Freshman Eligibility Is Slated for NCAA Agenda

For the first time since 1973, the issue of freshman eligibility for big-time college football and basketball will be on the agenda at an NCAA convention. Rules restricting freshman participation were abolished in 1973.

Delegates to the 1987 convention in San Diego in January will be asked to support the principle of freshman ineligibility in a resolution written by Christopher Fordham, chancellor of the University of North Carolina, and cosponsored by Maryland, Miami (Fla.), UCLA, North Carolina State and Minnesota.

Although passage of the resolution would not change the rule this year, such a change would be considered at the 1988 convention. First, the NCAA Presidents Commission also would have to draft a proposal.

“It’s a very important issue in terms of reestablishing the premise of academics in a collegiate enviroment in which the colleges and universities have been captured by a society obsessed with sports,” Fordham said. “It’s up to the colleges to assert academics. A student should go to class and learn where the library is before he plays before 50,000 people in the stadium.”

Maryland Chancellor John B. Slaughter, chairman of the presidents commission, called the inclusion of the resolution on the 152-item convention agenda “an important step. I’m very pleased we’re going to be able to put it before the convention even in this form.”

The idea has been discussed for some time among NCAA delegates, but financial considerations have overridden academic concerns among schools that play Division I-A football and Division I men’s basketball.

There have been fears that by making freshmen ineligible and giving them four years eligibility, the purpose of Proposition 48 would be undermined. The resolution, however, seeks “the retention of academic standards and procedures that will encourage and stimulate academic performance in secondary schools.”

Proposition 48, passed in 1983 and effective this academic year, requires a 700 SAT score and a C average in a core curriculum of 11 academic high school courses to be eligible as a freshman.