Random Amusing Links

Check out Gordon Smith's post at Conglomerate on Texas A&M football coach Dennis Franchione's super-duper-secret newsletter.

Sportsprof notes that Every School Should Have an Owner Like Boone Pickens and offers some gold-digging advice to Oklahoma State wannabees.

Finally, have a gander at EDSBS's take on the firing of University of Nebraska Athletic Director Steve Pederson, and the (re-)hiring of Tom Osborne. TEE HEE!

Ball State Penalized; More Trouble on the Horizon

At least where academics are concerned, Ball State is one of the better actors amongst NCAA Division I schools. Graduation rates run from a low of 52% in the baseball program to 100% in women's gymnastics. Unfortunately, it is finally facing the consequences of rules infractions dating from the tenure of former Athletic Director Lawrence 'Bubba' Cunningham, who is now safely ensconced at the University of Tulsa. Yesterday, the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions announced penalties stemming from prohibited practices and excess financial aid, and it was determined that there was the 'lack of institutional control' which Athletic Directors dread:

INDIANAPOLIS---The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions has penalized Ball State University for major violations in its athletics program, which included several student-athletes using nearly $27,000 in scholarship funds for books for other students through the university bookstore. The violations include a lack of institutional control, excessive financial aid and exceeding practice hour limitations.

Penalties for the violations include placing the university on probation for two years; reducing the number of football and men’s tennis scholarships; and reducing the maximum number of hours per week spent on countable athletically related activities for the softball team. . . .

From the 2003 spring semester through the 2004-05 academic year, 89 student-athletes in 10 sports impermissibly obtained a total value of $26,944 in textbooks through the book loan program for scholarship student-athletes. The textbooks were obtained by the student-athletes for classes in which they were not enrolled or for classes in which student-athletes obtained multiple copies of the same book. . . .

At the time the violations occurred, the university’s bookstore had a computerized system that placed a $1,000 per semester balance in the account of each student-athlete with a book scholarship. There was no system in place to check the class schedules of all student-athletes to ensure the books being obtained corresponded with the classes each student-athlete was taking. . . .

During an investigation by the NCAA enforcement staff, it was also found that from 1999 through 2006 the then head softball coach and the university’s softball program failed to count student-athletes’ work at camps, clinics and program fundraising events as mandatory athletically related activities. The program repeatedly exceeded daily and weekly practice hour limitations, failed to give student-athletes a required day off each week from athletically related activities, and conducted individual skill instruction sessions in violation of NCAA rules. . . .

While this activity was corrected, the violation was not reported to the NCAA. Further, the university received information in exit interviews with student-athletes that these violations might be occurring; however, it failed to act on the information. . . .

One of the strengths of the current enforcement regime is that this has become one of the biggest no nos for athletics programs. Athletic Director Tom Collins, who inherited the mess, commented on the sanctions:

Anytime you have rules violations, anything like that, I think it puts a mark on you. . . .I think the good news now is, now we know what it is. Now that it is done we can move forward. We just need to be diligent in our rules education for not only the staff, coaches and student-athletes, but we also have to be diligent in our monitoring.

The football and men's tennis coaches were, however, none too pleased by the additional sanctions which the NCAA meted out. Football coach Brady Hoke commented:

It was a little bit of shock that there were more penalties by the NCAA. I really thought it was over with. I haven't thought about it until today. I thought because of the actions of the university to right what went wrong and to punish the people involved, that would be enough. . . .Whenever you don't have your full compliment of scholarships it's disappointing, regardless of the sport you play. If you say you get 85 scholarships, I wouldn't know why you would want less than 85 student athletes.

As for Tom Collins, he is still facing a potential train wreck over allegations of significant rules violations committed by former basketball coach Ronny Thompson:

The allegations described by the NCAA include that:

• Thompson may have provided financial assistance to someone involved with a basketball player at another university whom the coach was recruiting to transfer to Ball State.

• The possible recruiting violation was brought to the attention of associate athletics director Pat Quinn, who tried to investigate before being reprimanded by athletic director Tom Collins for pursuing the matter.

