Getting Benched

Monday, Mar. 07, 2005 By SEAN GREGORY
SOARING: The Final Four fills up arenas and is worth billions to the NCAA
DOUG PENSINGER / GETTY
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Jim Calhoun, head men's basketball coach at the University of Connecticut, had just won his 700th career game as a college coach last Wednesday, and the 10,000 fans at the sold-out Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, Conn., were going wild, waving placards that read "700." Boosted by Calhoun and his two national titles, including last year's championship, UConn is no longer a "cow college" between Hartford and nowhere. It's a high-powered name, on TV every week during the season, with applications and donations booming. But of all the young men who have helped bring Calhoun glory over the past several years, just 27% graduated from the school.

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Poor academic performance spreads far beyond UConn's hoops program. Over the next few weeks, millions of fans will be wagering in office pools, trying to predict who will advance in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men's basketball tournament, a rite known as March Madness. Do you like Kentucky, with its 8% graduation rate, for the Sweet 16? Is Texas, at 27% like the Huskies, a match for them on the court too? Low achievement is plaguing not just revenue-generating sports like men's basketball and football. Softball and golf teams have also lagged. Add classroom woes to the cheating, sex and even murder scandals that have rocked campuses like Ohio State, Colorado and Baylor over the past few years, and it's clear that college sports need to get sent back to school.

Enter Myles Brand. The president of the NCAA unveiled last week the most aggressive athletic-reform measures in decades. For the first time, schools whose athletes don't meet a new minimum academic standard--roughly equivalent to a 50% graduation rate--stand to lose scholarships and risk harsher sanctions down the road such as being barred from lucrative post-season play. The organization fired loud warning shots, posting report cards on its website that detail which specific teams face the biggest challenges (UConn basketball and Ohio State football among them) and giving them a year to shape up or risk scholarship losses.

Brand's innovation is simple yet powerful: while athletic eligibility rules have long placed a burden on students to maintain minimum academic performance, this is the first time that teams would be penalized for lapses. The new rules have the potential to change the dynamics of college sports, starting as early as next year. "It's going to force our coaches to take a look at the type of people they have in their program, and I think it will change how you recruit coaches," says University of Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart. "We don't want coaches who want a quick fix."

Brand is trying to curb what many see as the exploitation of student athletes in an era when money for college sports is exploding. CBS pays the NCAA $6 billion for the rights to broadcast March Madness through 2014. That largesse is divided among all Division I schools, but the further you advance in the tournament, the more your conference, and thus your school, gets. Thanks to national championships at Syracuse and UConn the past two years, the NCAA will mail the Big East an $11.8 million check in April.