The Chronicle of Higher Education spotlighted Kansas State in a feature article in 1999. Reporter Welch Suggs discovered that the football team’s bowl appearances and high poll rankings had not prompted a Flutie Factor jump in admission applications, or a discernible increase in alumni contributions to the university’s undergraduate education programs. (See chapter 21 for a discussion on whether big-time college sports programs actually prompt alumni donations.)
The Kansas State president did boast that football success had erased the “loser image” of his school. But that is a circular argument. Kansas State’s “loser” reputation resulted from years of losing football teams; if the school had never entered Division I-A college football, and had emphasized undergraduate education, it might have developed another kind of fame, possibly as an outstanding agriculture and technical school. However, once in the big-time NCAA poker game, K State had to live with losing hands and winning ones, forever strapped into its chair at the table, its national reputation based mainly on sports results.
One element at K State that continued from the losing football years through the winning ones was the party scene. Kevin Allen, an alum of the university, noted that “beer-and-circus is a very accurate description of the atmosphere when I was in school there (1987-1992), and especially for the last six years since the football team has started going to bowl games.” Allen added, “Yes, I’m one of those forty thousand fans who follow KSU to bowl games,” but he worried that beer-and-circus undermined undergraduate education at his alma mater.
A number of students currently at the school raised similar concerns in their P.S. remarks to the questionnaire for this book. A sophomore male wrote:
The JUCO [junior college] transfers that star for the Cats have to be among the dumbest students in America. I was in a class with some of them and they could barely read or write. I was embarrassed that they attend the same college I do. But I still bleed purple [the school color] and go on the road with the Cats … . I got so drunk at the Alamo Bowl last year that I couldn’t remember a single thing. I found out afterward that we lost.
A sophomore female at Kansas State made a more direct comment on the quality of undergraduate education at the school:
I applied here after I read in the [Yale] Insider’s Guide about how good and serious the College of Architecture was and how students in it have to spend twenty hours a week in studio. When I came, it turned out that architecture majors take about 9 credit hours of studio work each semester, and so twenty hours a week is not very much. And the program turns out to be fairly mediocre … . An architecture major at Rice University told me she spends at least forty hours per week in studio, usually a lot more. And I’ve found out that Rice is rated one of the leading programs in the country, and K State is way down the list … .
Despite her discontent, this student offered a shrewd analysis of academics at K State:
I don’t think K State tried to fool me on purpose. What happened in architecture is all part of how K State deludes itself into thinking that it’s a good school. They call architecture a “weed out” major and say that it’s one of their best. It’s true that it’s ten times harder than most of the majors here. But so what? Most of the majors are a joke and most K State students spend their time cheering for the Cats and partying, and they couldn’t care less about going to school … Then the school prints all this stuff about “Excellence in Sports Equals Excellence in Education.” They might even believe it but it’s complete b.s.
The responses of these Kansas State insiders present a less glowing and positive picture of this university than does the national media. Other than the Chronicle of Higher Education’s investigation of the educational and athletic aspects of K State, and U.S. News’s ranking the school in the third tier of national universities (institutions that place between 121 and 176 in its ratings), the rest of the national media only peers through the K State college sports window, praising what they call—without irony—“Purple Haze.”
In January 2000, USA Today applauded K State’s rise to football fame, noting that the university had used a clever “formula” for intercollegiate athletic success:
A supportive president, quality coaching, blue-chip recruiting, TV exposure, selling tickets to keep the cash flowing, and “upgrading facilities,” jargon for bigger stadiums and fancier locker rooms and weight rooms.
In the corporate world of USA Today and College Sports MegaInc., this formula makes perfect sense. The only problem is its disconnection from education, and its dependence on fielding winning teams.
Crucial to winning in college sports is blue chip recruiting and, if the high schools in a state do not produce a sufficient number of blue chip athletes in a sport (the football situation in Kansas), the coach often brings in former JUCO players. Kansas State’s rise in the football world parallels the athletic quality of its JUCO transfers, but recruiting these athletes is always a two-edged sword: their athletic talent can produce sports victory, but their educational deficiencies, as mentioned by the K State undergrad above, can generate academic embarrassment.
Undergraduates at Kansas State and many other Big-time U’s expressed unease and doublethink about College Sports MegaInc., many of them loving it, particularly the accompanying party scene, and simultaneously questioning its corrupt practices, including star athletes who can “barely read or write.” Like all major corporations, College Sports MegaInc. has plans for future expansion and revenue, and it usually projects today’s students as tomorrow’s fervent rooters. However, the undergraduate responses to the survey for this book indicate very shallow support for big-time college sports among a large segment of the undergraduate population. If these fans do not become future supporters, College Sports Meganc. could cost Big-time U’s even more money than at present.
20
WHO LOVES THE JOCKS?
