All Posts Tagged With: "NCAA"

What students are talking about today (February 4th)

Law school applications drop (Tulane/Flickr)

1. It’s not just teacher’s college where the number of applicants is falling. Law schools in the United States are in crisis mode after statistics from the Law School Admission Council show that the number of applicants dropped 20 per cent from last year after falling 14 per cent the year before. In Canada the number of applicants is down four per cent, which is certainly not a crisis and may even be good news considering there is a small shortage of articling positions. Bill Flanagan, president of the Canadian Council of Law Deans, offered Canadian Lawyer Magazine his assessment. “On average, tuition at Canadian law schools is much more affordable than many U.S. law schools,” he said, adding, “the job market for Canadian law grads is better in many Canadian legal markets than it is for U.S. law grads in many U.S. legal markets.”

Continue reading Law school applicants, two-tier athletics & Arun Smith

The future of athletics at UBC is in the balance.

After years of waiting, broken dreams, and hopes in limbo, history will be made today in Vancouver that will define the city’s sporting dreams for years to come.

Oh, and the Canucks will play some other team in a hockey game.

Yes, while most in Lotusland will be praying for a win to keep the dreams of a Stanley Cup alive, UBC will be making an announcement that is pretty big of its own. A press conference will be held at 10:30 pacific time, where the university will say whether they are moving to the NCAA for athletics—or stay in Canadian Interuniversity Sport.

Joining the NCAA (where they would play in Division II in the Great Northwestern Conference) would mean the university could give full-ride athletic scholarships, but would also put a pretty big hole in Canadian University Sport, the sporting league for all Canadian universities with the exception of Simon Fraser University, who joined the NCAA last year. UBC has pushed for the opportunity to give larger scholarships for many years, but the CIS has been unwilling to budge.

It is curious that UBC would make this announcement today. Most indications—including an open letter by the CIS President—seemed to show UBC leaning towards making the move to the NCAA after three years of consultations. People within the athletics community had spoken up vocally in favour of a move, opposition towards the NCAA was less on campus than in previous years, and the CIS hasn’t moved an inch in allowing scholarships for anything other than tuition and general fees.

But if you’re UBC, and you wanted to move to the NCAA, and you wanted your decision to get attention, wouldn’t you schedule the announcement on a day when the Vancouver Canucks weren’t playing in Game 7 of a playoff series?

So, we’ll see what happens later today, when UBC President Stephen Toope steps up to the microphone. The future of athletics at UBC is in the balance.

Joining American league would bring higher quality sports, permit full-ride scholarships.

At many institutions the decision on whether their sports teams would join the NCAA would set the campus buzzing.

At UBC? Students care about as much as they do about the football team—which is to say, there’s athletes who care, friends of athletes, about a hundred sport nuts . . . and that’s about it.

Despite this, the university is beginning what it promises is the final round of consultations to decide whether to join NCAA Division II, or stay in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS), of which it is a founding member.

UBC had held prior consultations about joining NCAA in 2008 and 2009, but they were inconclusive. The administration then spent the next year attempting to work with the CIS to change rules around scholarships (UBC would like to offer full-ride ones) and conference tiering (UBC plays too many games against small schools they blow out), to no avail.

Of course, for most schools, the NCAA isn’t appealing. According to UBC officials, only Alberta, McGill and Ryerson have expressed interest—though none of those schools have said so publicly. Simon Fraser joined last year, but they were founded with the intent of competing against American schools, and only joined the CIS in 2000 after too many of their US rivals joined the NCAA, which banned international schools until 2008.

Even if you’re philosophically fine with full-time scholarships for athletes (as a growing number of schools, frustrated with the athletic brain drain, are), the travel costs combined with the scholarships make joining the NCAA prohibitively expensive for universities. But UBC’s athletic department, which has wanted to move to the NCAA for many years, is close enough to the border and has teams in sports that the CIS doesn’t even offer, including baseball and golf. In others like field hockey and swimming, there’s simply not enough competition within Canada. When it comes to the CIS, UBC is a big fish in a comparatively small pond.

