NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

Last week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution released a study on the academic credentials of incoming athletes versus regular student.  Not surprisingly stereotypes held.

Nationwide, football players average 220 points lower on the SAT than their classmates - and men’s basketball players average seven points less than football players.

Those figures come from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution study of 54 public universities, including the members of the six major Bowl Championship Series conferences and other schools whose teams finished the 2007-08 season ranked among the football or men’s basketball top 25.

While it’s commonly known that admission standards are different for athletes, the AJC study quantifies how wide the gap is between athletes and the general student body at major universities.

NCAA President Myles Brand said the big question isn’t whether athletes are as qualified as other students when they enroll but whether, given help, they can obtain degrees. “What you are really looking for is whether the student-athletes who are being accepted have the capability of graduating from that institution with the academic support they have available,” Brand said.

The real take away for families going through the recruiting process is to remember that athletics can open the door to even the most elite colleges.  Athletes and families should contact as many schools as possible regardless of perceived or published reports on the typical grades of incoming freshman.  Universities make special exceptions for athletes because they are special people.  Their commitment to sport indicates their tremendous potential as people.  Athletes should use this fact as an advantage.

 When discussing college athletics and academics usually the talk centers on low graduation rates and corruption.  One of the many underreported benefits for college student-athletes are the incredible amount of academic resources available to student athletes who have the drive to use them to their full advantage.

A great example of the resources of available is the story of Ole Miss Offensive Tackle Michael Oher.  Oher’s recruitment and struggle to gain eligibility were chronicled by Michael Lewis in the best seller Blind Side.  Even when he finally gained eligibility most assumed he would make little progress towards a degree and leave school early for the NFL. 

Not only did he put off likely millions the NFL last spring to return for his senior season, but he is now on the verge of graduation.  The LA Daily News recently discussed the emergence of well funded academic support for student athletes around the country.

I haven’t struggled a bit in college,” the standout offensive lineman says. “It’s been a breeze.”

It’s a tribute to Oher’s determination and character, but his story also says something about the state of big-time college athletics.

As many college athletes do, Oher got not only tutoring help but a full range of academic support services throughout his years at Ole Miss. Fourteen full-time staffers on campus line up tutors for student athletes, help them choose classes, monitor their study and check attendance. Athletes at Ole Miss averaged about 1,000 tutoring sessions a week this fall.

Such services are not unusual. The last five years have seen an astounding jump in the time, money and resources spent on academic support for student athletes. Tougher regulations instituted by the NCAA now punish schools for poor academic performance, fueling a spending binge with private and public funds on tutorial staff and athletes-only facilities filled with study rooms and computer labs.

The developments have been hailed by the NCAA, but faculty members are disturbed by what they see as a shift that puts athletes ahead of other students.

Before the first kickoff this season, The Associated Press began a survey of the 65 schools from the six major conferences involved in the Bowl Championship Series, as well as independent Notre Dame. The AP obtained at least some data from 45 schools about the resources they spend on getting athletes graduated.

The picture formed by the data is one of schools frequently spending more than $1 million annually on academic support for athletes, and some spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more in 2008 than they did in 2004, the AP found. Eight BCS schools reported spending increases of more than 70 percent in the last five years. Four increased spending by more than 100 percent.

Helping athletes graduate has become a profession with an organization whose membership has nearly doubled in two years.

For the second stright year the Higher Ed Watch has developed its own BCS rankings to point out the discrepancy in graduating athletes and some of the nation’s top football programs. 

Only 55 percent of Division I-A football playersleave college in six years with a degree — and that number drops precipitously at most big-time programs that solely focus on counting Ws and Ls instead of As and Bs. It also doesn’t take into account the poor quality of the education many are receiving to begin with. Jock majors don’t provide job-ready skills.

Teams like Boston College and Northwestern show that it is possible to field a competitive team with true student-athletes.

I greatly encourage every potential recruit to thoroughly investigate the acadmeic report on any program they are considering.  Playing in front of huge crowds and dreaming of your name on scoreboard can be enticing, but a real meaningful degree will mean a lot more.

The College Board has adopted a Score Choice^TM policy for the SAT that, according to the College Board website, will give students the option to choose, by test date, which SAT scores that they will send to colleges and thereby “allow students to put their best foot forward on test day by giving them more flexibility and control over their scores.”

