional high school.

The promise that surrounded Fyvush Finkel's return to network television was too much to resist. Somehow, the promo in which he said, "Look at my knockers!" only got funnier each time I saw it. So I watched.

Although the show was disappointing overall, it had its moments of profundity. In the pilot episode, the school's star running back was declared academically ineligible to play in the big game after failing a number of subjects. Not surprisingly, the boy's outraged father confronted the faculty. What followed was a very interesting dialogue on the weightier issues surrounding the kid's situation: the school's burden of fault for letting him get that far, the parent's responsibility, and the purpose of a high school education.

Save the terribly predictable ending, I thought the show handled this issue surprisingly well. The questions it raised were more complicated and relevant to the real world than anything I've come to expect from Fox, and they prompt a look at sports and school at the next level--college.

Harvard is no place to start. Our offensive line's combined SAT score is probably higher than that of some entire conferences. Here, Plato's ideal of the scholar-athlete actually works.

But once you leave the top tier of schools, things change. Applicants are accepted based solely on their athletic prowess. Money also becomes a concern: schools stand to make a lot of dough from tournament appearances and general success on the field. Coaches and scouts wait anxiously by the phone, praying that the objects of their lust meet the NCAA's requirements for eligibility.

Those requirements include a combination of grade-point average and standardized test scores. The pressure doesn't end there--athletes must maintain a minimum GPA while in college in order to keep playing.

The standards are low, but not to somebody whose understanding of math may be limited to the difference between a two- and three-pointer. This has led to numerous incidents of academic fraud, most recently at the University of Minnesota, where a tutor wrote over 400 papers for athletes over five years.

Minnesota deserved to be punished for its egregious violations. But how much sense do the rules they broke really make?

At a time when some schools will accept a player with no regard to grades (except for the requirements that are forced on them), is the NCAA fooling itself?

After all, most of the powerhouse colleges probably care a lot more about the final score than their shooting guard's understanding of Dante.

Many of the students don't care, either. Most students who are accepted purely because they can run a football are both aware of and content with that fact. The athletic scholarship often gives them a valuable--if empty--degree they otherwise would not have, and in some cases, a shot at stardom.

With academics arguably not behind the match between student and school, from either perspective, the regulations seem somewhat hollow.

Of course, the intent behind the rules is appealing. The college experience should be about learning, even if neither the individual school nor the student-athlete thinks so. Education is important for reasons we all realize, at the very least because not every student-athlete becomes a millionaire. Short of a draft selection, knowledge is the key to a successful future. These are things we hear in grade school.

The question really is whether athletes who display no inclination toward academic success--nay, academic interest--should receive scholarships in the first place. "Boston Public" didn't attempt to answer the question of what the proper balance between academics and athletics is in a single hour, and I won't attempt to do the same in a single column.

However, as the show did, I can begin to hint at the issue's complexity. One's opinion on the issue shouldn't simply be a matter of either instinctively resenting the Georgetown forward who can't spell his name or cheering on the kid who otherwise wouldn't have a chance. There are other questions to consider.

There are questions about the school. What is the purpose of a college? Is it to educate those who are most ready, or to create a sense of community for community's sake? Or should it be motivated primarily by the bottom line?

There are questions about the athletes themselves. Considering that society has allowed them to ride their skills this far, are schools doing the academically unqualified a greater disservice by accepting them or rejecting them? Are the student-athletes being used? If so, does the way in which they benefit make it okay?

There are questions of broader social concern, as well. What impact does the sports-based opportunity for higher education have on impressionable youth as they learn to prioritize? How about the overwhelming differences between the mostly poor, minority athletes and the Kates, Katies and Caitlins who battle on Jordan and Ohiri Fields? To what extent should race enter the equation?

These are only some of the questions that must be considered in evaluating the modern student-athlete. Their implications extend far beyond the back page, and are anything but multiple choice.