By Dennis Dodd
SportsLine Senior Writer

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- It is "very likely" the NCAA will change its initial-eligibility standards after an appeals court granted a stay Tuesday to a federal judge's ruling striking down part of those standards.

NCAA Division I Board of Directors Chairman Graham Spanier said Wednesday the board had been studying adjustments to Proposition 16 for at least six months. He added future adjustments could put less emphasis on the controversial test scores that have been criticized for being discriminatory.

Philadelphia federal court judge Ronald Buckwalter struck down the minimum test score standard of Prop 16 on March 8, ruling it violated the civil rights of four black student-athletes who had brought suit against the NCAA.

"It is very likely that we will make some changes in the existing Proposition 16," Spanier said Wednesday. "I think we would have done that without this court case."

There's plenty of reason to question that last statement. The NCAA is not faring well in court battles these days. There's no doubt, though, the stay allows the NCAA to catch its breath and study its options.

THE LACK OF CLEAR INITIAL eligibility requirements in the last 23 days had admittedly thrown the NCAA into chaos before it got the stay from the Third Circuit of Appeals. Now college athletics' largest governing body can work on adjusting Prop 16 while at the same time pursuing an appeal that could take up to 18 months.

The board could consider Prop 16 adjustments at their August meeting and have a new model in place by Sept. 1, in time for the 1999-2000 academic year. If the appeal is rejected before then, the board can adopt emergency legislation.

The stay also restores Prop 16 to its original form in time for the Division I basketball signing period, which begins April 7. Prop 16 was adopted in 1992. It amended Prop 48, adopted in 1983 that required core course requirements and minimum test scores to strengthen initial eligibility requirements.

"This is good news," said John Swofford, commissioner of the ACC, "because it restores order at a time when college athletics certainly needs it, particularly with the signing day a week away."

While Spanier would not go as far to admit the board was reacting directly to the lawsuit, he did say the new requirements might put less weight on standardized test scores. The NCAA accepts the SAT or the ACT standardized test as one of three determining factors for initial eligibility. The others are core-course requirements and high school grade-point average.

THE TEST SCORE IS EASILY the most debatable. Detractors have argued the SAT does nothing more than measure how a student does on that test, not how that student would do in a college setting. It is designed so 20 percent of the students will not finish it on time. Critics argue its questions are culturally and racially biased. Companies have sprung up that do nothing but help high school applicants study to take the SAT. In those cases not only is an athletic scholarship on the line but millions in academic scholarships.

There are even other tests that can be used such as advanced placement or AP. The AP test concentrates on various school subjects instead of the sometimes esoteric subject matter of the SAT. A typical SAT question asks, "How many positive integers less than 20 are equal to the sum of a positive multiple of three and a positive multiple of four?"

"You're really not improving yourself at all," test prep spokesman Kevin McMullin told the Houston Chronicle. "You'll never see those problems again in your life."

Currently under Prop 16, a student-athlete can have no lower than an 820 on the SAT. A sliding scale allows a student-athlete to have as low as a 2.0 core GPA, if the student has a 1,010 SAT test score.

"Most educators know from research literature that the single best predictor of success in college is one's performance in high school," said Spanier, also the president at Penn State. "We've always felt that the high school GPA is very important. While we don't want to stay away from test scores completely ... we want to put considerable weight on the grade-point average.

"The test scores will have a somewhat diminished influence."

With that last statement, the NCAA seems to be backtracking to 16 years ago when Proposition 48 was first adopted. From 1972-82, the NCAA relied solely on a minimum 2.0 high school GPA for initial eligibility.

THE 1983 NCAA CONVENTION then started what has been commonly called the reform movement with Prop 48.

"This is not a race problem," Penn State football coach Joe Paterno said that year while arguing on the NCAA Convention floor in favor of Prop 48. "We have raped a generation-and-a-half of young black athletes. We have taken kids and sold them on bouncing a ball and running with the football and that being able to do certain things athletically was going to be an end in itself."

Spanier added Wednesday: "Many of us remember the bad, old days when some prospects arrived on our campuses ill-prepared for the academic rigors of university level work. They played out their sports until the realities of the classroom pulled them up short. Too often they were cast out with neither an education nor prospects for the future. No one wants to return to those times."

In its appeal, the NCAA will argue whether it was even eligible to be sued by the four individuals. Buckwalter ruled that because the NCAA receives federal funds, it is liable for Title VI (civil rights) violations.

The NCAA has contended it does not directly receive federal funds. Using that argument it prevailed a few weeks ago in a lawsuit brought by a graduate student who was seeking additional volleyball eligibility while in graduate school.