King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NCAA gets tough on academics -- for the smaller programs, at least. Plus: World Baseball Classic to begin. And: Oscar nominee "Murderball."

Read more: Sports, Baseball, Movies, NCAA, King Kaufman, Sports Daily

March 2, 2006 | The NCAA announced sanctions Wednesday for schools that have failed to live up to new academic standards.

Ninety-nine Division I teams at 65 schools lost at least one scholarship. There are 6,112 Division I sports teams.

The NCAA's Academic Progress Rate, which measures how well teams keep players academically eligible and in school, with allowances made for players who leave early to turn pro as long as they're still eligible, is in its second year, but this is the first year penalties have been assessed.

Of the six major conferences, exactly one school lost exactly one scholarship: DePaul men's basketball.

That's it.

So let me get this straight. All of the big powerhouses in football and men's basketball, all those SEC football teams, ACC basketball teams and so on, are living up to the strict new academic standards, but the smaller fish are failing left and right, from Sacramento State to Maryland-Eastern Shore.

I couldn't say whether Cal Poly, Centenary, Texas State or Hampton, among the most-penalized men's basketball teams, are living up to their academic mission for athletes. I also have no idea about the most-penalized football programs: Temple, Toledo, Hawaii, Middle Tennessee State and Western Michigan.

But the idea that these schools are skimping on the academics while the football and basketball powers of the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big East, Big 12 and Pac-10 are meeting all the requirements, DePaul hoops excepted, strains credulity, to say the least.

Among those big conferences Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Texas and Tennessee were sanctioned in baseball, West Virginia in men's wrestling and Mississippi in men's indoor track. But football and basketball? Paragons of learning.

In the immortal word of former Temple football player William H. Cosby Jr., Ed.D.: Riiight.

The Catch-22 of stricter academic standards in college athletics is that it encourages schools to fudge grades, to push athletes toward joke classes at a minimum, to cheat outright at worst, with subtle and not-so-subtle grading pressure on professors in between.

When the key measure is something as easily fudged as eligibility, the opportunities to fudge are greater. Imagine if the cops enforced traffic laws with a camera hooked up to the Hubble telescope. Might be easier to roll through that stop sign, don't you think?

Maybe the NCAA's figures are legit. Maybe everything all of us know about college sports is wrong: Athletes in the big, money-making programs are genuine students making passing grades to stay eligible, with little hanky-panky of the sort that goes on at lower levels.

Or maybe a system that punishes smaller programs while leaving the big cash machines alone ought to raise suspicions that the stated goal, academic excellence top to bottom, isn't the highest priority.

It certainly has for me.

Next page: World Baseball Classic. Plus: "Murderball"