The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Murphy addresses academics in latest NCAA critique
Four months after issuing his first critique of the NCAA, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy rolled out the second installment in his report on the state of college athletics,
Titled “Madness Inc.: How colleges keep athletes on the field and out of the classroom,” the 15page report released Thursday focuses on the academic side of college sports. Specifically, how the NCAA often fails to deliver on the promise of an education and
college degree for athletes.
“The lack of academic integrity across college sports may be the most insidious piece of a broken system,” the report says. “The only significant form of compensation many athletes will receive from their efforts is a scholarship. These scholarships are, of course, very valuable, and at every chance, the NCAA claims these scholarships are more than enough to compensate athletes for the fulltime hours they devote to their sports. Yet, the NCAA and colleges look the other way as athletic programs — especially in revenuegenerating sports — routinely defraud athletes of the tremendous value those scholarships hold.”
Murphy’s first report called for studentathletes to be compensated beyond the scholarship, citing the enormous revenue stream that benefits conferences, schools and coaches.
This report — like the first report — does not offer a specific road map to a solution, but Murphy does demand the NCAA and member institutions “take immediate and significant steps to restore the promise and opportunity of a college education to athletes who have been denied that for too long.”
Murphy takes the NCAA to task for boasting of “recordbreaking graduation rates for college athletes.” The NCAA, according to Murphy’s report, said nearly 21,000 Division I athletes graduated at an 88 percent
rate last year.
“Unfortunately, these numbers are both incomplete and misleading,” the report says.
Murphy cites the NCAA’s use of the Graduation Success Rate (GSR), which was instituted in 2002. The GSR excludes athletes who leave or transfer out of a program prior to graduation but are in “good academic standing.”
“Wherever the athlete transfers to then becomes responsible for their academic success and it reflects upon their GSR,” the report says. “While this seems fair, the numbers on transfers paint a startling story. For the most recent cohort used to calculate GSR, the NCAA reported 95,782 athletes who entered college from 20062009. Within this group, the NCAA reported 23,112 athletes who transferred out of their programs in good academic standing, thus labeled ‘Left Eligible.’
“However, the NCAA only reported 8,165 athletes who transferred into programs, meaning there were nearly 15,000 — or twothirds of all ‘Left Eligible’ athletes and 16 percent of all athletes — who went missing in the data. These athletes did not graduate, but the numbers account for them as if they did — painting an inflated picture of academic success.”
Citing data from the College Research Institute, the reports states that black football and basketball players at socalled Power Five schools have graduation rates 22 and 35 percent lower than their peers.
And the report points to the 2015 NCAA men’s bas
ketball tournament, which featured schools such as Cincinnati and Indiana reporting graduation rates of 8 percent.
“Regardless of how you look at the numbers, there is a crisis on college campuses,” the report states. “While the NCAA may try to find ways to sugarcoat the data, far too many athletes are missing at graduation ceremonies.”
Murphy also focuses on academic fraud scandals, specifically those involving Syracuse and North Carolina. According to the report, there have been 40 academic fraud cases involving NCAA schools since 1990. “These scandals also speak to the tension between athletics and academics that routinely undermines academic integrity and with it, the educational opportunities colleges purport to provide,” the report says.
Another section, titled “Academic Fraud 102: Majoring in football,” deals with the amount of time required to be a fulltime student and a Division I athlete. An NCAA study cited finds athletes average more than 40 hours a week on athletic commitments during their season, although the Pac12 Conference placed the number at more than 50 hours per week.
“The tension between the ‘student’ and the ‘athlete’ has become increasingly unbalanced, as the latter takes precedence amid the high stakes of college sports,” Murphy’s report says. “As a result, athletes promised an education implicit in their scholarships too often find that
promise hollow, no matter the choices they make.”
The report, which relies on studies and media accounts, concludes with a call for “complete transparency into the academic data of college athletes while they’re on campus and their economic outcomes once they leave.”
Murphy also demands that an athlete’s educational opportunity be protected from and prioritized over the demands of a sport, and that schools guarantee scholarships for four years, rather than offering scholarships on a yeartoyear basis.
There is also a call for schools to “maintain a reasonable balance between the hours athletes commit to athletics and academics,” and for accountability on programs that commit academic fraud.
“Change means giving athletes a fair shot at an education,” Murphy writes. “It means finally living up to the promise every institution makes to an athlete when it extends a scholarship offer. It means actually practicing the values these higher education institutions espouse.”
Murphy’s upcoming reports: examining the longterm health and wellbeing consequences that college athletes face and the lack of comprehensive healthcare offered to them, looking at why the NCAA fails to enact meaningful reforms, and at how the litany of issues within the industry can be addressed.
paul.doyle @hearstmediact.com; @pauldoyle1