Big Ten introduces proposal to rule freshmen ineligible for men's basketball, football

soxhop411

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[SIZE=12.0036001205444px]The Big Ten is hoping for support from its member institutions to begin a “national discussion” about ruling freshmen ineligible for football and men’s basketball, according to a document obtained by The Diamondback.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12.0036001205444px]“What I like about the concept of the proposal is it puts right up front the basic issue: Are we basically a quasi-professional activity or primarily an educational activity?” university President Wallace Loh said. “And if you support it, you are basically saying very clearly the No. 1 priority is the education of the students.”[/SIZE]


 


The University Athletic Council is meeting this afternoon to discuss a proposal the Big Ten is titling “A Year of Readiness,” which equates to a mandatory redshirt season to examine “the health of the educational experience.”
“I want to listen to the council,” said Nick Hadley, athletic council chairman and physics professor. “As a faculty member, it’s hard for me not to support something that would increase academic performance.”
The document, which shows football and men’s basketball as the only sports with graduation rates less than 75 percent across the NCAA, states that a push for freshman ineligibility would benefit athletes academically.
Men’s basketball and football players lag behind other sports in terms of academics, according to data provided in the document. Among the 34 sports listed in the Graduation Success Rate data, football and men’s basketball ranked last in the 2004 to 2007 cohort, according to the document. Among the 38 sports listed in the Academic Progress Rate data from 2009 to 2013, those two sports also ranked last.
The proposal examines “the imbalance observed in those two sports” and cites that football and men’s basketball student-athletes account for less than 19 percent of Division I participants, yet they account for more than 80 percent of academic infraction cases.
It also suggests applying current academic eligibility standards for freshman student-athletes to sophomores if the “Year of Readiness” is approved.
An NCAA rule prohibited true freshman from competing in all sports up until 1972, and the decision to make first-year students eligible was financially rooted, according to the document.
The proposal addresses the additional funds necessary to keep athletes on scholarship for the one year of ineligibility and four years of play. It also acknowledges the need to balance scholarship increases for women’s sports.
The document estimates the cost of the additional scholarships at about $94.5 million per year if the “Year of Readiness” program were implemented nationwide, which is less than 10 percent of football and men’s basketball postseason revenue distribution across all Division I programs.
“If they do well because they spend more time, get more academic advising … their freshman year, they’re going to graduate,” Loh said. “And I think it’s worth spending an extra year of financial support to ensure that they graduate.”
According to Forbes, the Big Ten brought in an estimated $318 million in 2014, the most revenue of all conferences nationwide, taking into account income from television deals as well as payouts from football bowl games and the NCAA basketball tournament.
Still, many athletic departments, including this university’s, have experienced economic troubles in recent years. This university's athletic department reported $3.5 million in operating losses in 2014 and cut seven varsity sports teams in 2012 in an attempt to balance its budget and begin to climb out of debt.
On Wednesday, Terrapins men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon said he’s concerned about his players’ academic performance as time-consuming postseason tournaments draw closer.
“This time of year, you’re really worried about [academics] as a coach, making sure your kids don’t get too far behind,” Turgeon said.
Terrapins football coach Randy Edsall, meanwhile, voiced more direct support for such a proposal in August when responding to a question about Damian Prince, a highly touted offensive lineman who redshirted this past season.
“All the freshmen should be redshirted,” Edsall said. “If we're in a true collegiate model that we talk about or people like to talk about, it's hard. It is hard for these kids. School is going to start next week. Now they’ve got the added weight of taking 15 [credits] and getting acclimated in terms of time management, taking these classes and reaching the expectations that we have for them in the classroom.”
http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/article_02376858-b858-11e4-b662-db4b843c100a.html
 

IdiotKicker

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Nov 21, 2005
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This is bullshit window-dressing to try to avoid the inevitability of paying athletes. Why do I say that? Because redshirting everyone doesn't mean shit in terms of actually reducing the amount of time they spend with their team. My sophomore year, I didn't even sniff the field once (not that I should have). Did that mean I saw any reduction in the amount of hours for meetings, practice, or anything else not associated with games? Nope. And that is the stuff that makes up the majority of the time spent with any team.
 
You want to get serious about making academics a priority? Shorten the seasons, shorten post-seasons, and enforce hard caps on the amount of practice hours and associated activities. Otherwise you're not serious about actually doing this to improve academics. This is a last-ditch attempt to try to wrangle out of paying kids for putting in the time, and it's something that is absolute horseshit, in the worst sense of the word.
 
In case you can't tell, I don't like this.
 

SoxJox

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This likely will never fly on a conference basis, if for no other reason than the almost certain disadvantage that would accrue to that conference relative to other conferences who could continue promising a prospective student-athlete that they could play immediately.
 
BTW, if not for the pre-1972 rule, Pete Maravich's records would have been even more unbreakable.  Not to mention introduction of the 3-point line.  But I digress.
 

IdiotKicker

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Why the Big Ten's Plan for Freshman Ineligibility is Disingenous, No Good, and Generally Terrible
http://soshcentral.com/football-central-university/long-form-and-editorial/2015/02/24/why-the-big-tens-plan-for-freshman-ineligibility-is-disingenuous-no-good-and-generally-terrible/
 
 
 
While nominally an attempt to change student behavior, the proposal likely overestimates the effect this will have on freshman athletes, while failing – perhaps even willfully so – to take into account the virtual inevitability of paid college athletes. It raises the question of whether this is a legitimate effort to reform the system, or simply an attempt to paper over well-publicized problems with collegiate athletics in order to keep multi-billion-dollar profits in the hands of administrators and staff, rather than sharing those riches with the players on whose backs they are earned.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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You want to get serious about making academics a priority? Shorten the seasons, shorten post-seasons, and enforce hard caps on the amount of practice hours and associated activities. Otherwise you're not serious about actually doing this to improve academics. This is a last-ditch attempt to try to wrangle out of paying kids for putting in the time, and it's something that is absolute horseshit, in the worst sense of the word.
I agree it's window dressing for a lot of things.

And if the NCAA really wanted to focus on academics, they'd get into regional conferences with much shorter travel times and stop playing games at all hours of the night. And encourage athletes to take real classes and not just classes they can pass (for example, why don't these schools have mandatory financial management classes?) Of course that would mean a lot less money for them.