Articles in U.S. News and World Report and Newsweek covering the College Board’s new test-reporting option raise a number of questions about the motivation for and benefits of the policy. The Newsweek piece reports that the new policy may be less altruistic and more financially motivated than the College Board statement implies. It cites an internal e-mail sent by Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT, that refers to “less kids taking SAT,” thereby “threatening the viability of the program itself.” U.S. News and World Report quotes a critic who has done the math: “[I]f roughly 3 percent of the 1.5 million students who take the test annually took it just one additional time-so 50,000 tests at $45 apiece-that would mean an extra $2.25 million for the College Board.” College Board is losing market share to ACT, so the potential financial motivation behind its choice of Score Choice is obvious enough. 

Newsweek also reports that some colleges, Stanford, Cornell, Pomona, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California are named, have decided to opt out of the score choice policy and, instead, require applicants to submit all scores. The overzealous test-taker who sits for ten administrations of the SAT will be sorely disappointed to find that he must display all the fruits of his obsessive labors when applying to these schools.  Such a test-taker would more wisely spend all of those testing hours on intelligent, academic study that builds a better G.P.A. as well as better test scores? 

If the objective of a standardized test is to assess whether students are college ready, that is, proficient in a vital set of academic skills, then the relevance of SAT Score Choice does indeed seem quite negligible. Our years of experience at Academic Approach, where we have helped thousands of students prepare for both standardized exams and high school core curriculum, has made obvious to us that repeated testing without intelligent assessment, analysis, and curriculum yields little or no measurable improvement.  Attempting to game the SAT by taking it ten times will look a bit desperate to admissions officers. At the same time, such repeated testing does not necessarily improve a student’s performance on the test or in the classroom.

Through our experience, we have developed our own best practices on standardized testing and test preparation-we teach in such a way that we are always simultaneously preparing our students in the fundamental skills that will be demanded of them not just on the standardized exams but also in their high school and college classrooms. Our practices accord with those of the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC) as articulated in its recent study of the place of standardized testing in college admissions. In that report, NACAC stated that, “the best form of test preparation is focused on core knowledge content and on skills that will help prepare students for their academic future.”

What is the best way to achieve this effect?

• Take diagnostic tests to determine which test features your skills best-the SAT or ACT.
• Develop an academic, skill-building program around the test that is best for you, focusing in to save time and money.
• Take a maximum of three official SATs or ACTs (4 in extraordinary cases).

What really matters is early assessment, determining which test to take, designing an intelligent plan, and following up by moving through the appropriate course work.  Choosing such an approach is the best, most reasonable path towards success on standardized exams.

Courtney Federle, PhD from The University of California, Berkeley, currently working as an educator at Academic Approach. 

 Former Recruiting Coordinator at Notre Dame and University of Michigan and current NCSA Speaker, Bob Chmiel, recently presented a Recruiting 101 Seminar at Owensboro High School in Kentucky.  Senior Guidance Counselor from Owensboro, Jane Prince, played a key role in bringing Coach Chmiel to educate families and student athletes. 

Aside from her role as Senior Guidance Counselor and high school coach, Jane is the mother of a current collegiate athlete and wife of a former collegiate athlete.  The bottom line is that Jane has experienced recruiting from several perspectives.  NCSA caught up with Jane to discuss the importance of recruiting education.

NCSA: What motivated Owensboro to bring in an expert to educate families about the recruiting process?  Why NCSA and Coach Chmiel?

We will be working with NSCA this January to help my son achieve his goal of playing college football.  He is currently a sophomore in high school.  I’m also a Senior Guidance Counselor at Owensboro High School in Kentucky and coached high school tennis and swimming.  Over the years, I worked with many high school athletes.  My husband is the Head football coach at OHS and played college football at The University of Kentucky. My daughter plays college basketball at Georgetown College (NAIA).

Five years ago, another teacher and I formed a program at this high school to prepare high school athletes to become college athletes and I thought the NCSA presentation would be an excellent opportunity for parents to hear information about the college recruiting process from an outside source.  We were just lucky that our guest speaker was Coach Chmiel.  He is able to tell stories about his life experiences that get the attention of his audience and pull them in for the real message.

What was the most valuable information that Coach Chmiel passed along to families in your opinion? 

He had some excellent suggestions like:

• Don’t send film to a college without the specific name of the coach that you are sending it to…..unidentified film goes in the trash”
• Separate yourself from problems or problem people

He also talked about three important aspects of an athlete necessary to be successful: (1) Strong academics, (2) good character, and (3) always give 110 % on every play and in all preparations to play.

What are some of the most common misconceptions about the recruiting process that families have?

