Tougher grad standards could bowl top programs over

Oklahoma is ineligible for a bowl.

OK, cheap attention grabber, but it worked, right? That faux headline might become reality for some school sooner than you think. The NCAA Management Council is considering what form the next round of sweeping academic reforms will take.

The so-called "incentive/disincentive package" could penalize schools that don't graduate a certain percentage of players. The Knight Commission, a respected watchdog group for college athletics, proposed the cutoff be 50 percent or schools wouldn't be allowed to play in the postseason.

What's worse/better/significant (pick one) is that the Management Council has started dialogue to consider it. If any kind of disincentive is tied to grad rates, it could be the most significant NCAA move since the death penalty was adopted in the mid-1980s.

"It would be mind-boggling because of the ramifications," said Jim Livengood, the Arizona athletic director and chairman of the Division I men's basketball committee.

The adjustments could take many forms, or none. Incentives could go as far as rewarding schools with extra scholarships or NCAA Tournament money for graduating at a high rate. Schools on the other end could be financially penalized, or worse, removed from postseason play.

"If you graduate at 80 percent or higher, you might get a little more money," said Gene Smith, a member of the Management Council, using arbitrary numbers. "If you graduate less than 30 percent, say, you get less money. Or you don't get a chance to go to the postseason."

Expect some sort of move, perhaps as soon as April. The council fast-tracked the latest academic reforms, getting them through in only 18 months. They were significant enough. New initial eligibility requirements shifted the emphasis away from entrance tests to high school performance, a major move in the NCAA philosophy.

"This is the first strong manifestation of the changeover that has occurred in the NCAA in jurisdiction by the presidents," said Bill Friday, a member of the Knight Commission who, along with Notre Dame president emeritus Father Theodore Hesburgh, first proposed that schools be penalized for not graduating at least 50 percent of their athletes.

Friday, the former president at North Carolina, and Hesburgh worked on the Knight Commission for a decade trying to reform college athletics. In that time, they have seen billion-dollar television deals, million-dollar coaches and athletic departments supported, in part, by shoe deals.

The market forces at work are not inside the school but outside, dictating everything from logo placement to game times. Hesburgh once said he was not so upset at the result of Notre Dame's last major bowl, a 41-9 loss to Oregon State in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl, but the means by which it was attained.

Oregon State players, he said, "just walked away. They played one day and weren't at the university the next day."

The latest figures available show Oregon State with a 25 percent graduation rate in football.

The climate has indeed changed. For the first time, the NCAA has a former university president, Myles Brand, as its leader. Not since the first NCAA Presidents Commission was formed in the late '80s have the college CEOs flexed so much muscle.

The schools have themselves to blame. Despite an NCAA-record 60 percent overall graduation rate in the latest figures, there is still a feeling that the major-college athlete is underachieving.

Using the Friday/Hesburgh model, 10 of the teams in the current Associated Press Top 25 would not be eligible for a bowl. Twenty of those football programs have lower graduation rates than the general student population.

"Any university president that graduates less than that (50 percent) owes an explanation to the alumni," Friday said. "We're going to find out how far we're willing to go to straighten what had been the erosion of reputation of the institutions."

Fifty percent might be too ambitious a number, but it's clear the Management Council plans to do something. The 51-member group of Division I administrators researches and proposes legislation for the board to adopt. It has several options. Involving scholarships and postseason play would have more of a major impact than financial rewards or restrictions.

Already, schools are penalized scholarships and postseason play for breaking NCAA by-laws. The next step would be to tie work in the classroom to schools' participation on the field.

Bottom line? No surprise, but the current climate suggests there will be no college football playoff. Not now, perhaps not in the long-term future. To presidents, less -- games and scholarships -- is best. There will be more academic accountability. Starting next year, athletes will be asked to reach a certain percentage of their degree requirements after each year.

The long-time practice of majoring in eligibility might be at an end.

"Remember, the average is less than one out of 100 ever make a living at it," Friday said of college athletics. "Universities and colleges have a moral duty to see that these people have a skill once they leave the campus. We should not use up these young people."

The method of measuring graduation rates must first be addressed. When the NCAA was federally mandated to track grad rates in the 1980s, it adopted a broad -- some say misleading -- method. Athletes are allowed a six-year window to graduate. But schools don't get credit for athletes who transfer or quit while in good academic standing.

The six-year window is a confusing snapshot of how things were two or three coaches ago. For example, Oklahoma's AP rank, tied for fourth, is higher than its grad rate, six percent. But during that 1995-96 school year, Howard Schnellenberger was coach for only one season. Since then, the school has changed coaches twice and says its current rates under Bob Stoops are much higher.

Under the current system, we won't see the players from Stoops' first class in 1998 tracked for two more years.

"They better be careful how they go about it," said Penn State's Joe Paterno, whose players graduate at an 88 percent rate, seven points higher than the student population. "Their intentions are good. We are here to do everything we can to make sure a kid graduates as well as play good football."

There are legions of critics that will agree with only half of Paterno's last statement. Some of those legions are to blame, too. For many college presidents, winning is more important than grad rates when coaches are fired.

Texas coach Mack Brown saw his brother Watson get fired at Vanderbilt in 1990 after graduating 100 percent of his players. And that's the NCAA's current numbers for Vanderbilt. Every single one of Rod Dowhower's incoming freshman in 1995 graduated within the six-year window, but he wasn't around to see it. He departed after consecutive 2-9 seasons.

"Winning right now is more important nationally than graduation rate," Mack Brown said. "Usually, the team that wins the graduation rate award, the coach gets fired and he's not there to accept. It's a bad message. I don't know if we'll ever get it where that is as important as winning."

The Management Council knows it has to address the flaws in the grad rate.

"We have to be real careful with that," said Smith, the Arizona State athletic director. "Look at a school like Central Michigan, that does a great job with student-athletes (66 percent grad rate for all athletes). Let's say they slip a couple of years ... you can have one bad year in graduating and you take a large percentage of money away from them. It would devastate the program."

If withholding revenue would devastate a program, think what a postseason ban would do. Bowls generated approximately $150 million for participating schools and conferences last year. Part of the reason athletic directors and coaches don't want a playoff is because that revenue is steady, constant and lucrative.

A conference champion earns $13.5 million alone from a BCS bowl appearance.

"It's unbelievable," Smith said. "Just the thought of that (being taken away) in my view would make some people who maybe have not been committed get committed, because it might happen."

Some are critical of the academic reforms to date. Without saying it overtly, for years the NCAA didn't trust high schools. The thinking was that if Johnny needed an A to get that scholarship, then a friendly teacher might be tempted to award a friendly grade. The NCAA stuck to its guns, stating that the SAT and ACT were more accurate predictors of a student's college potential.

But the tests were criticized for being discriminatory toward minorities and athletes from lower-income households. Now there is going to be more of a reliance on high school core courses and less reliance on the tests.

"People in high schools across the country are going to be put in difficult positions, why do that?" said Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione of the potential for academic fraud in high school. "We already know what the outcome will be."

To some, that means more less-qualified students coming in at one end, students who might not make it to graduation.

"The reality of it, in layman's terms, is that it would open the door to let almost anyone in," Castiglione said, "and we're making it harder for them to stay on campus."

Castiglione, and those who agree with him, are swimming against a strong tide. When the first Proposition 48 guidelines were adopted, critics predicted academic Armageddon. But high schools, colleges and students adapted. Now, the reformers say, it's time to take the next step.

"I would stand by that 50 percent rule," Friday said. "I have noticed that when universities have a standard to meet, they meet it."