• Thompson provided Nike shoes to athletes as a reward for improved grades, which could be considered an extra benefit.

If the second allegation is true, then this is a mess which is entirely of Collins' making, and one which should cost him his job.

STUDENT-Athletes at Boston College

The article by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports on the Boston College athletics program should be required reading for everyone, especially those who maintain that high academic standards are incompatible with success on the field. Here are some excerpts:

In an upset bigger than Appalachian State and Stanford combined, the most likely place to find the actual players on a serious national title contender is – get this – in class. (And eventually, caps and gowns.)

Boston College has a whole bunch of numbers going for it right now. There is the record (6-0), the national ranking (No. 4) and the possible position in the Heisman race for quarterback Matt Ryan (No. 1).

Then there is the number that makes the Eagles one of the most unlikely national title contenders in years: 93.

That's the graduation rate for BC football players according to the latest NCAA figures. The Eagles finished third in the country behind Navy (95) and Northwestern (94). . .

It's not like the 93 percent was some aberration. Last year it was 96 and for nearly two decades, through various formulas, it's almost always been above 90. Four times – 1992, 1994, 1995 and 2004 – the Eagles finished No. 1 in the nation. Best of all, there is no trend of hiding athletes in basket-weaving majors, no fifth-year seniors who are still "undecided."

"The statistics show that we take the term 'student-athlete' very seriously at Boston College," athletic director Gene DeFillipo said.

Meanwhile, the rest of the national title contenders seem to prefer the term athlete-student. BC has a 40-percentage point advantage on the three teams ahead of it in the AP poll – LSU (51 percent), Cal (52) and Ohio State (53). Those three aren't even the worst offenders, either.

No matter what many of these big football factories say, no matter how many excuses they make or how well they promote select success stories, the reality is few of them put any real care or concern into the long-term educational welfare of their players. . . .

Certainly neither the school nor the athletic department is perfect as the occasional scandal (more than once gambling related) and off-campus flare up prove. . . .

Indeed.

. . . .But when trouble hits there isn't a cover up, a stonewalling or an "everyone-else-does-it" defense.

They refocus and not just with lip service.

Back in the mid-1990s, successful basketball coach Jim O'Brien got into a battle with the admissions department over whether it should relax standards for a couple of recruits. The school sided with the admissions people and told O'Brien it was their way or the highway, no matter how popular he was.

O'Brien left immediately for Ohio State where he got the Buckeyes to the Final Four, then on major probation, then into a multimillion dollar wrongful firing lawsuit. BC just shrugged and hired a new coach, Al Skinner, who could win within their standards. . . .

If they get there, who knows the fallout? Will Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany write an open letter complaining that the Eagles are too smart? Will the BCS formula be tweaked to punish teams capable of doing calculus? Will the Boone Pickens of the world suddenly scrap plans for some Taj Mahal football dorm to construct "one of them thar library thingies?"

The current average graduation rate of the last five BCS champions is 54 percent.

In a corner-cutting climate like that, can Boston College actually wind up the best team in the country?

For some of us, they already have.

BRAVO.

Stanford Football

Several weeks ago, SFGate.com columnist 'Betting Fool' posed his 'Question of the Week':

How do you fix the Stanford football program? Is is worth fixing? How long should it take to have a winning season?

Some choice responses:

Drop the educational idealism nonsense and make the football program a "Football" program. No one with dreams of playing in the NFL will go to a school that doesn't make football the priority. Top programs groom their players for the NFL. Stanford makes them students first and football players second. Maybe it is "the right thing to do" but that is not the question here. If they are the only ones with STUDENT Athletes instead of ATHLETE students, the talent won't show and neither will the wins.

Simple answer: Have Stanford Admissions Dept. let in the same quality of student athlete that Cal does.

The way to fix Stanford football is take schools like Stanford, Vanderbilt, Duke, Baylor, Tulane, Notre Dame, and the Military Academies, and form the only 1-A college football conference where players actually go to class. Don't give the conference a BCS berth, but give the conference winner an automatic bid to the CarQuest Bowl. As Ross Perot was fond of saying, problem solved!

