Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 24, 1990 TAG: 9007240380
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HAL BOCK THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Schools and sports get a failing grade when it comes to graduating athletes headed for pro football and basketball.
An Associated Press survey shows that almost two-thirds of the players drafted by the NFL and the NBA this year did not finish college, and many of them dropped out just shy of graduation to pursue the promise of the pros.
Of the 385 players selected in the two drafts, 64.1 percent did not graduate - 130 received degrees, 232 did not. The status of 21 football players could not be determined because their schools would not release graduation data for privacy reasons. Two European basketball players did not attend American schools.
Football players were less likely to graduate than their basketball colleagues.
Of the 331 players selected in the NFL draft last April, 204 did not graduate and 106 did. Of the 54 players selected in the NBA draft last month, 28 did not complete their degree work and 24 did.
Six schools - Albany State, Georgia, Pitt, St. Cloud State, Southern Mississippi, Stephen F. Austin and Texas A&M - refused to divulge information on which of its draft choices had graduated, citing issues of privacy.
The AP survey also found that:
At least 82 NFL draft choices left school one semester or less away from a degree to attend workouts run by scouting combines for the teams and the league.
Some athletes had more than enough credits for graduation but not enough required courses. Instead, they took easier courses to maintain their athletic eligibility. There is, for example, the case of Miami of Ohio basketball coach Jerry Peirson, under NCAA investigation after giving an "A" to one of his players in a course called "Theory of Basketball," despite the fact the student never attended the class.
There are dramatic contrasts among schools. At Notre Dame, all nine drafted football players got diplomas. Houston and Florida State were a combined 0-for-14 in degrees for drafted football players. Houston also had a basketball player drafted. He didn't graduate, either.
Although there are many close calls with one or two courses separating an athlete from his degree, there are many more wide misses. Among them: All-American basketball star Gary Payton, more than a year short at Oregon State, and nose tackle Tory Epps, 50 credits away at Memphis State.
The No. 1 picks in both drafts are non-graduates.
The NBA's Derrick Coleman, picked first by the New Jersey Nets, played four years at Syracuse and left a semester short of a degree in sociology. The NFL's Jeff George, selected by the Indianapolis Colts, came out of Illinois as a redshirt junior one semester short of a degree in speech communications.
Some football players were as close as one course to graduating. In almost all of those cases, the players withdrew to attend pre-draft scouting combines and rookie mini-camps. That tendency is a constant irritant for academic administrators and has prompted NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue to promise new guidelines next month.
Typical is the case of Ohio State guard Tim Moxley, a ninth-round pick by the Washington Redskins. He left school one quarter short of his degree in natural resources and forestry.
"It's a bother to me that people look at graduation rates and he's a negative even though he went through five years here with a double major," said Larry Romanoff, athletics academic counselor at Ohio State.
"The pros say `Now!' and he drops out. He was one-third of the way through chemistry when he had to drop it in the spring. He would have graduated. He's a great kid who worked hard and did better here than he did in high school. But he's always a negative in graduation studies."
That does not mean, however, that Moxley won't get his degree. Romanoff said he expects him back after football season. Many student-athletes find their way back to campus to finish what they started.
"In some places," Romanoff said, "you leave and you're a statistic. Not here. Here, we recruit them and tell them they're going to get an education and that's part of the deal. And we bug them until they do.
"William White of the Detroit Lions was here four years in engineering, almost an honor student. Here, engineering is a five-year course. He's back for two courses. He's taking it a quarter at a time.
"Keith Ferguson of Detroit graduated this quarter. He was 2 1/2 quarters short when he left. Ten years later, he came back to finish.
"[Former NBA star] Clark Kellogg is back. Nobody hears about those cases."
Notre Dame, Houston and Florida State represent the extremes of the spectrum among drafted athletes. The middle might be represented by Miami, where the national football champions had nine players drafted by NFL teams and five finished their studies. Anna Price is the university's assistant athletic director for academics and student services.
"The crucial thing in my view are the expectations of the student-athlete," Price said. "When you expect them to graduate, they respond. Then you must provide the services necessary to get them the support to graduate."
Achieving a diploma can be a complicated bit of business. "For a lot of young people - not just athletes - they have more hours than they need and they don't graduate," Price said. "They take different courses to raise their grade-point averages. They need 120 credits, they end up with 140, but no degree."
And then they're gone.
David Wells, assistant athletic director for academics at Mississippi, said he wonders if the situation will change. "I'm not sure it will be corrected," he said. "For some of those drafted and signed, putting off the degree for pro compensation is justifiable. It's hard to tell them to get their degrees so they can get a job for $25,000, when one game played pays maybe $25,000."
Getting them back often is difficult because of the demands of pro sports.
"We've got a player, Wesley Walls, a great student with an NCAA post-graduate scholarship, an engineering student," Wells said. "He's one semester away. He's with the 49ers. When can he get back? Summer camp starts in July and by the time they're through with their season, its too late for spring."
There are other drawbacks, too.
"It's hard for older people to come back and re-groove themselves to studying, sitting with people six and seven years younger," Wells said. "They have job opportunities from contacts they made in their pro careers. Sometimes the catalog changes. They leave a semester away and it turns out they're a year away. The diploma may not materialize, but it's no fault of theirs. It's part of the system.
"The person who's not graduated is not necessarily a poor student. A lot of times the circumstances justify leaving. I'd do the same thing with the opportunity. We're pious to criticize those who don't graduate for what they do."
The absence of a departing athlete's degree does not always mean the school has failed, said Gayle Hopkins, assistant athletic director for academics at Arizona. Of the six athletes drafted into the NFL and NBA from his school, only linebacker Chris Singleton, picked No. 1 by the New England Patriots, is graduating.
"The numbers are misleading," Hopkins said. "The others are all transfers from junior colleges and lost credits coming here.
"There is such a demand on institutions, and each one has a right to its own educational philosophy. For me, I'm more interested that after our young people have exhausted their eligibility, they are in position for graduation."
None of Arizona's five non-graduates is more than two semesters away from his degree. For Hopkins, the educational commitment of his school remains intact. "We provide the fifth-year scholarship," he said. "They're never gone as far as we're concerned. We stay in touch with them and we don't let up."
The four-year course of study, once the accepted college regimen, has fallen by the wayside. Nationwide, just 14 percent of all college students, not just athletes, graduate in four years, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Nationally, graduation rates are climbing, estimated at 1.017 million for 1989 and 1990, up from 993,000 in 1988.
In sports, four-year students have been replaced by redshirts, a system that allows athletes to sit out a season of competition, affording them an extra year's time to accumulate the credits needed for graduation. Originally for injured players, redshirting is now a common way to save a year's eligibility for players.
Some players, hungry for pro contracts, are not interested in delaying their move into the pros for a fifth year in college. Miami's Price faces that situation next season. "We've got nine players who did not redshirt," she said. "It's a business decision. They won't sacrifice another year. I've got to get them out by May."
Transfers from junior colleges complicate the picture. Credits often do not follow athletes from one school to another. At Ohio State, however, adviser Larry Romanoff made certain they would for one student-athlete.
"When Todd Bell was in Chicago with the Bears," Romanoff said, "I arranged for him to take courses at DePaul that could be transferred. He said, `I played in the football stadium. I'm going to graduate in the football stadium.'
"And that's exactly what he did."
NEXT: A success story and a casualty - two degrees for one NFL rookie and none for another.
by CNB