COMMENTARY : This Won’t Put More Athletes in Classroom

Give Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., the Rhodes Scholar, a gold star. He is sponsoring a bill that would force colleges to make public their graduation rates for athletes.

Terrific.

Now the best basketball players and football players in the land will perhaps get a list of those colleges that demand the least effort in the classroom. “Don’t bother me with with no sociology papers. I have to work on my jump shot.”

America’s athletes have needed full-disclosure information before signing a letter of intent. That’s what they really want, isn’t it?

Bradley’s bill is a nice, elitist idea -- but meaningless. “It’s a nice idea; it’s as good as outlawing drugs,” said Wil Klein, who has seen both sides of the question. “They will have a hard time making it work. Kids care more about the coach’s winning record and how many times they’ll be on national TV.”

Better Bradley should work to get freshman eligibility stopped. Better the high school coach who cares should get more help from Bradley’s good intentions.

The coach, the parents and their community can make a difference. The coach who wants to help his kids already has that kind of information. If kids already are focused and get guidance from parents, they don’t need it. A few in the middle would be helped.

Klein, who recently retired as principal of Evander Childs High School in New York , previously coached basketball at Columbus High School in the city and is a partner in Five-Star Basketball Camp, where the elite come to showcase their games. Klein said, “The really good players will say: ‘What’s more interesting to me, is will you give me a car? Forget the graduation rate.”’

That’s exaggerated for most prospects, but it is realistic. There is some exploitation and some larceny in the hearts on both sides.

At the Nike Betterment and Career Development Basketball Camp at Princeton, 124 players were tested, and 45 were at or below fifth-grade reading level and 75 at or below the eighth-grade level. These were the top college prospects, passed along before colleges laid an eye on them.

In 1988, 30 of the 800 NCAA schools had graduation rates of 5 percent or less for basketball players. The NCAA says the 48-percent graduation rate for athletes is actually a fraction of a point better than for student bodies as a whole, but that rate includes soccer and gymnastics in addition to the major sports.

The graduation rate for college seniors is more than 90 percent. The NBA and NFL show that fewer than a third of their players earned a degree, and almost all of them played out their four years of eligibility.

A General Accounting Office study recently showed that of 97 schools at the highest level in college basketball, not more than one in five basketball players ever graduates.

Maybe having the schools identified would embarrass boards of trustees into pressuring chancellors to watch more closely. It is a dim picture.

“I know certain colleges will take a football player, give him a tutor to go to class with him for each subject,” said Shelly Spiegelman, assistant principal and athletic director at Boys and Girls High School in New York. “They’ve no more made that player college material than taking a stone out of the street and teaching it to swim.”

A few years ago, two young men used up their eligibility at a California school and then sued the school for not giving them an education. One of them willingly had accepted credit for courses given in Los Angeles while he was spending the summer in Georgia.

“Kids don’t care about certain things; they just want to play ball,” said Hank Williams, Malverne athletic director and a former basketball coach. “We as educators have to take a hand.”

But there’s big money for the schools and for the kids -- those few who don’t have their hearts broken.

At a recent basketball meeting at Boys and Girls, coach Paul Brown recited some odds: 400,000 high school players, 40,000 college players, 326 in the NBA. The rest have to show they can do something in the marketplace.

The recruiter always can rationalize low graduation figures, saying “That was why we got rid of the previous coach,” or, “We have this new counseling program.”

“The recruiter always paints a rosy picture,” Brown said. “A lot of these kids have one parent at home; maybe they’re supporting themselves. Parents are not up on recruiting; you have to be a little sophisticated.”

Magic Johnson recently accepted an honorary degree from Rust College in Mississippi, telling incoming students: “I don’t want you to be the next Magic Johnson. I want you to be the next lawyer, doctor, teacher. We don’t need more athletes. We need more black professionals. They make the difference.”

“The problem is that when the black kid turns on the TV, what he sees is Magic,” Williams said. “Magic can say that, but unless it’s reinforced by the parents and maybe the coach, it becomes: ‘Yeah, Magic, right. But we’re going to be like you.’ ”

Williams plays his part. “We didn’t have a school eligibility rule,” he said. “We do now. Pass or don’t play. All of your subjects.”

He won two state championships and sent James Solters and Andre Hawkins on to college ball and college degrees. Solters went to Penn. Maybe he could have played at a higher level, but the coach urged him to go to the Ivy League before Solters even knew what the Ivy League was. Solters is coming back as varsity coach for Williams.

“The Malverne kid is no different in the sense that he wants to play,” Williams said. “Andre Hawkins said, ‘Coach, I want to play.’ ” They checked on Villanova’s high graduation rate and Hawkins was told he could start in time. Hawkins told Williams: “Coach, I want to play.” Jim Boeheim said Hawkins could play as a freshman at Syracuse.

“I had no problem with Syracuse,” Williams said. “Andre’s mother, Mrs. Durham, asked, ‘Hank, is he going to get a degree?’ She lived to see it.

“Andre, he still wanted to play.”

Hank Williams did his job. Like the iceberg, the greatest part was unseen. That kind of guidance doesn’t come from a Bill in Congress.