NCAA CONVENTION NOTES : Strict Standards May Be Trend

At USC, the Trojan football factory has added a new dimension in recent years--stricter academic requirements.

Long regarded as one of the West Coast’s top football schools, USC adopted a policy of not accepting so-called nonqualifiers or partial qualifiers under Proposition 48, which sets the NCAA’s academic standards for freshmen. Under Prop. 48, schools are allowed to accept academically deficient athletes, but those athletes lose one year of eligibility while concentrating on their studies.

Because of USC’s tough stance on Prop. 48, which requires incoming freshmen to score at least 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or 17 on the American College Testing standardized test, some highly recruited players never made it to the school.

Someday, however, the rest of the country’s Division I schools may go the way of USC and other institutions that refuse to accept Prop. 48 athletes. At least, the Southeastern Conference hopes so.

Conference officials have offered legislation that, in effect, would eliminate Prop. 48 admissions, a proposal that is scheduled for vote either today or Thursday at the NCAA’s annual convention in Anaheim.

Although it is doubtful the proposal will pass, USC Athletic Director Mike McGee said Tuesday the current trend in athletic-academic reform is to reduce Prop. 48 admissions.

The Southeastern Conference has phased out nonqualifiers and partial qualifiers and will no longer accept any, beginning with the next academic year.

The Southwest Conference will adopt a similar policy next year, according to Texas Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds.

The Pacific 10 Conference does not have a formal policy, but administrators endorse the move, said Dutch Baughman, Oregon State’s athletic director. Still, Pac-10 officials are opposed to the SEC proposal because it has a three-year transitional period before taking effect.

When and if the NCAA adopts such a policy, schools who relied on Prop. 48 athletes could be greatly affected, McGee said. But he added that the recent push toward stricter academic requirements, such as increased grade-point average standards, will have greater influence in reducing Prop. 48 athletes.

Still, SEC officials say they are trying to close what some perceive as a loophole in the reform movement.

“It basically forces an individual to attend junior college,” said Joseph S. Boland, faculty representative at Auburn. “The idea is to force athletes to go the same route as all other students (who fail entrance requirements).”

Some might be surprised to find southern schools such as scandal-ridden Auburn taking the lead in eliminating Prop. 48. But Boland, whose school is being investigated for alleged rules violations in men’s basketball and tennis, said administrators have concluded that they needed to accept only those who have a reasonable chance to graduate.

They are doing this even at the risk of losing a competitive edge in football, which at Auburn also is embroiled in controversy over a former player’s charge of cash payments.

“It has been our experience that the ones who are academically at risk are the ones you have the most problems with--academically and disciplinary,” Boland said.

Other SEC officials said they wanted to send a clear message to high school students interested in sports--be academically prepared or plan to spend two years at a community college.

McGee believes that point is made with the proposed legislation from the Presidents Commission that would increase the GPA minimum from 2.0 to 2.5, and the core course minimum from 11 to 13. USC, which allows some special admissions of academically-at-risk students, requires a minimum of 15 core courses.

“They come better prepared with the more core courses they take,” McGee said.

And as a result, he implied, they have a better chance to graduate.

NCAA Notes

The strange case of Dexter Cambridge, the Texas basketball player who lost his eligibility for having accepted a $7,000 payment from a junior college booster in 1990, veered in yet another direction Tuesday.

The NCAA Council Division I subcommittee on eligibility appeals, convened to hear Cambridge’s case, ruled that the matter should be reconsidered by the NCAA Eligibility Committee if Texas can provide information corroborating the booster’s claim that $2,400 of the payment was for work Cambridge had performed.

The Eligibility Committee ruled Cambridge, a senior, ineligible after he had played in four games for the Longhorns this season. Original testimony had indicated that only $1,500 of the money was payment for work that Cambridge had done while attending Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Tex.

Members of the football bowl alliance have made a proposal to the Atlantic Coast Conference that may keep the coalition afloat in the face of a $4.3-million offer from the Blockbuster Bowl to match the champions of the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big East Conference.

The alliance has told the ACC that the conference would not be required to send a team to the Fiesta Bowl unless the rankings produced a No. 1 vs. No. 2 bowl matchup of an ACC team against either a team from the Big East or Notre Dame. In all other instances, the ACC champion would play in either the Orange, Sugar or Cotton bowls against conference champions committed to those bowls.