The NCAA News - Briefly in the News

August 3, 1997

Leaders in professional football and basketball, college athletics and Olympic field hockey recently returned to their alma mater, Springfield College, to discuss violence and substance abuse in sport as well as the issue of college athletes being lured from higher education into professional sports.

The panel included Gene DeFilippo, Boston College athletics director; Pam Hixon, U.S. women's field hockey team coach; Garry St. Jean, Golden State Warriors general manager; Dick MacPherson, former head football coach of the New England Patriots and former head football coach at Syracuse University; and Tim Murphy, head football coach at Harvard.

The program was moderated by Diane Potter, Springfield College professor of physical education.

"The way the pros act has an effect," Defilippo said. "We see violence emulated at the college level and are doing seminars for our teams."

MacPherson described sport as a highly visible microcosm of society, in part due to media attention.

St. Jean said that the Warriors had instituted programs to teach anger management, and he cited the National Football League's efforts to crack down on players and coaches who provoke or engage in violence.

In discussing the dilemma of student-athletes being lured into professional sports, Murphy had this to offer: "We must consider each case individually. For most student-athletes, it's important to stay in college to prepare for life.

"Only a handful of the top picks have the option to drop out of college to make eight or nine million dollars, and they have a short window to use that chance to secure financial futures for themselves and their families."

Hixon described the prevalence of performance-enhancing drugs in amateur athletics.

"There are fewer opportunities for amateur athletes to go for the gold, to be on television, and to get that contract. So they feel enormous pressure to do all that they can to win when they have that brief shining moment," she said.

The program was part of Springfield's reunion weekend. The panelists spoke to other alumni, many of whom are professionals in physical education and athletics.

Give Northwestern an "A"

Northwestern University has received the 1998 American Football Coaches Association's Academic Achievement Award, presented annually by the Touchdown Club of Memphis, Tennessee.

Northwestern recorded a 100 percent graduation rate for members of its football squad when all 20 members of the class of 1997 earned a degree.

"This award is the result of tremendous work done by our academic support program, our assistant coaches, the athletes and the families of those athletes involved," said Northwestern head coach Gary Barnett.

Northwestern's win snaps a five-year run by Duke University, which had won or shared the award every year since 1993 and has won or shared it nine times since it was first awarded in 1981 by the College Football Association.

Twenty-four other NCAA Division I-A members received honorable-mention status for having football team graduation rates of 70 percent or better. Those institutions were: Boston College; Bowling Green State University; Duke; the University of Florida; the University of Idaho; the University of Illinois, Champaign; the University of Iowa; Louisiana Tech University; Marshall University; Mississippi State University; the University of Nebraska, Lincoln; the University of Notre Dame; the University of Oregon; Pennsylvania State University; Rice University; Southern Methodist University; Syracuse University; the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Tulane University; Vanderbilt University; the University of Virginia; Wake Forest University; the University of Washington; and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Looking back

5 years ago: The final report of the NCAA Gender-Equity Task Force calls for the Association's membership to achieve gender equity in intercollegiate athletics primarily on an institution-by-institution basis. The report emphasizes the need for the membership to address the problem aggressively, stressing that failure to do so will result in intervention from outside sources. The report concludes that "enforcement of fairness may not be easy, but is clearly necessary. The courts are currently enforcing adherence to the law, and Congress, as well as the Office of Civil Rights, appears prepared to monitor compliance." The report calls for an ultimate goal of male/female athletics participation that is substantially proportionate to the overall student body. (The NCAA News, August 4, 1993)

10 years ago: The Division I Men's Basketball Committee recommends to the Executive Committee that the Division I Men's Basketball Championship continue with a 64-team bracket consisting of not more than 30 automatic qualifiers and not fewer than 34 at-large teams through the 1998 championship. The basketball committee's recommendation to extend a 1984 Executive Committee moratorium placed on tournament expansion through 1990 includes the added stipulations regarding automatic qualifiers and at-large berths. According to Cedric W. Dempsey, director of athletics at the University of Arizona and incoming committee chair, the committee also will continue to refine criteria used in selecting the 30 conference champions that automatically qualify for the field. (The NCAA News, August 3, 1988)

15 years ago: The College Football Association cancels a meeting that had been called to formulate a possible 1983 football television plan and instead asks its members to abide by the 1982-85 NCAA Football Television Plan for the upcoming season. The action follows a July decision by a Supreme Court justice to stay lower-court rulings that the NCAA plan was in violation of federal antitrust laws. The stay will remain in effect at least until October. Charles M. Neinas, CFA executive director, said the CFA's board believes it is not in the best interests of college football to have such a disruption occur at midseason. (The NCAA News, August 3, 1983)