Another Set Of Standings

By: DJ Elsass

Amidst the giddy anticipation of preseason, as coaches and players moved from the Vegas-lite of Midnight Madness into official practice, from intrasquad runs to the blowouts and mock upsets (Grand Valley State, Findlay) of exhibition games, from rusty jumpers, mistimed cuts, and bad passes to some early semblance of a groove; as fans and commentators peered into their crystal balls, each trying to divine the five months ahead and how their teams of choice will look from the mountaintop of mid-March, the NCAA quietly posted the results of a six-year examination.Easily obscured in the hoopla about great recruiting classes, tournament aspirations, sold out arenas, million dollar broadcast deals, and wins and losses is the fact that all of the above takes place - in theory at least - on the platform of higher education. Of course, we are painfully aware of the many elements that make the relationship between big revenue athletics and higher education a tenuous, often hypocritical one. But at the core, coaches and the institutions they represent have a responsibility to maintain more than the facade of student-athleticism.

And the student-athletes in question, in exchange for a free education and all the perks of being cast in what are essentially multi-million dollar traveling road shows, also bear a responsibility. Despite all the fawning, boosterism, and hanging on that many of these athletes have been poisoned by from their earliest days of team basketball, they need to maintain purchase on the realities beyond the game.

This is no small order, and many - even those with finite basketball upsides - get buried in the snow of hype and pipe dreams. Against all the predation by coaches, agents, and most dangerously by friends and family, the athlete fortunate enough to land a full college ride had better be looking out for his own education. They certainly can’t bank on the stewardship or good counsel of a college coach, too many of whom are in the business of self-aggrandizement and basketball glory-hunting to consider the educational component of their job more than a nagging annoyance.

Fortunately, the NCAA’s 2007 Graduation Success Rates (GSR) suggest many of the Big Ten basketball programs are doing a fairly commendable job of upholding their role as educators of young men, most of whom will find their post-collegiate playing days null or certainly not career-worthy.

Cited below are the GSR’s for the basketball programs of the eleven member schools of the Big Ten against the national average for all men’s basketball programs. I’ve also included the program rates from Oklahoma, Duke and North Carolina; both as salient points of comparison, and further rebuttal to the persistent mythology of Coach K’s Duke as a peerless model of student-athleticism.

The rates below measure six-year graduation rates for athletes matriculating from 1997-2000. The GSR metric differs from the previously used model in that it does not penalize programs for outbound transfers or those non-graduates that leave for other reasons (i.e. early NBA draftees) as long as the student-athletes in question leave in good academic standing.

2007 Big Ten Basketball Graduation Success Rates (GSR)

  1. Purdue 91%
    A credit to Gene Keady as a program leader who was interested in more than mere wins. Keady took his role as an educator and caretaker of his young men as a job requirement.
  2. Northwestern 89%
    Impressive number given the academic rigor. But this is a school that offers minimal (if any) lenience with its admittance policy. Northwestern athletes have to possess the academic chops or they aren’t offered scholarships. As the legend goes when Tommy Amaker interviewed in 1995 for the coaching position here he gave then athletic director Rick Taylor the grades and test scores of two hypothetical recruits and asked if they’d get into Northwestern. When Taylor said no, Amaker said you’ve just denied admittance to Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley. Amaker decided he wasn’t up to the challenge in Evanston and returned to Coach K’s corporate park in Durham.
  3. Illinois 80%
    Another Gene Keady disciple posting numbers that would make his mentor proud.
  4. Indiana 78%
    Say what you will about Mike Davis as a basketball strategist, he did run a clean, respectable program in the tradition of his predecessor, Bob Knight, who has a career graduation rate of approximately 98% and in forty-two years has coached only 4 players, total, who have failed to get degrees.
  5. Michigan State 67%
    Not unimpeachable numbers, but no one is going to accuse Tom Izzo of being a program leader who doesn’t have his players best interests in mind. While his program clearly takes risks on the academic backgrounds of some of his recruits, instances of news worthy disciplinary issues and character problems within the Spartan family are rare. That said, Izzo can and should do better.
  6. Wisconsin 67%
    Bo Ryan takes gambles on kids and he’s had some player behavioral issues over the years, but the overall scent of his program is still that of a freshly bathed badger, not strawberry flavored but far from mange.
  7. Penn State 64%
    Penn State has historically struggled to lure large numbers of Big Ten caliber studs to Happy Valley, so perhaps they roll the dice academically more than they should.
  8. Michigan 57%
    Tommy Amaker had too much integrity, too high a standard of student-athleticism to succeed on the big-time collegiate level? This number suggests, like the Duke fable that continues to give his career legs, otherwise.
  9. Iowa 47%
    Yet another strike against Steve Alford and the kind of program he administers.
  10. Ohio State 40%
    Maybe Thad Matta will turn this number around with as much vigor as he recruits and abuses Trident.
  11. Minnesota 38%
    Embarassing. Dan Monson may not have dipped into outright malfeasance like Clem Haskins, but the university can’t be proud of this statistic. Hopefully Tubby Smith will get this under control.
  • National Average For Men’s Basketball 61%
  • North Carolina 86%
    There are likely some ugly truths at the core of this number, but until they are exposed by Nader’s Raiders, not too shabby.
  • Duke 67%
    Hardly an apocalyptic percentage, but also not up to the harp and lyre accompanied gospel about Duke’s players being exemplars of books and ball.
  • Oklahoma 46%
    A poor but unsurprising reflection of the Kelvin Sampson tenure there and a preview of things to come in Bloomington.

Basket Weaving 101: The Rise Of Wicker

Embedded in the numbers above is the fact that most of the programs above ostensibly go to great lengths to ensure their athletes are put in a position to succeed academically for nothing else but to maintain eligibility. Whether the support comes in the form of lighter in-season academic loads, extensive above-board tutoring or rule-skirting, Clem Haskins-style assistance is - short of a sting operation - hard to prove.

One method of inquiry that is available is a quick look at majors of study for the players currently on Big Ten rosters. Looking at the majors as a representative sampling of a program’s academic profile, while far from the full story, does get at that old chestnut about athletes and basket weaving.

Using program media guides, we found all of the programs valued academics enough to at least list their players’ majors. And a preponderance didn’t seem to be hiding its athletes in dubious academic disciplines. One of the possible exceptions was Illinois, which currently has eight members of its sixteen-man roster in a major called Sports Management. While this is no doubt a legitimate field of study, the fact that half the team shares it does beg questions.

A similar imbalance occurs at Michigan, which currently has seven of its fourteen players in Sports Management & Kinesiology. The Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Management major shared by three Nittany Lions and the Organizational Leadership & Supervision major of four Boilermakers also merit skepticism, but until we launch our Seymour Hersh-sponsored Operation GradeHawk, no formal accusations will be presented.

For a full accounting of Division I GSR’s please refer to the link here.

DJ Elsass is one of the rakes behind Hoopraker, a Big Ten basketball webzine located at hoopraker.com.

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