ACADEMIC AND ATHLETIC REFORM

"No Pass, No Play" Initiative

Prominent Texas business executive H. Ross Perot led a 1984-1985 campaign in his admittedly football-obsessed state to enact strictures barring failing high-school students from participating in sports. Perot's reform efforts were successful, and in 1985 a Texas law, which was emulated around the country, officially made achievement of a 70 average in every course for six weeks a prerequisite for playing a sport. A research study conducted three years later concluded that the Texas law was succeeding even beyond Perot's expectations. The percentage of students failing dropped from 15.5 in 1984-1985 to 12.8 in 1987-1988. Although opponents had predicted that students would opt for the easiest courses in the curriculum to assure sports eligibility, the number of athletes enrolled in honors courses remained constant. Also, most students inter-viewed for the study said the rule encouraged them to achieve.

Proposition 48

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) voted on 13 and 14 January 1986 to instigate minimum eligibility requirements for college athletes based on standardized test scores and to implement drug testing at championship events. By fall 1988 athletes at Division I schools had to score 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or 15 on the American College Test and maintain a 2.0 (a "C" average) or better in their high school's core curriculum. These new NCAA rules were called Proposition 48. One of the most outspoken opponents of this new rule was John Thompson, George-town University's black basketball coach. Complaining bitterly that the new rules would adversely affect minority youth, Thompson admitted that some athletes were un-prepared for college, but he maintained, "It wasn't a coach who passed these kids from grades one through six when they weren't able to read." Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight had a different opinion. He believed that the strengthening of the rules would benefit all student athletes by forcing high schools to pay more attention to academics. "College isn't for everyone," Knight argued. "College isn't for you if you aren't a pretty good reader and a pretty good writer. In athletics, we really haven't understood that over the years."

Unfair to Blacks?

Those who agreed with Thompson criticized the rule on the grounds that minority achievement on standardized tests was required. Some educators believed that such tests were culturally biased against blacks, 41 percent of whom were enrolled in some of America's most troubled urban schools. Statistics from the SAT in 1987 show that the average score was 906 of a potential 1600; the average for blacks was 728, just above the 700 level required by Proposition 48. An Associated Press (AP) study in 1988 suggested that the Proposition 48's new freshman eligibility rule was primarily penalizing black athletes. The AP found that 274 college football players had been disqualified in 1988, and of the 213 athletes whose race could be determined, 86 percent were black. John Thompson's protests of these seeming inequities failed to change Proposition 48, and in protest he announced on 13 January 1989 that "I will not be on the bench in an NCAA-sanctioned Georgetown basket-ball game until something is done to provide student-athletes with opportunities and hope for access to college education." Thompson's protest soon ended, and Proposition 48 remained in effect, setting a clear threshold for high-school student-athlete academic achievement.