Most families wrongly believe several basic concepts:

(1) That most athletes are discovered like a Hollywood movie star for their scholarship

(2) DI level of play is the only one that provides financial assistance

(3) It is the high school coaches’ responsibility to get their athlete a scholarship

(4) Academics really are not that important if they are talented enough athletically

(5) Every scholarship, in every sport is a full-ride.

What type of advice would you give families who are going through the process for the first time as not only a guidance counselor, but also a mother and wife of collegiate student athletes?

• Start preparing your potential student/athlete in the 9^th grade by explaining the core GPA and the NCAA process. Register at the beginning of their junior year with the NCAA Eligibility Center. Keep constant tabs on their transcript and daily grades.

• Build a resume of sports accomplishments and awards as well as community service and inter-scholastic activities and honors. Save it in your computer and update it with everything they have accomplished each month. This resume should be sent to college coaches. This allows them to see the student/athlete as a person that is active and has good character.

• Choose a few good sports photos to have on hand to send with your resume and other sports related scholarships that they may apply for, such as state sportsmanship scholarships for example.

• Form good relationships with high school coaches; remember they will give the final recommendation.

• Learn how to speak to the media; you are representing your family, community, school and yourself. Complement your teammates and coaches in interviews; you didn’t get there on your own.

• Play other sports in high school, it’s good for you and makes you a more appealing athlete.

• Fill out all sports questionnaires, even to schools you may not attend. It’s a small world and coaches change jobs every day and may remember you.

• God gave you a certain body size and ability. You may be of size for the big time and you may not. Be thankful for whatever opportunities may come your way at any level whether it is DI, II, III, NAIA or Jr. College.

I really could go on and on…….there is so much for them to know……

Would you encourage other high schools to provide recruiting education similar to the seminar at Owensboro?  If so, why?

Yes, it was very helpful to hear Coach Chmiel.  He didn’t try to force the NCSA on his audience. He simply gave his educational message about the recruiting process and informed people about the NCSA at the end.  I think this made people more interested in the NCSA material. Parents are really misinformed about athletic scholarship and need a lot of help in the process.

 If you would like to learn more about potentially scheduling a Recruiting 101 Seminar, click here.

Its a tough economy these days, unless you are a high profile football coach.  Take a look at Alabama Coach Nick Saban pulling in between $5-4 million this year while his “bosses,” Alabama President Robert Witt and Gov. Bob Riley earn $611,000 and $105,000 respectively.  The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about the two fundamental differences in the pay scale.

The first is simple supply and demand. With all due respect to the many great teachers, it’s easier to replace them than Mr. Saban, Ohio State’s Jim Tressel or Penn State’s Joe Paterno (who makes a paltry $500,000 a year).

“The talent that Saban, Tressel and other coaches have is relatively scarce,” Phil Miller, an assistant professor of economics at Minnesota State University, Mankato, wrote on The Sports Economist blog. “On the other hand, the talent it takes to teach effectively, for example, at the collegiate level is more abundant. So the price of coaching talent is much higher than the salary obtained by most professors.” Or, as legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes once told an antisports prof: “I can do your job, but you can’t do mine.”

The other problem with the salary comparison is that Alabama taxpayers aren’t paying Mr. Saban, and so his salary doesn’t take any money away from professors. One of the benefits to come out of the rampant commercialism of college athletics is that media conglomerates and sneaker companies are willing to pay huge sums for the broadcast and apparel rights. Thus, Mr. Saban will be paid out of Alabama’s $70 million athletic budget, with little or no impact on academic departments.

However, does this set the wrong precedent?  Shouldn’t coaches either accept a pay scale more in line with their peers or move on to the professional leagues?  On the other hand, don’t they justify these salaries by bring the university money in endorsements, post-season revenue and prestige?  What do you think?

Facilities like the University of Illinois Irwin Academic Services Center can be a big selling point to college recruits.  The $6 million dollar center features oversized leather coaches, oriental rugs, computer labs and other plush amenities.  It is packed with tutors to ensure that athletes get all the help they need to complete their athletic and academic workload. 

Of course, this could be considered one of the low end facilities of its kind.  The LSU and Texas A&M centers cost $15 million and $27 million respectively. However, some in academia are not pleased at this type of commitment to student athletes.  While the centers are usually funded through private donations and the athletic department budget they are off limits to the rest of the student body.

 Allen Sack, a University of New Haven professor who played football for Notre Dame, spoke to the Chicago Tribune about what he sees as a growing rift between regular students and the privileged student athlete.

