Dangerous Minds at Northridge

Way to go, Northridge athletic department. Mediocrity be thy nickname.

Don’t bother monogramming your gear with the letter “M” because people surely won’t take it to mean Matadors.

It would be the scarlet letter in sports wear.

What you’ve come up with now, this business of lowering academic standards for freshman and sophomore athletes, is weak.

Your new policy calls for freshmen to maintain at least a 1.6 grade-point average in their first semester, no lower than a 1.85 by the start of their sophomore year, and they can keep their uniforms.

The department’s 2.0 GPA across the board is gone, probably never to return.

In the past, Northridge students who fell below a 2.0 GPA and went on probation still were considered in good academic standing, according to a CSUN official. Athletes were not. They lost their eligibility based on NCAA guidelines that penalize student-athletes not in good academic standing.

Now, eligibility at Northridge will be determined on a sliding scale that combines university-wide minimum GPA’s and those prescribed by the Big Sky Conference.

This was done, you say, so that athletes no longer have to maintain academic standards higher than the general student population.

The obvious question is, what’s wrong with higher academic standards? What’s so dreadful about rising above the mundane? Should an institution of higher learning cut slack for its students? Or rather, shouldn’t its charge be to deliver a message that complacency isn’t a prudent policy?

By changing academic requirements, Northridge is telling its athletes that ineptitude is fine, acceptable, almost inevitable.

We’re talking about a high “D,” for heaven’s sake. Some folks might not need to so much as open a textbook for that.

In the real world, coaches don’t redesign the playbook for a quarterback who can’t hit an open receiver. They show that quarterback the bench.

In the real world, bosses don’t tolerate inefficient employees who might suck the lifeblood right out of their companies.

In the real world, responsible students aim high and seldom settle for less.

Maybe Northridge is not the real world. Maybe the Big Sky Conference, which requires such minimal standards from its athletes, is not the real world, either.

In fact, you know Northridge is in another galaxy when you hear some people there talk.

Take Jeff Kearin, an assistant football coach who monitors the academic progress of the players. Kearin likes the new rule. He wasn’t thrilled with the old one because, in his view, athletes were being treated unfairly.

“Athletes are already held to a higher standard in every area of college life,” he said Tuesday, when the school announced the change. “They can’t work. They have to graduate in a certain time. Whereas another kid just has to pass their units.”

Whoa, coach. Just pass their units?

Many of those kids flip burgers or stock supermarket shelves to pay for their education while athletes are just practicing or playing games.

Yet, most somehow find time to study and keep GPA’s considerably higher than 2.0.

That’s the kind of student that men’s soccer Coach Marwan Ass’ad believes everyone should be, could be, if they applied themselves. The way he sees it, those who can’t keep a “C” average have learning disabilities or don’t work hard enough.

The second reason mentioned by Ass’ad is one that new men’s basketball Coach Bobby Braswell has instituted for his players. Anyone on the team whose GPA drops below 2.8 is required to attend a study table five nights per week, two hours per session. There are no shortcuts in Braswell’s program.

Maybe Braswell’s rebuilding effort won’t take hold right away and the basketball team still will be mediocre on the court. At least any failures won’t carry over to the classroom.

Northridge athletes who allow themselves the crutch of their new academic standards might come to regret it.