Thompson Criticizes NCAA Reforms

Georgetown University basketball coach John Thompson and athletic director Frank Rienzo Friday criticized the NCAA for instituting reforms that they believe will lead intercollegiate athletics into mediocrity.

Thompson was particularly harsh on the NCAA Presidents Commission, a 44-member group created in 1984 to spur reform, and Rienzo called for a change in the NCAA structure, suggesting that each sport rule itself under an Olympic-style umbrella group. He said current attempts by the Presidents Commission “to create a level playing field” -- for example, by limiting all sports to 20 hours of activity a week -- will homogenize college sports. Cheaters will still cheat, even in non-revenue sports, Rienzo said, and honorable programs would be unfairly penalized.

During a luncheon with editors and reporters of The Washington Post, Thompson said, “People are dealing with perceptions. Intercollegiate athletics has a terrible perception. They’re voting in relation to how it is perceived by the public as opposed to whether it is functional and correct. The Presidents Commission is getting involved, and they’re intimidating everybody.

“They probably know least about what is going on, obviously, or we wouldn’t have gotten to the state that it’s in now. Now they’ll jump in and make amazing and dramatic changes ... They want to send a signal to the public that they’re cleaning this dirty thing up.”

For example, Thompson cited the last NCAA convention’s decision to place a 20-hour per week limit on athletes for practice, meetings and games. The presidents “say that the kid is with the coach too much. The kid is in the gymnasium too much. But what has been done to refunnel that time and put that kid in the classroom? Absolutely nothing. A drug addict in Washington, D.C., has more availability to my kids than I do based on NCAA legislation.”

Another example, criticized by Thompson and other Georgetown officials since its inception, is Proposition 48, the rule adopted in 1983 and implemented in 1986 setting minimum standards for first-year eligibility. Among the standards is a 700 cutoff (out of 1,600) on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

At the time Proposition 48 was passed, NCAA officials promised to look at data after five years and make adjustments if necessary. This summer, the academic requirements committee, after reviewing the research, made two recommendations that used sliding scales; neither recommendation had the 700 cutoff as an absolute minimum. But the Presidents Commission stayed with the 700 floor (but has proposed an increase in core courses and grade-point average).

“The Educational Testing Service has stated that the SATs are used incorrectly,” Thompson said. College administrators “continue to use it incorrectly because they’re afraid. Now the public perceives that we are exploiting these athletes. ... For some kids who participate, 700 is a joke. It’s entirely too low. But you cannot say across the board that we’re going to take one score.”

Thompson and Rienzo emphasized a need for presidents and athletic directors to control their own programs. “Certainly I want standards, but I want those standards to be evaluated by academicians, not by a universal standard,” Thompson said. “There is no such thing as a ‘normal student.’ ... The problem is you don’t have people ... in institutions to make the decisions they were hired to make.”

Other than creating a sport-by-sport system of governance, neither Thompson nor Rienzo said they had an alternative to offer. “But I certainly do want the right to have my educational creativity,” Thompson said. The academic rules, he said, won’t work in today’s crime-ridden society. “How are you going to scare some kid into learning who isn’t afraid of death?” he asked.

Thompson, who grew up in a Northeast Washington public-housing project, said school systems have de-emphasized physical education. “We have given up things kids are interested in; instead, we hire consultants to tell us what kids are interested in ... It was the P.E. teacher and the coach who made me have an appreciation for education.”

Rienzo said a sport-by-sport federated approach to college sports will allow schools with national, regional or local goals in those sports to abide by common rules and desire for level of competition. “The idea of a College Football Association was not wrong,” he said. “It was the way they tried to influence other sports.”

In response to Thompson’s criticism of the Presidents Commission, GW president Steve Trachtenberg, chairman of its nominating committee, said, “John Thompson’s surely entitled to be critical of the Presidents Commission. He should deliver his observations to the Commission ... The fact is the status quo is perceived as unacceptable. So we’re going to have some change.”