Saturday night featured an outstanding game between two of the nation’s top 10 teams. Both the Texas Longhorns and the Red Raiders of Texas Tech came into the contest with undefeated records. By the end of the evening, one team would no longer be perfect…

Coming into the game, many analysts and experts believed that the high-powered Texas Tech offense, led by Quarterback Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree, would be shut down by the stingy Texas Longhorns’ defense. All of these expert predictions, though, went out the window when Texas Tech scored 39 points, leading to a 6 point victory over the nation’s top team. The way that the game ended was more than entertaining to say the least.

Texas Quarterback Colt McCoy, who struggled throughout the first half of the game, picked apart the Red Raider defense during a late fourth quarter drive. When the drive ended, with a 4-yard TD run by running back Vondrell McGee, Texas found themselves on the upside of a 33-32 lead, clinging to a one point lead. The Longhorns left Harrell 1:32 seconds to conduct a drive that was nothing short of a miracle considering the fact that Texas Tech had only 1 timeout.

Harrell effeciently took what the Longhorn defense gave him and moved his team into field goal range. With just 8 seconds and still a timeout remaining, most teams would center the ball to the middle of the field, take their timeout and kick the last second field goal. That just wouldn’t fit into the script for Head Coach Mike Leach and his high-powered offense. Graham Harrell remained on the field with the offense. When he took the snap and looked downfield, I was confused.

By the end of the play, Harrell had connected on a 28 yard touchdown pass to arguably the nation’s best receiver Michael Crabtree. With just one second remaining on the clock, the student body of the Red Raiders swarmed the field. The team was issued a series of 15-yard penalties that resulted in a kickoff from their own 7 1/2 yard line.

After the kick and a few lateral passes the second that seemed like another hour to the Tech fans had run off the clock and the number one team in the nation had been dethroned. This victory will without a doubt cause a shake-up in the BCS polls and it should be interesting to see where each top team falls this week.

This past weekend could arguably be called one of the craziest in regards to college football. Three out of the top five teams in the nation were upset this weekend, causing constant changes to the AP Polls. These changes brought in new colleges who were previously unranked and also knocked ranked teams out of the top 25.

The first upset of the weekend came on Thursday night when the #1 team in the nation, The USC Trojans, was upset by their conference opponent Oregon State Beavers. Although USC mounted a 2^nd half comeback, an early 21-0 lead capped by a Jacquizz Rodgers 2-yard touchdown run in the final quarter proved to be too much for Coach Pete Carroll and his team to overcome. With the loss USC drops to 2-1 on the year and fell 8 spots in the AP Polls to #9.

The final two upsets came from arguably the strongest conference in college football, the SEC. In an absolute battle between two ranked teams, the Crimson Tide of Alabama jolted out to a 31-0 lead in the first half over the nation’s #3 team, the Georgia Bulldogs. Although the Bulldogs fought their way back into the game, outscoring Alabama 30-10 in the second half, the early lead and stifling 1^st half defense was too large of a lead to overcome. With the loss Georgia fell from #3 to #11 and dropped to 4-1 on the year.

When Ole Miss took the a late lead over #4 ranked Florida on an 86-yard touchdown from Jevan Snead to speedy receiver Shay Hodge, I’m sure they knew they were in good position for an upset. However, they forgot Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow was taking the snaps on the other side for Florida. As Tebow lead his team on a late 4^th quarter touchdown drive, the game was just a one point difference at 31-30. The ensuing extra point, though, was blocked by some great hustle and special teams play by the Rebels.

Three national powerhouses could’ve easily lost a BCS bid for this year. For the new teams in the poll, however, their hopes remain. After all the changes to the polls the newest AP Top 10 poll looks like this:

1. Oklahoma 4-0

2. Alabama 5-0

3. LSU 4-0

4. Missouri 4-0

5. Texas 4-0

6. Penn State 5-0

7. Texas Tech 4-0

8. BYU 4-0

9. USC 2-1

10. South Florida 5-0

Bill Pennington’s story makes all the issues come alive:

“As a high school senior, she had been thrilled to receive a $19,000 athletic scholarship to play field hockey at Villanova, a select, private institution near Philadelphia. But she had not counted on the 7 a.m. start of every class day, something required so she could be in the locker room by noon to prepare for a four-hour shift of afternoon practices and weight-lifting sessions. Travel to games forced her to miss exams and classes. There were also mandatory team meetings, study halls and weekend practices.

She was overwhelmed.”

What Stephanie Campbell – and so many other student athletes – discovered was that something had to give. In her case, it was about recognizing the business end of school sports. Stephanie’s mom, Kathleen, helped her daughter figure it out:

“So Kathleen Campbell sat her daughter down, waited for a break in the sobs and said: “Villanova costs more than $40,000 a year to attend. They’re paying you $19,000 to play field hockey. At your age, there is no one out there anywhere who is going to pay you that kind of money to do anything. And that’s how you have to look at this: It’s a job, but it’s a great job.”

Campbell, 22, kept at it all four years, serving as a team captain last fall while majoring in marketing. She is expected to graduate this spring.

“I’m missing the sport terribly already,” she said last month. “But it was a ton of work. Receiving an athletic scholarship is a wonderful thing, but most of us only know what we’re getting, not what we’re getting into.”

Campbell made it work but a lot of student athletes don’t. You can get a sense of the problem by looking at the data the NCAA assembles on the Academic Progress Rate (APR), and the Graduation Success Rate (GSR) at colleges and universities across the country.

According to the NCAA :

“The APR provides a real-time “snapshot” of a team’s academic success each semester by looking at current academic progress of every student-athlete.
The APR includes eligibility, retention, and graduation as factors in the rate calculation and provides a much clearer picture of the current academic culture in each sport.
The GSR looks back at historical academic success by measuring graduation of all student-athletes, including transfer students and students who leave campus in good academic standing.