Recruiting JUCO players reveals the underside of College Sports MegaInc., and their presence on university campuses often prompts negative reactions from regular undergraduates. This chapter continues to explore this situation as well as the surprising student responses to a number of survey questions probing their attitudes toward intercollegiate athletes.
We’ve never admitted junior college athletes to Notre Dame because we don’t believe they’re real college students or could ever become ones … . Maybe we’re too strict and we sure miss out on lots of great players that way, but cripes, these guys are pros, hired by schools to play sports … .
The NCAA is always talking about student-athletes. If it’s really serious about that, it would bar JUCO transfers. The big football and basketball schools will never let that happen because they believe that JUCOs can help them turn around their programs if they hit a bad stretch. And it helps some of the little guys move up in the world.
—Edward “Moose” Krause, former coach and athletic director at
the University of Notre Dame.
“Moose” Krause raised basic questions about the nature of student-athletes on many campuses and, by implication, the conflict between big-time college sports and authentic undergraduate education. An examination of JUCO transfers provides a path into these issues; it also dramatizes the conflicting feelings of regular students about “special admits” for all athletes—a practice that allows intercollegiate athletes to enter universities with ACT/SAT scores far below regular students, and that permits some JUCO transfers to enter without ever taking the ACT or SAT exam.
JUCO athletes usually belong to the cohort of high school athletes who fail to meet the NCAA’s minimal academic requirements for playing intercollegiate athletics as freshmen. As a result, they attend junior colleges and, after receiving graduation certificates there, move on to an NCAA school (they lose two years of NCAA playing eligibility in the process). Most important, these athletes are not required to take the SAT/ACT exams or to prove to anyone outside their junior college and the welcoming NCAA school that they can read, write, and count past ten.
> Because of the JUCO loophole and the fact that many junior colleges do not provide quality educations, numerous JUCO transfers cannot do university work, even in “gut” courses. In the eyes of regular undergraduates, these athletes come closest to the “dumb jock” stereotype; in interviews, many students express resentment and cynicism about the admission of these athletes to their schools.
A number of questions on the survey for this book also revealed these undergraduate feelings, not just on JUCO transfers but concerning special admissions for all intercollegiate athletes, and concerning the academic privileges that all intercollegiate athletes receive while in college. The large majorities in response to these questions were the most unexpected results on the survey.
Question 11
All intercollegiate athletes should meet the same university entrance requirements as regular students.
Twenty-nine percent of respondents “strongly agreed” with this statement, and 31 percent “agreed.” A majority of these positive responses came from students at Division III colleges and women at Division I schools; nevertheless, many men at big-time college sports universities also assented. Almost all the negatives were from males at Division I schools—10 percent “strongly disagreed,” and 18 percent “disagreed.” In addition, 12 percent were neutral, split evenly between Division I and III schools.
An interesting correlation occurred at Division I schools between the responses and the differences in the average SAT/ACT scores of athletes and regular students: the larger the spread, the higher the percentage of students opposed to special admits for athletes. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a school that accepts only 35 percent of all applicants, men’s basketball players average 905 out of a possible 1600 on their SATs, and regular undergraduates, 1220. At this university, 82 percent of female, and 60 percent of male respondents disapproved of special admits for athletes. Similar percentages occurred at other schools with situations paralleling UNC-Chapel Hill’s. These results imply that if regular students have to work hard to gain admission to their university, they resent other students, even athletes, entering with significantly lower SAT scores. (In contrast, at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, accepting 94 percent of all applicants and with less of an SAT and ACT differential between regular students and athletes, the disapproval numbers were 59 percent female, and 43 percent male.)
In addition, at many schools with selective admissions policies, student doublethink existed on this question. Despite their dislike of special admits, North Carolina undergraduates love and cheer wildly for their “Heels,” particularly when they are winning. A Georgetown University junior offered a typical explanation for student doublethink on special admits:
I busted my ass in high school to get into this place, and I know that some of the basketball players here got almost half the SAT score I did. I also know that there aren’t many outstanding athletes with 1600 SATs, or even 1100, and I want our teams to win. So I accept the fact that these low SAT guys are in Georgetown, but I think the system stinks. Then again, our team would be terrible if only regular Georgetown students played. Who knows? Go Hoyas. Meet you at the Tombs or Chadwicks [off-campus sports bars].
The following question on the survey prompted an even greater surge of hostile feelings toward the jocks than did the admissions one:
Regular students should have the same access to academic assistance as intercollegiate athletes (free unlimited tutoring, priority scheduling of classes, et cetera).
Possibly the lack of academic assistance available to regular undergraduates, or jealousy over the perks that athletes receive, caused 43 percent to “strongly agree” and 35 percent to “agree” to equal assistance for all students (these numbers were the most one-sided on the survey). Only 7 percent “strongly disagreed” and another 9 percent “disagreed,” with a mere 6 percent remaining neutral. Agreement encompassed almost every respondent at Division III schools, a large majority of women in Division I, and a sizable majority of men at the “Public Ivies” and similar private institutions.
