The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- December 6, 1999

Thoughts of the Day

Freshman eligibility

"I think it is very unfair to ask a freshman to come in and compete with the varsity in football and basketball. We will try to get the rule changed in January. That is a legitimate criticism of the NCAA."

-- Pennsylvania State University
football coach Joe Paterno

1983 testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee

"There is a strong feeling among committee members and Division I basketball coaches that freshmen should not play. But we don't want to increase costs to a program by instituting a system in which freshmen are ineligible. We can't have freshman teams or coaching staffs. The big question is how is the going to be accomplished without increasing costs?"

-- Sun Belt Conference Commissioner Vic Bubas

about a 1989 proposal by the Basketball Issues Committee to make freshmen ineligible for Division I men's basketball competition

"Freshmen competing in intercollegiate athletics is nonsense. They're in the stadium playing before 100,000 people, and they don't know where the library is."

-- Donald B. Canham, director of athletics, University of Michigan, 1988

Presidential involvement

"The best change in intercollegiate athletics over the past five years has been the increased involvement of the chief executive officers at many, many institutions. They, more than anyone else, are in a position to enforce institutional policy and set the tone for athletics programs.

"While the problems seem to be frustrating and
suffocating at times, the increased involvement of the educational leaders of our campuses will bring about needed reforms, and I'm sure the much-needed recommitment to play within the rules and conduct intercollegiate athletics with high integrity.

"Those of us within intercollegiate athletics must admit (whether we like it or not) that the high visibility and role-model status of our programs impart the responsibility to ensure that our programs are operated in a manner of high quality and integrity.

"A change will occur only with continued influence of college presidents and a recommitment to the purposes and principles of intercollegiate athletics."

-- D.J. DiJulia, commissioner

Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, 1984

Restructuring

"I became convinced in the last year through consulting with scores of college presidents that the key to reform of major intercollegiate athletics was a significant reform of the structure itself.

"The new organization will be much smaller. It will be in the neighborhood of 75 to 150 schools, and they will be institutions with roughly comparable interests."

-- Edward T. Foote II, president

University of Miami (Florida), 1985

Academic standards

"(Proposition 48) is such a minimum standard. All it does is it keeps the functionally illiterate out of college. I don't think it's asking too much that the players be able to read and write."

-- C.M. Newton, men's basketball coach,
Vanderbilt University, 1986

"What does Proposition 48 do to aspiration levels?

"Outside of will and skill, nothing should limit an athlete's participation. Why should the NCAA play God? What they're saying is that college is for the elite.

"Opportunity is what this country is all about. And that should come first. Allow someone to succeed on his own merit. And if he fails and he winds up back on the streets, so be it.

"Kid comes out of a college reading at the seventh-grade level. I blame the kid. The opportunity was there. Proposition 48 heads us back toward the Stone Age. I blame the entire educational system. That's where the problem lies."

-- John Chaney, men's basketball coach,

Temple University, 1987

"It is time we begin to show sensitivity to black American culture and stop trying to make black Americans conform to 'Anglo' test material and test biases.

"Tests should be tailored for specific cultures, because people of various ethnic backgrounds may perform badly on tests designed for and by Euro-Americans."

-- Robert L. Williams, professor of psychology and black studies, Washington University (Missouri)

Television revenue

"What looked like a game and a way to teach sportsmanship has become something else. It's time somebody stood up and said that we're not a product, and we're not something to be merchandised.

"Television has a magnificent thing here. They don't have to train actors; they don't have to pay the athlete; they don't even have to play the music. They just turn on their cameras and there it is.

"And now, this whole thing has developed as a culture all its own, and it will do a lot of damage before it can be harnessed.

"I don't think the NCAA can handle it any longer because they make too much money for themselves now. It's the power of the dollar that no college administration has yet devised a way of controlling."

-- William C. Friday, former president,

University of North Carolina System, 1988