Virginia Tech Athletes Must Make the Grade for New President

James McComas, the new Virginia Tech president, wasted little time telling his athletic department that, unlike his predecessor, he will not intervene on behalf of athletes who can’t meet the school’s admission standards.

“I don’t tinker with admissions,” McComas said, shortly after being named as the successor to William E. Lavery as president of Virginia’s largest college. “I think people (will) learn very soon that there are certain things that are not negotiable.”

Virginia Tech’s football and basketball teams are paying the price for violating a number of National Collegiate Athletic Assn. regulations, including grade padding.

An immediate effect of McComas’ pledge could be that a star basketball player will not be allowed to enroll at Virginia Tech.

Basketball coach Frankie Allen successfully recruited James Rivers, South Carolina’s high school athlete of the year, but Rivers’ academic record is far less impressive than his athletic prowess.

Even if Rivers is admitted to Tech, his combined score of 680 on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) is 20 points below the minimum established by the NCAA for freshman eligibility.

Although Virginia Tech technically has no minimum score for admission, the median score of the 9,336 students offered admission to next fall’s freshman class, selected from a pool of 15,157 applicants, is 1,135.

Lavery acknowledges that during his nearly 13 years as president of Virginia Tech, he helped some athletes be admitted who initially had been rejected by the admissions office.

McComas emphasized he is not opposed to sports. “I think they have a significant role to play” at the university, he said. He said sports events uniquely “create a sense of community” on campus. Further, he said, winning is important because it offers a financial advantage. “It costs to have a non-competitive program; you’ve got certain fixed costs, heating, cooling, and scholarships,” he said. “So if you have a losing team, consistently, you have to use resources from other parts of the university to support that program.”

Allen was appointed interim coach last fall, after serving 11 years as an assistant to Charles Moir, who quit as a result of the scandals. Allen said he agrees with McComas’ goals.

“Our first victories must be in the classroom,” he said, noting that he has instituted a mandatory study hall and a daily “march to breakfast.”

“That’s half the battle,” said Allen. “You can’t get to class if you don’t get out of bed.”

Allen said that as a result of both in-house and NCAA investigations, it is “paramount that the graduation rate must climb.”

“Those guys realize it’s important to me,” Allen said. “It didn’t happen overnight. There was early resistance to tutors and study hall. I had to struggle to get discipline.” To do that, he took away playing time from players who didn’t cooperate. “You can discipline all you want, but they’ve got to accept it.”

In midseason, Allen extended the study halls to road trips, asking Kimble (Jay) Reynolds, the president of the class of 1988, to accompany the team and serve as a tutor.

Reynolds took the volunteer job just before the Georgetown game, which provided Tech with its biggest win of the year. Reynolds was later reimbursed and will return next year to again work with the team.

Were some of the players in trouble academically, Reynolds was asked during an interview here last week.

“Oh, yeah,” he said with a grin.

“It was a new concept, like working up from ground zero,” Reynolds said of the crackdown on studies, which included studying on airplanes, in hotel lobbies and airport lounges. His instruction included such basics as “bring your books,” he said.

“Academics hadn’t been stressed as that important; it was not their first priority,” Reynolds said. “They were used to just playing basketball, particularly the older guys. No one bothered them about anything else.”

Reynolds said the drills were “not just to look good on paper. They were for real. I stayed on their case, drove them hard. It had to come, sooner or later, especially because of the controversy and investigation.

“They all knew athletes who had flunked out, and are working a little job back home. They know that ultimately it will benefit them as individuals.”

After a few trips, Reynolds realized that “their schedule is so demanding. It’s not the glamorous life.”

Reynolds, who knew two or three of the players, urged them to plan ahead, so they could make the most of their time on the road.

“They definitely miss a lot of class. I didn’t realize how much,” said Reynolds, a marketing major whose grades suffered while traveling with the team. However, he was taking a full 18 credit hours; nearly all players carry only 12 hours during the season.

“One or two of them were here under the false impression that they could do well, but they didn’t really have the foundation,” Reynolds said. “Those concepts should have been taken care of in high school.”