How shocking that Stanford would do the right thing on several points:

- Embracing 'Educational Idealism' rather than making football the priority.
- Making sure the players are in fact STUDENT-athletes.
- Maintaining admissions standards.
- Forcing players to go to class.

With these thoughts in mind, lets congratulate the Stanford Cardinals (graduation rate 91%) and Coach Jim Harbaugh on their 24-23 win over #2 ranked USC (graduation rate 54%) last night. Do not, however, hold your breath on the sentiments expressed by commenter sean2834 at SFGate.com:

Stanford's win confirms the cardinal rule of college sports: coaching matters. The winning stopped in Palo Alto with Willingham's departure, and it looks like Harbaugh is putting the Teevens/Harris Era to bed. Now maybe we can stop hearing about how Stanford can't recruit the right talent owing to high academic standards.

More Self-Congratulation from the NCAA

Item #1

The NCAA is trumpeting its Colloquium to be held at the NCAA convention on January 10-11, on 'College Sports: A Legitimate Focus for Scholarly Inquiry?' For a far more instructive scoop on this, review the post at Sports Law Blog from April on the Lost NCAA conference.

Item #2

On Wednesday, the NCAA released its latest data manipulation efforts I mean Graduate Success Rate measures:

INDIANAPOLIS—Division I student-athletes continue to perform well in the classroom, and more of them are graduating from college, according to the latest NCAA Graduation Success Rate figures.

From 1995-2000, Graduation Success Rates increased in many sports, including high-profile men’s sports such as basketball, football and baseball, and high-profile women’s sports such as basketball, ice hockey and soccer. In fact, Graduation Success Rates in men’s basketball jumped nearly 8 percent.

WHOOT! WHOOT! Time to jump for joy! Not so fast.

The 'Graduation Success Rate' for Men's Basketball made it all the way to 63%, and that falls after all of the data manipulation, the most important element of which is the fact that students who depart eligible (whether they graduate or not) are counted positively. If one digs deeply enough into the mound of data which the NCAA has released, one discovers that the federally reported graduation rate still stands at an appalling 45%.

It sickens me that the NCAA's propagandizing efforts on behalf of the revenue sports continue to overshadow the laudable efforts of the STUDENT-athletes in other sports.

Tony Joiner's 'Misunderstanding'

On Tuesday, a laudatory story on Florida safety Tony Joiner appeared at Gatorzone.com. On the same day, he became the eighth player on his team to be arrested this year, although there was good reason to believe that the felony burglary charge was, indeed, the result of a 'misunderstanding'. After all, the owner of the the property where the burglary allegedly occurred went to bat for him:

But the owner of the property leased by the towing company, Stan Forron, said Tuesday afternoon that the whole thing is "a big misunderstanding." . . .

Forron said Joiner had made arrangements to pay the towing bill and pick up the car. But when Joiner arrived, no one was around to help him.

"I don't know if he was late or early or what," said Forron, who plans to urge the state attorney's office to drop the charges. "I don't understand why he was arrested. Is it a crime? Yes and no. It's kind of my fault because I left the gate open.

"It's like going to breakfast at Cracker Barrel and when you go to leave there's no one there to take your money. How long are you going to wait?"

Forron acknowledged that he is a Gators fan, but he insisted that it had no bearing on his desire to see the charges dropped.

"I came forward because right is right and wrong is wrong," Forron said. "I don't think he should be in trouble."

It also appeared that he had made no attempt to get away:

According to the police report, witnesses said Joiner opened the gate to the towing company, got into a car, drove out of the lot and was trying to close the gate when he was confronted by one of the witnesses. The witness said Joiner drove back into the lot and waited for police to arrive.

Over the last 24 hours, new details have emerged, and Stan Forron's story has been contradicted by both witnesses - and himself. From the Tampa Tribune:

In a telephone interview with The Tampa Tribune, the owner of the lot, Stan Forron, said he inadvertently left the gate open before he left work early Tuesday morning. Forron said he was not present during the incident.

