Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Thursday, July 22, 1999

College hoops: Tough
to solve this problem

IT'S an imperfect world, so coming up with a perfect solution isn't possible, I'm afraid.

It was never more apparent than the NCAA's attempt to come up with solutions to cope with some of the problems plaguing Division I college basketball.

One proposal by the 27-member panel was making male freshmen ineligible. That idea was quickly dismissed.

Visualize all the pending lawsuits that would have engendered. It was also a matter of fairness. Why pick on just one class? Why pick on guys? And why just men's basketball?

Actually, we all know why men's basketball. Or should know.

Most of the recruiting problems in college athletics involve men's basketball. No sport has lower graduation rates or more athletes academically ill-prepared.

Football and baseball coaches weren't the ones clamoring to make freshmen ineligible. Rather, it was basketball coaches.

It's not that the latter are more interested in the academic welfare of their recruits than their football or baseball counterparts.

SO why the big push on their part?

It's obvious. Guess which coach is under more pressure to promise and play his hot-shot recruits right away in order to get them to come to his program?

It's a promise he won't have to make if high school recruits can't play the first year.

"Sorry, son. NCAA rule, you know."

The coach would also be smiling to himself, knowing that he will have the recruit in his program for at least two years.

Even Duke, which never had a player leave its program early for the NBA, saw four standouts quit this season.

So, realizing that adopting a rule to make freshman basketball players ineligible wasn't an ideal or practical solution, the panel recommended several other proposals.

They will be forwarded to the NCAA's executive committee early next month and could be in place by the fall of 2001, if approved.

One of them should be shot down as quickly as the idea of making freshmen ineligible.

It's the proposal to tie-in the number of basketball scholarships to the school's academic success.

UNDER that recommendation, schools with a 75 percent graduation rate or higher would be allowed 14 full scholarships. It would be 13 and 12 scholarships for those schools with lower graduation rates.

Already, you can see what a flawed idea it is.

To begin with, the "haves" of college basketball already enjoy the pick of the blue-chip litter - those who can play and have the grades as well.

Such a scholarship tie-in plan would widen an already large gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots." But that's not all.

Imagine if a school's graduation rate is down, meaning a loss of a scholarship or two.

What would a basketball coach do? Why, ask for a little academic consideration and assistance from his faculty, of course.

We'd have the same problem that plagued the University of Minnesota. We'd have Minnesotas all over the country.

If the NCAA is truly interested in a solution to the college basketball rat race, such as players leaving early, I have an idea:

Sign a recruit for five years. If he leaves early, eliminate his scholarship until his class graduates. Or, putting it realistically in academic terms, until those his year have used up their eligibility.

That, to me, would be the perfect solution. But, then, it wouldn't work because it's an imperfect world.