South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier is hopping mad over the decision to deny admission to two recruits who were above the NCAA minimum standard for eligibility, but did not meet the University's requirements. Said Spurrier:
"As long as I'm the coach here, we're going to take guys that qualify. If not, then I'm going to have to go somewhere else because I can't tell a young man to come to school here, he qualifies, and not do that. And we did that this year."
In a sane world, the response to this ought to be "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out," but, of course, this is not a sane world. The University is going to review its admissions procedures, and Spurrier also said "The president has already told me how we're going to change how we do admissions here," so you can guess the outcome of the review.
On some level, the most surprising thing about the whole episode is the discovery that South Carolina's admissions standards are higher than the NCAA minimum, but then, I'm an inveterate Yankee. Anyway, good for them, while it lasts.
I happen to have attended the University which was the previous home of USC's president Dr. Sorenson and my mother is good friends with Mrs. Sorenson. I find it hard to believe that Dr. Sorenson will be in favor of lowering the standards for admission for athletes across the board. The main problem I see with the situation of these two students is that they didn't find out until mid-summer, as they were going through a special admissions process because they didn't meet the standard requirements. I have no problem with special requirements for special cases (even if most of the special cases are high profile atheletes) and I think they should be notified of acceptance/rejection in a timely manner, particularly since scholarships may be at stake. (Does signing a National Letter of Intent rule out scholarships from another school if one isn't accepted?) But excepting the school to simply admit everyone the coach says to? Puh-lees!
This is one of those stories that bring up the question, for me anyway, of whether we should abandon the "scholar-athelete" charade for big money college teams or make them be scholars first and foremost. Here in Alabama college football is the state religon. And...I'll stop now before I really get on my soapbox.
Back in 1986 Stanford's basketball coach, Tom Davis, more or less said that Stanford had to admit a particular recruit, Chris Munk, or he would leave. The admissions office said no, the coach left. Some of the alumni complained but I don't think the admissions office got any pressure from the President's office.
In the football recruiting of my previous university, all recruits are first screened by the admissions office to see if they are eligible for admissions. The football coach/university is then notified if the student is eligible or not to attend the university. The coach then offers the student a scholarship based (1), of course, on their athletic ability, and (2) on their academic standing from the admissions office. I assumed this process happened at all schools but apparently not. This avoids any of the situations described at South Carolina.
P - That sounds like a reasonable way to handle it. All universities should do it that way; I doubt UA does.
When it comes to governance decisions that have any influence on big time college athletics, head coaches/athletic directors have more power than presidents. Their relative salaries reflect this power imbalance. Alumni and trustees care *a lot* more about winning football games than they do about academic standards.