From the Miami Herald:

Stan Forron, who on Tuesday identified himself as the property owner (lease holder) where Watson's Towing and Recovery is located, said the towing service will not press charges against Joiner.

He called the incident a ``big miscommunication.''

Forron said that he left the gate open and that Joiner called earlier in the morning about picking up the car.

Forron said that the towing service employees asked the police not to arrest Joiner.

But no mention of a complaint withdrawal was written in the police report and Gainesville police information officer Lt. Keith Kameg said Tuesday that Forron was never at the scene of the incident while the police were there.

Forron told The Miami Herald that ``the boys didn't know I was there because I was in the back.''

So depending on which story you believe, he was either there, or he was not. Furthermore, that he left the gate up, which is flatly contradicted by witnesses (including the suspect), and his employees asked that he not be arrested. We cannot be sure on that last point, but his employee Travis Watkins did make a couple calls to the police during the incident, and these have now been released.

Excerpt from Call #1, 4:32 A.M:

Watkins: “I need GPD down here now.”

Dispatcher: “At Watson’s?”

Watkins: “Yes ma’am.”

Dispatcher: “What’s going on there?”

Watkins: “Well, I had somebody trying to break into the yard trying to steal their car.”

Dispatcher: "Is he still out there, the suspect?"

Watkins: "Yeah, he's still here, its, ah, Tony Joiner from the Gators."

Excerpt from Call #2, 4:37 A.M:

Watkins: “Could I have GPD step it up please?”

Dispatcher: “OK. What’s going on there right now?”

Watkins: “They’re getting a little hasty with us.”

Dispatcher: “OK. What are they doing?”

Watkins: “They’re getting up in our face and [expletive]. They’ve already broken into the yard and tried to take the car, and I blocked them in.”

It thus does not sound like the innocent incident which was first portrayed in the press, and it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the fact that Stan Forron is a Gators fan has influenced the various versions of the event that he has recounted.

Yesterday, Urban Meyer attempted damage control by stripping Joiner of his captaincy. Yes, thats right, Joiner was one of the team captains. It is now difficult to escape the conclusion that Meyer has lost control of the Florida football program.

Inside Higher Ed on Academic Fraud

Apologies for the long hiatus. This is my first semester on tenure-track and marking my 150 exams is currently consuming my life. Thankfully University Diaries has been ably reporting on most of the important scandals in intercollegiate athletics. There was also an excellent article yesterday at Inside Higher Ed on Academic Fraud. Both the article and the comments thread are well worth reading. Here are a couple excerpts:

Largely as a response to sagging graduation rates for football and basketball players, the NCAA put into place several years ago new academic rules that require colleges to report each term whether their athletes are on progress toward a degree — with penalties awaiting those whose students aren’t progressing and aren’t performing.

At the same time, the NCAA reversed its previous approach of continually raising initial entrance requirements and began allowing students with SAT scores as low as 400 (or a corresponding ACT score) to enroll so long as their high school grades were high enough. That move appeased critics of the standardized test score requirement who said it adversely affected minority students.

In the years since the changes, many have expressed concern that the combination of heightened academic expectations and lowered entrance regulations would put the campus employees responsible for providing academic support to athletes in a tough spot, asked to help a growing number of marginal students — potentially at all costs. . . .

David Goldfield, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who served on the academic eligibility and compliance cabinet of the NCAA, which helped craft the new policy, said he supports the new progress standards but still opposes lowering entrance requirements — which he said strains the entire system of academic support.

“When there’s pressure applied you’re going to get a reaction, and the reaction we’re seeing is academic fraud cases,” Goldfield said. “From a coach’s perspective, the major task is to win, but now with the new requirements, the second and often equally pressing task is to maintain the eligibility of players.”

Goldfield fears that academic fraud cases are far more widespread than just the ones reported to the NCAA. Compliance officers can have a difficult time tracking down such cases, he said, because they can involve wrongdoing by people in all parts of an institution, and often rely on self-reporting by athletics officials. . . .