“These athletic tutoring palaces perpetuate resentment and stereotyping on campus.  A student who is not an athlete will say: ‘I’m working nights to get through school, why don’t I get free tutoring?  That the athletes do perpetuates the image of a dumb jock who couldn’t get through school without special help.”

Helping his case is the fact that several centers have been involved in academic scandals at schools like Florida State and Minnesota.  However, defenders of academic centers point out the revenues and prestige that athletes bring to a school.  What do you think?
 

The NCAA Eligibility Center has recently adopted a new policy for high school student-athletes who have demonstrated a high level of academic achievement during their first six semesters of high school. Qualified student-athletes will receive an early certification waiver prior to high school graduation.

In order to qualify for an early certification waiver a student must meet the following criteria:

A minimum SAT (math and critical reading) score of 1000 or minimum sum score of 85 on the ACT;

For Division I:  Core-course GPA of 3.0 or higher in a minimum of 13 core courses:

• 3 English;
• 2 Math;
• 2 Science; and
• 6 additional core courses.

For Division II:  Core-course GPA of 3.0 or higher in a minimum of 12 core courses:

• 3 English;
• 2 Math;
• 2 Science; and
• 5 additional core courses.

During their senior year, the student-athlete will receive confirmation that he/she has met the academic certification requirements.

If you have any questions about early certification you may contact the NCAA Eligibility Center directly at 877-262-1492.

 I often write about insights I gain when I deliver NCSA’s College Recruiting 101. Last night, Wednesday Dec 3^rd, I spoke to athletes and their families from South Bend (IN) Schools. South Bend Dir. Of Athletics Kirby Whitacre has seen what it takes to become a college student athlete over the years. When he was the A.D. at Mishawaka High School he had great advice for the athletes that got Questionnaires from Colleges. Of course, he advised them to return the Questionnaires. He also encouraged them to attach a personal hand written note thanking the College coach for sending the Questionnaire.

Whitacre also suggested they create their own note. A funny high school athlete would write something funny. A serious athlete would put a motivational quote at the bottom of the card. College coaches like that kind of thing. One of his high school softball players created a card in the shape of a softball. One signed her note “from your new centerfielder.” That showed moxie, but College coaches like that fire within.

Whitacre also had some interesting insights on the SAT. He said for twenty years he had been debating with counselors on when recruitable athletes should take the SAT. Often, students are advised to take it late in the junior year. The reason being is that they have more math under their belt. Whitacre has argued that the recruitable athlete should take it early in the junior year for these reasons: First, if they do poorly, they can work on improving the score. He cited a 6-2, 200 pound girls softball pitcher they had who could throw bullets. She had several D1 offers but her SAT was not high enough. Her parents immediately got her into a SAT prep program. In three weeks she raised her score by 200 points and got a great package to pitch at the University of Illinois. Second, if they do well by taking it early in the Junior year, the pressure is off and they don’t have to take it again. Of course, they can do well and still take it again and improve it even more.

In an article in Dec. 4th’s Wall Street Journal, Harvard’s endowment has been hit by losses of 22% in the 4 months between July 1st and October 31st.  That’s 8 Billion dollars!  More than the total endowments of all but 6 universities.  Income from Harvard’s endowment funds 35% of its budget.  That includes athletics.  As mentioned in the article, all other college endowments have suffered a similar fate.  State schools, who don’t have large endowments, must cut back because of reduced tax receipts. 

So what does that mean to student athletes and their parents?  First, recruiting budgets for college coaches are going to be reduced.  That means less travel for coaches.  They will be relying more on video than ever before to evaluate talent.  Second, college coaches are going to be more careful in their selections.  So those high school students they’ve known the longest (starting freshman year) will be more likely to score the scholarship.  Third, colleges will be reducing the financial aid awarded for academics.  A smaller percentage of elite students will receive the top awards.  A student athlete who wants to compete will need better grades and test scores than ever.  She/he better be working on that starting freshman year!  Fourth, large state institutions will be cutting costs.  That means larger class sizes for required courses.   If your student-athlete doesn’t do well in class sizes of 300 or more, then they need to find a better fit.  Finally, student-athletes will be competing harder than ever for the existing scholarship dollars.  That competition will be in the work out room, in the class room, in preparing for college entrance exams, and finally in knowing the rules of the recruiting game.   How can you gain a significant competitive advantage over others and win the recruiting game?  Start here.