Only some men and a few women at big-time college sports universities in the SEC, ACC, Big 12, and Pac-10 disagreed, often arguing a version of “The jocks work really hard here and deserve extra help.” Male respondents from these schools also appeared in the neutral category, adding such cynical P.S.’s as, “Why should academic assistance matter—the jocks pass their courses no matter what?” Also:
I can’t answer this question because I can’t believe that schools will ever give the same assistance to regular students that they give to athletes, like having tutors write papers for them, [team] managers take exams for them, and everything else I’ve seen given to jocks.
A few years ago, U Magazine conducted a poll on this topic and discovered similar positive and negative results. It asked, “Athletes—should they be given special treatment?” and only 21 percent of respondents answered yes, versus 79 percent replying no. The comments to U Magazine also paralleled many of the P.S.’s to this question on the book survey. A University of Georgia student told U, “Yes. It’s hard to fit an athletic [training and playing] schedule with an academic schedule.” But many more undergraduates replied “No,” an Illinois undergraduate recognizing the vocationalism of an athletic scholarship, but showing no sympathy for the jocks’ work-filled days: “Athletes should look at their role as a forty-hour-a-week job. I work forty hours a week, and I don’t get special treatment.”
For all the apparent clarity of the student responses on special admits and academic perks for athletes, the results require an important qualification: They reflect undergraduate attitudes to intercollegiate athletes in the abstract. When students at Division I schools were questioned about specific athletes on their campuses, their opinions shifted and the celebrity of the player became important to them, often triggering a doublethink response.
In chapter 12 of this book, “Cheating,” the results to the question on helping “a star athlete at your school … cheat on an important exam” revealed much less hostility than the inquiries on perks for abstract intercollegiate athletes: 59 percent of the respondents at Division I schools agreed, sometimes for cynical reasons, to help the star cheat. Even after factoring in the highly negative Division III responses on this question, the “yes” percentage was still higher than the pro-athlete responses to the more general inquiries on special admits and aid for jocks.
Sports journalist Teri Bostian observed this phenomenon at the University of Iowa:
Regular undergraduates always complain about the special deals the jocks get, and then they turn around and tell you how thrilled they were when they saw Jess Settles [an UI basketball player] or some other star athlete in the student union. They have a real split personality on this one.
Student doublethink can take another complete revolution: undergraduates will speak cynically about star players but almost swoon when they actually meet them. A faculty member at Georgetown University noticed that when basketball star Allen Iverson briefly attended the school, undergraduates “talked about his questionable high school academic record and about [his] run-in with the law,” as well as his “cruising around campus in a Mercedes and wearing a Rolex” (Iverson came from a very poor background). Then “when he left the campus for the NBA, students felt not that a fellow student had dropped out, but that an athlete had won an early exit from a basketball camp”—Georgetown’s men’s basketball program.
Yet, not only did many of these same undergraduates proudly wear their Hoyas basketball regalia, attend home games, and cheer mightily for Iverson when he played for their university, but, in interviews for this book, a number of otherwise cynical Georgetown students almost gushed while telling stories of seeing Iverson in D.C. clubs and following him on club-hopping tours.
At what point does student doublethink about college sports become schizophrenia, so unstable that student fans cannot distinguish between their fantasies and reality? It is also unstable because the media
iconography of star college athletes merges with the reality of the athletes’ campus lives, and, for many undergraduates, the mixed images make no sense. Do students love the jocks? Yes, no, maybe—sometimes all three reactions at once.
In many ways, intercollegiate athletes possess a saner and more coherent vision of big-time college sports than do the student fans. Their attitude on special admission tends to be straightforward, practical, and vocational. They also show some contempt for regular students, particularly those mired in the collegiate subculture. In a typical comment, a Tulane female tennis player explained:
I’ve been practicing and training since I was a little kid. If I had put a tenth of that time into studying, I’d have more than enough SAT points to get in here regularly. But this school brings me to New Orleans to play tennis, to do a job, so they should cut me some slack on admission.
The Tulane athlete added: “My SAT scores weren’t that much below regular students here, and most of them trained for Tulane by drinking their way through high school … [And] that’s what they do now while I work at tennis.”
Basketball and football players from less privileged backgrounds than the Tulane tennis player offered versions of the same justification. A Boston College football player remarked, “I’m at BC to play football, and the coaches make sure that I do it. If BC let me in with low SAT scores, don’t blame me, bitch at the school. Anyway, I made my NCAA number [850].” Paralleling the Tulane athlete’s complaint about regular students at the school, the BC player remarked:
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