Daniel McQuade: Colleges fail their basketball players

Duke and Oklahoma State really blew it.

Well, yes, both teams had a reasonable shot to win on Saturday in the NCAA national semifinals, but really, I'm upset because they blew it for me. You see, had Duke beaten Oklahoma State in the finals of the tournament, I would have won every pool I entered. Yes, I had my entire Final Four correct and then didn't get any of the final three games right.

Ah well. Uhh, not that I would have won any money. No, sir.

There's no doubt that the NCAA Tournament is fun to watch, especially the first two rounds. There are a few games going at once, little schools are trying to knock off behemoths, and when several games end at once, it's great to watch a couple of exciting finishes. It almost makes you forget that these guys are students.

Of course, it's not like the coaches remember that, either. Some of them, anyway.

You see, the NCAA Tournament is big business. CBS paid $6 billion for the rights a few years ago. Millions of people watch the games. Lots of T-shirts are sold. Billions change hands in bets on individual games and on office pools. Gotta have exciting games. Gotta have the best players to get some exposure. Gotta do whatever it takes.

What eventually happens is players get exploited, don't receive enough guidance and don't graduate. And, thanks to a Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act provision, the NCAA no longer has to disclose graduation rates of men's basketball players. Nifty.

The FERPA rule does have a sensible implementation. Basketball teams are small -- 12 to 15 guys, roughly, while Ivy League schools are a little larger -- and if graduation rates are posted, especially for individual races, it's pretty easy to figure out who graduated and who didn't. Since students' privacy is protected by FERPA, some graduation rates, it's been said, were suppressed.

The NCAA has said that it will do its own collection of rates and, since they're not subject to the FERPA rule, will publish them. NCAA President Myles Brand disclosed that four teams in this year's field of 65 had graduation rates of zero. For the last year data was available, national champ UConn and runner-up Georgia Tech had men's basketball graduation rates of 27 percent.

But there it is right now, on the NCAA's Web site -- graduation rates, and most of the men's basketball schools' rates are marked with three asterisks. Some men's basketball rates are not suppressed. This seems odd -- until you see what they show, which are success stories and academic schools.

Stanford boasts a 100 percent graduation rate. Penn State has a 50 percent graduation rate for men's hoops in the four-year period. (Penn and the other Ivy schools are not included in the report, because it only concerns athletes who are on scholarship, but suffice it to say, they're doing OK.)

Look, let's just put aside the debate about how some underqualified academic players are admitted because they can put a ball through a hoop. But if a school does this, shouldn't Big State U. give players all the guidance in the world in order to help them graduate? Give and take: You play hoops for us, we'll make sure you get an education.

Unfortunately, it seems that schools aren't doing this. While some schools have made strides, too many players are simply becoming disinterested after a while, dropping out and not getting a chance. Some of it may be their own faults, true, but schools need to do more. Or at least care.

A caveat: I'm not talking about John Chaney, head men's hoops coach at Temple, here. Chaney is famous for taking chances on kids who aren't academically eligible at first but can work to get there after the first semester. He's had some successes, some failures, but he's doing the right thing. Temple's grad rates may be lower than most, but it's because they've tried to help disadvantaged kids. In fact, Temple's overall student-athlete grad rate is almost 30 percent higher than the general school population.

There was a test floating around in the media a few months ago, given by Jim Harrick Jr. at Georgia in 2001. The final exam for the coaching basketball class had questions like "How many points is a 3-point shot worth?" Everyone got a good laugh out of it -- another question included the line "who will you tribute [sic] your success to" -- but it revealed a truth about the current status of college athletics: get you in, make us some money, get out.

Daniel McQuade is a senior English major from Philadelphia, Pa., and former 34th Street managing editor. Lone Wolf McQuade appears on Thursdays.

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