He said that although the players didn’t admit it at first, he knows they’re happy about the enforced study halls, because after the end of the season, they voluntarily continued to come to him for help.

Wally Lancaster, the Hokies’ second-leading scorer and a graduate of Coolidge High School in the District of Columbia, said, “Most guys took to it (the study halls). That’s the key, a person has to be dedicated. Coach Allen can’t do it all.”

Another innovation was the appointment of Jerry W. Via, an assistant professor of biology, as the full-time academic adviser for athletes. The position, which is attached to the provost’s office, was recommended in last summer’s blueprint for excellence report, the in-house investigation of Tech athletics.

Via, 39, an ornithologist whose sports experience was limited to being “the local expert on bird distribution,” said he “took a lot of stereotypes” to the job. But now he’s enthusiastic about his assignment, which he views as helping “students caught in the middle.”

“We can’t study for them or take their tests,” but he and a part-time assistant try to “outline a strategy for saving time, while boosting their self-image. Very few of them have an academic image of themselves.”

Via is available to work with all of Tech’s 480 scholarship athletes, but most of his time is spent with “the revenue sports.”

He has been “pleasantly surprised at the acceptance” he received from the student-athletes, a term he said he does not consider an oxymoron.

Despite the reforms, Via admits there is “a lot of pressure for a winning season. Unfortunately, what got us in trouble was trying to beat the system.”

Although he had concerns about “how much will I be pulled by coach,” he said, “I don’t feel compromised from actions of a coach. They know where the line is.”

Via’s office is in the Coliseum, where he oversees a nightly two-hour study hall for all athletes whose grade-point average slips below 2.0. At any given time, Via said, about 40% of the football and basketball players are below the required minimum, which is 2.0 for juniors and seniors, 1.75 for sophomores and 1.5 for freshmen.

“At first, there was lots of moaning and groaning,” said Via, who has become sympathetic because “their personal time is almost non-existent.”

The names of those who don’t show up for the full 10 hours are reported to their respective coaches, who typically order punishment such as running laps at 6:30 in the morning, Via said.

While some who show up “can sit there with a book open and not do a thing,” Via said, “at least they’re there. A college education is not for everybody. But some of those who initially resisted have become the most ardent fans, and even come around when it’s not required.

“(The) biggest problem with all students is class attendance. It’s very disheartening, though I don’t know if it’s any worse with athletes.”

Via said he is compiling lists of former athletes who dropped out, and will encourage them to come back. One of them, Bruce Smith, who plays professional football for the Buffalo Bills, was on campus last week taking a biology review session.

“But he sends a dichotomous message with his Mercedes and jewelry,” said Via, who points out the chances of a college athlete making the pros is infinitesimal. “I think it’s about 1 in 50,000 in football and 1 in 80,000 in basketball.”

Nonetheless, Allen said he plans to ask the university’s five-member Admissions Appeal Committee to grant a waiver to Rivers. The committee is empowered to admit up to one-half of 1 percent of the freshman class, or about 20 students out of 4,000, for extenuating circumstances.

Although the waivers are not limited to athletes, the committee was established last year, as part of the aftermath of investigations that uncovered grade-padding and other infractions among scholarship athletes.

A study also found that scholarship recipients in men’s football and basketball had average SAT scores more than 400 points lower than other students.

Allen said he believes there are extenuating circumstances involving Rivers, and that it is not just that he stands 6 feet 6 1/2 inches tall and weighs 210 pounds.

Allen said Rivers is “a minority from rural South Carolina” who comes from a family that has a record of success in college, including five older siblings who graduated from college. At Moncks Corner (S.C.) High School, Rivers compiled a 2.8 (C+) grade-point average that included three years of mathematics and two years of a foreign language.

The loss of Rivers would be especially damaging to the basketball team because Allen had only three scholarships to offer for next year. The others went to Anthony Carr, 6-7 1/2, 240, from Maret School in the District of Columbia, and Michael Holland from Roanoke, Va.