Each Division I sports team receives an APR score. An APR of 925 (out of 1,000) equals roughly a 60 percent Graduation Success Rate.”

Remember only about 60% of student athletes graduate within 6 years.

The importance of student athletes receiving a good education – and the issue of graduation rates – becomes especially clear when you examine how many or few student athletes make the transition to professional sports. Of course, playing professional sports is a dream of so many student athletes – but how often does the dream come true?

Here are some sports and the statistics:
Men’s Basketball - 1.2%
Women’s Basketball - 1.0%
Football - 1.8%
Baseball - 9.4%
Men’s Ice Hockey - 3.7%
Men’s Soccer - 1.7%

Here’s a look at the 1997- 2000 NCAA graduation success rates (and federal statistics) at two representative schools:

You can data for all schools on the NCAA website.

One last note: college is a challenge for all students, not just student athletes. The NCAA is quick to point out that in general, student athletes do slightly better than non-student athletes when it comes to graduating. And they believe their new statistical analysis is more accurate and illuminating than the federal graduation statistics.

The NCAA notes that:

63 percent of Division I student-athletes who began college as freshmen in 2000 graduated within six years, compared to 62 percent of students at Division I institutions, according to the federal data.

In particular, African-American student-athletes are graduating at a rate seven points higher than African-American students in general (53 percent to 46 percent). African-American male student-athletes are graduating at a rate 10 points higher than African-American male students, 49 percent to 39 percent.

White student-athletes graduate three points higher than their student body peers, at 67 percent to 64 percent. This is due in part to the fact that the graduation rate for white female student-athletes is seven points higher than white female students (74 percent to 66 percent).

So I guess the best advice anyone can give is, study hard, play well, and do your best to graduate!

Student athletes and their families have always known it is not easy balancing the demands of performing at a high level in collegiate sports while keeping up with one’s grades.

To begin with, student athletes must meet the following NCAA requirements to participate in sports and/or receive an athletics scholarship during their first year:

Graduate from high school; Complete these 14 core courses:

- 4 years of English

- 2 years of math (algebra 1 or higher)

- 2 years of natural or physical science (including one year of lab science if offered by your high school)

- 1 extra year of English, math or natural or physical science

- 2 years of social science

- 3 years of extra core courses (from any category above, or foreign language, nondoctrinal religion or philosophy);  

Earn a minimum required grade-point average in your core courses; and

Earn a combined SAT or ACT sum score that matches your core course grade-point average on the NCAA test score sliding scale … for example, a 2.400 core-course grade-point average needs an 860 SAT).

Student athletes who meet these requirements can practice or compete for their college or university during their first year of college; can receive an athletics scholarship during their first year of college; and can play four seasons in their sport if they maintain their eligibility from year to year.

There are now more than 400,000 students athletes in the United States and the numbers climb each year.

The NCAA is increasingly aware of the stress and challenges student athletes face.  From May 25-29, they’ll be hosting a conference in Orlando, FL for more than 700 student-athletes to discuss issues that affect them on their campuses and in their communities.  The conference which used to be called the NCAA Student-Athlete Leadership Conference is now known as the Development Conference.

According to Robert Vowels, vice-president of education services at the NCAA:

the conference will help student-athletes find their voice to shape their future and make a commitment to lead on campus and in the community.

“With the new focus of the Development Conference, we’ll also place more emphasis on enhancing the leadership skills of the student-athletes, which not only helps them in their academic and athletic setting, but also better prepares them for life experiences after they graduate,” said Vowels.

Student-athletes will discuss topics such as game environment, gender equity, religion in sport, social networking, EKG testing, mental health and nutrition. They will also discuss division-specific issues, create dialogue surrounding possible solutions to division-specific issues and discuss potential career direction.  

 

As student athletes gather in Orlando, it might be helpful to put the problems facing college sports in perspective. A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor highlights some alarming trends: “College sports programs lose money and fail to educate their athletes.”

Problem One: colleges are spending an enormous amount of money on sports. You might ask if this money could be better spent on purely educational programs. According to the Monitor:

One NCAA report on revenues and expenses of big-time athletic programs (Division I) for the first time shows that high-profile athletics are, on balance, a money-losing proposition. In other words, they’re a significant drain on these educational institutions.

While sports expenses at these schools rose 23 percent from 2004 to 2006, revenues (ticket sales, etc.) expanded only 16 percent. Just 17 of the 300-plus sports programs made a profit. All but one of those were among a few high-profile schools that regularly go to bowl games.

What’s more, schools subsidize about a quarter of their athletics. For the non-bowl-eligible, lower-profile schools, their budgets were 70 percent subsidized.

Just how “big-time” is college sports? The report didn’t name names, but it did say one school spent more than $101 million on its sports programs in fiscal 2006.

Problem Two: Student athletes aren’t doing as well in the classroom as they are on the field. According to the Monitor:

A second NCAA study asks how athletes perform in the classroom, even as the NCAA stiffens its penalties for schools that fail to meet a minimum standard. That standard, called an Academic Progress Rate (APR), takes into account athletes’ grades and graduation rates.

The NCAA’s report shows that only about 60 percent of athletes at the nation’s Division I schools graduate within six years. Among high-profile, revenue-producing sports programs, about 2 out of 5 schools had basketball teams that ranked below the APR threshold, and about 1 of 3 baseball and football teams failed to make that minimum standard.

I put a picture of Candace Parker up above because she is a shining example of the successful student athlete. She is an extraordinary basketball player who led her Tennessee team to the 2007 NCAA championship. But, even better, Parker earned a 3.35 grade-point average in sports management.

In the weeks to come, we’ll be blogging about the challenges and successes of the student athlete. Join in and check back often.