True or false?
Athletes get to take all the best classes. Tutors write papers for students. Universities have different standards for athletes. Coaches don’t bother with the academic details of all their players.
False. False. False. False.
Such common misconceptions about advantages given to student athletes, especially football players, have run rampant with the recent academic allegations hanging over Ohio State’s Maurice Clarett.
But football players, coaches and administrators say school is no easier for athletes, and some say it may even be more difficult.
“I think the press sensationalizes individual stories,” Northwestern head coach Randy Walker said. “I’ve never been to a place where players had any advantage because they were football players.”
With classes starting this week at NU and Ohio State, football players at both schools will use the academic counselors, tutors and study programs offered by the academic services departments when tackling their scheduling challenges.
All of the players that take the field on Saturday must balance studying classwork and game films, but within different environments.
“NU and Ohio State are pretty close to being on the opposite ends of the academic spectrum,” said Margaret Akerstrom, NU’s assistant athletic director of academic services. “The academic people there care just as much, but it’s just a different culture. The culture here says that academics comes first and everyone knows it.”
Classroom coaching
NU is no longer sending report cards home to parents, but football players still have nowhere to hide after a rough first midterm. Walker said he could recite each of his players’ GPAs faster than their 40 times, and linebackers coach Pat Fitzgerald said he knows how much his players are participating in discussion sections.
“We play close attention to all the guys so they don’t slip by the wayside, while at other schools I’ve been at you didn’t find out about academics until after the semester was over,” said Fitzgerald, a 1996 NU graduate. “Other schools are reactive and here we’re proactive.”
The coaches said they will meet with the advisors from academic services once a week this fall to discuss how players are doing in class, and these advisors send out progress reports to professors once each quarter to get direct feedback.
NU abides by the Big Ten eligibility standards that require athletes to maintain a GPA at the end of each term of 1.65 as freshmen, 1.8 as sophomores, 1.9 as juniors and 2.0 as seniors to compete in games.
But Walker said he has separate expectations for each player, and he made the decision last year to hold starting left tackle Trai Essex out of spring drills so he could focus on academics, despite the fact that Essex was eligible to practice.
“I hold players to different academic standards because I expect each one to do his best,” Walker said. “I tell the freshmen that I don’t have a motion picture following them in the classroom, but I get snap shots and the pictures need to look good.”
Most of the football players take three classes during the season, and Akerstrom estimated that about 95 percent of the team takes summer school. NU hasn’t had a football player declared ineligible since 1996, according to Akerstrom.
About one-third of the roughly 60 football players with declared majors are in communications studies. Economics is the second most popular discipline on a team where majors range from mechanical engineering to art theory and practice.
Last year the team had 11 players with cumulative GPAs above 3.0 while Ohio State had 27 players maintaining at least a ‘B’ average. Akerstrom couldn’t discuss individuals’ grades, but she did say different schools shouldn’t be compared.
“If a lot of our football players went to different Big Ten schools their grades would shoot up,” Akerstrom said. “At NU there are no places to hide.”
Helping Hand
Almost all NU students know that Prof. Charles Moskos’ sociology class is a must-take in the fall — a must-take for everyone except athletes who can’t schedule afternoon classes.
With four practices and a game each week, football players rely on academic services to help schedule classes and tutoring sessions.
“I put a 10-percent cap on the number of athletes who can priority register for a class so they don’t take all the spots,” said Akerstrom, who added that athletes could still sign up for classes during regular registration. “The tutors don’t re-teach things or help the athletes write papers, but they answer questions the students have about the readings or lecture. We want them to use the resources available to every other student first.”
Academic services pays about 30 NU graduate students between $12 and $15 an hour to work with student athletes, according to NU tutoring coordinator Steve King.
Four nights a week about 12 tutors are stationed in seminar rooms in the library helping athletes in subjects such as economics, calculus, chemistry and foreign languages, King said. For large introductory courses, academic services sets up learning teams, in which a tutor meets with about 10 students once a week. King also helps athletes arrange private tutoring sessions if they need help in upper-level or specialized classes.
“I think the amount of help we give all our athletes is about right,” said Prof. Kenneth Seeskin, chairman of NU’s committee on athletics and recreation. “Football players don’t get specialized privileges.”
Each athlete meets with his advisor every quarter to select classes, but academic services mainly focuses on helping freshmen athletes.
Freshmen meet with their advisor once a week for their first two quarters, and are required to spend six hours each week studying in the library. The advisors lead an orientation session before school starts to familiarize students with campus and teach them how to manage their time.
“The goal the first year is to make sure they know where the help is, but after that we expect them to make their own decisions,” Akerstrom said. “Most schools don’t push them out of the nest, but keep them there for five years.”
Differing expectations
The word: Athlete class.
The definition: Not the courses at NU filled with football players, but classes at several other Big Ten schools that freshman athletes must take for credit.
At Ohio State the course is Contemporary Issues Affecting College Student Athletes, while at Minnesota the requirement is Student Athletes in Transition.
“The academic programs (in the Big Ten) are similar in nature, but very different in scope,” said Dr. Kate Riffee, Ohio State associate athletics director. “The programming is based on needs of the specific population.”
Athletes at Ohio State number almost 1,000 while NU has less than 450, making NU unique in the Big Ten.
At Minnesota, Ohio State and Illinois, the academic services send out progress reports, require between six and 10 hours of study time for freshmen, meet with athletes before registration and keep in close contact with coaches — just as they do at NU.
But instead of assigning specific advisors to each team as is done at most schools, at NU, advisors are given a certain number of freshmen each year from various teams, according to Akerstrom. Also, with a total of only four advisors, NU’s staff is smaller than most of its Big Ten competitors, as Illinois has two working solely with the football team.
“NU’s staff is small and maybe a little understaffed,” said Dr. Carol Gruber, Minnesota’s director of counseling and student services for intercollegiate athletics. “There’s a perception that students at NU don’t need as much as what they see as hand holding.”
After a 1999 academic scandal at Minnesota, in which a tutor admitted writing more than 400 papers for student athletes, the school instituted a more extensive academic program. Along with academic counselors, Minnesota has five learning specialis
ts that meet twice a week with the 85 most academically at-risk athletes, but the school still doesn’t graduate players at a rate comparable to NU.
“NU’s admission requirements are stricter than most other Big Ten schools,” Gruber said. “Their average SAT scores are significantly higher than most other Big Ten schools.”
With the start of the conference season, football will be center stage this Saturday, but during the week NU and Ohio State players will battle fatigue in morning lectures and endless amount of reading — just like all of their non-athlete classmates. And despite the controversy over Clarett’s academics, coaches and players at both schools say athletes adhere to the same standards as the rest of the student body.
“The Ohio State players have a lot of the same rigors and it’s not like the people there turn (a blind) eye or anything for the athletes,” said NU’s Jeff Backes, who talks regularly with friends on Ohio State. “They’re expected to go to class and face the same academic challenges, but I would be fooling myself if I say they’re the same.”
