No Good Sports on Knight Commission

The problem with reports is that people who write them don’t have to implement them.

On Tuesday, the day before an NBA draft where three of the top five picks may be high school players who have no use for college sports, the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics issued a report titled: “A Call to Action--Reconnecting College Sports and Higher Education.”

Here’s the first problem.

When, exactly, were college sports ever connected to higher education in the idyllic way the Knight Commission dreams about?

Were Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen known for their math grades or their football skills? Did Knute Rockne’s “Win One for the Gipper” speech propel chemistry students to storm the lab and find a cure for tuberculosis? There were basketball gambling scandals six decades ago. Almost from the start, college sports in the big-time environments were about winning and making money.

So now this Knight report says that things have to change in college sports. It suggests that, by 2007, any college team not graduating 50% of its athletes would be ineligible the next season for conference and NCAA postseason play. It suggests that colleges prohibit sponsorship logos on uniforms.

At the same time it suggests that more money and resources go to women’s programs. It suggests college coaching salaries be brought in line with college professor’s salaries, which, apparently, means the Knight commission panel members don’t believe in free enterprise.

And it suggests that if college sports can’t be brought back into the fold, made compatible with the academic ideals of college, then college sports should be dropped.

Here’s a suggestion.

Get real.

People who say: “If it becomes impossible to create a system of intercollegiate athletics that can live honorably within the American college and university then the nation’s colleges and universities [should] get out of the business of big-time sports,” should not be telling us how to fix what’s wrong in college sports.

How do we reform something if the conclusion of a 52-page report is that maybe we’ll have to junk the whole thing?

Are there problems with college sports?

Absolutely.

There are problems with pro sports, amateur sports, Olympic sports, all sports.

We have high schools that can figure out how to produce nationally ranked basketball teams traveling to tournaments around the country but can’t figure out how to have enough books and computers for the classrooms.

Our Olympics are marked by daily bulletins about athletes being disqualified for failing drug tests.

And in college, in the glamour sports of basketball and football, we have coaches being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by shoe companies; we have athletes dropping by for a year or two, polishing passing or shooting skills before turning pro and never desiring a college degree.

But we also have students who are in college because they earned a softball scholarship or a rowing scholarship or a track scholarship who might never have been able to afford college. We have Rhodes Scholars who won NCAA cross-country titles, who become, literally, rocket scientists.

It’s not all good, it’s not all bad.

Yes, more and more college basketball players are leaving college early or not going at all. That’s the way it works in a free country. You can go or you can stay. You can earn your college degree in four years, five years, 10 years or not at all. Some players who leave school after a year or two eventually get a degree. Some don’t.

Some premedical students get a degree in four years, five years, or more. Some change majors. Some business students drop out to get a job, come back five years later and get a degree. Some don’t.

What is going to get better by barring Duke from the NCAA tournament because one year Elton Brand, Corey Maggette and William Avery suddenly decide to leave early and turn pro and Chris Burgess decides to transfer? Does that make Mike Krzyzewski a bad man, a bad recruiter, a bad teacher of young men?

What if Brand, who was the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, takes five or 10 or 15 years to get his degree but does, eventually, get his degree. Was he not well-served by spending two years at Duke? Why should Duke be punished?

It took Shaquille O’Neal nearly a decade to graduate. Should he have been, for five years, a negative factor at Louisiana State? What do you think Shaq has been to LSU and education? Plus or minus?

If the ideas in this report are implemented, the kids who will pay are the athletes in inner city schools who aren’t good enough to play in the NBA or NFL but who might be good enough to play for Cal State Fullerton or Temple or Hampton, athletes who might take five or six or seven years to get a degree, athletes who might never have gone to college except for the athletic scholarship.

This report seems to wish that all schools were Ivy League schools living on endowments and not needing sports to market themselves, not needing the money from Coke or Nike. But different schools have different missions.

One size fits all can’t be the solution. Our colleges and their sports teams have the same problems we have in society. Sometimes our priorities are misplaced, our money is badly spent, our search for heroes goes awry. But more rules don’t fix things, as the NCAA proves every time it adds layers of dos and don’ts.

The problem isn’t college. The problem is the adult who tries to buy a tall, strong fifth-grader with cool shoes and shirts. The problem is the grown-up who offers a high school star the “loan” of a Lincoln Navigator or a free pass on a test.

The Knight Commission can’t fix that. No report can.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com