That’s not to say it’s a slam dunk for UBC to join. Far from it. In the 2008/09 consultations, 52 per cent of respondents polled in a survey were against moving to the NCAA, despite a concerted attempt by the athletic department to get as many of their athletes as possible to fill out the survey. Though there are no plans for any clear “vote” this time around, UBC will end this final consultation making a decision one way or another—the deadline for application to Division II is June 1st.

University teams will be representing Canada when competing down south

Inside the gymnasium, the international lines forming trapezoidal keys on the basketball court are gone, replaced by the familiar rectangle and a pair of three-point arcs. The oddly long and wide lines — by American standards — on the turf football field are being torn apart and replaced by a 100-yard field with 10-yard end zones.

Simon Fraser University is almost ready to become the first Canadian member of the NCAA. It’s just coming 12 months earlier than anyone expected. “We have a unique situation. We are the only Canadian team playing in the United States,” Simon Fraser women’s basketball coach Bruce Langford said. “Therefore we kind of represent Canada, therefore there is a little bit more at stake.”

From the top of Burnaby Mountain, where the Simon Fraser campus sits, the views of the entire Lower Mainland surrounding metropolitan Vancouver are eye-popping: Snowcapped mountains to the north and south, sea to the west, all framed by the towering firs of the Pacific Northwest.

But while the concrete campus at the top of the mountain provide views few can match, it’s the rest of Canadian college athletics that’s closely watching what happens at SFU. When Simon Fraser hosts Western Oregon on Sept. 4 to begin the 2010 football season, the Clan will become the first Canadian team to play against U.S. competitors as a member of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference in NCAA Division II.

It’s part of a reclassification process that started in 2008 when the NCAA voted to accept membership applications from Canadian schools interested in joining Division II.

Simon Fraser, which held joint membership in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport system and the American-based NAIA, was the only school to move forward in the process.

Originally, the move to becoming the first Canadian NCAA member was to take place for the 2011-12 school year. That was before Canada West, SFU’s playing conference within the CIS, evicted the Clan beginning with this upcoming school year. Already in the process of making the procedural changes to become an NCAA member, Simon Fraser’s timetable was dramatically accelerated. Schedules went from full to empty. The NCAA rule book became required reading, as staff was hired earlier than expected to help with the transition.

Simon Fraser will compete in the 2010-11 school year as a provisional NCAA member. “The real rule in Canada is there are no rules,” SFU football coach Dave Johnson said. “NCAA there is a rule for every angle, every thing and we kind of knew that. It’s becoming more familiar with those rules. “There is going to be an educational component that we’re learning by braille a little bit,” he said.

Most dramatic in the speed up was the impact on athletes. The CIS system allowed athletes five years of playing eligibility. But when Canada West kicked Simon Fraser out and the school announced last October it was heading south a year earlier than planned, numerous Simon Fraser athletes found themselves in the final days of their playing careers.

Langford’s women’s basketball program, a two-time defending CIS national champion, suddenly had just four returning players for the 2010-11 season. Johnson’s football team lost 60 players who either had finished four years of play or decided they wanted more than their one remaining year.

Additionally, a number of SFU athletes saw their remaining eligibility cut in half. Many athletes in Canada attend secondary schools following high school. Under the CIS system, those athletes still have five years of eligibility when they arrive at the university. But the NCAA views those years the same as attending a junior college.

“It was vindictive. That’s all I can say. There was no good solid reason why they wouldn’t allow us to go this year,” Simon Fraser athletic director David Murphy said. “But it’s a blessing in disguise because it’s accelerated our ability to be compliant with NCAA rules and the fact GNAC accepted us. I was very disappointed because I knew the people, but in the end it turned out to be very beneficial to us. It did hurt some student-athletes here very badly.”

But ask those at Simon Fraser about the sudden change of plans, and while bitter about the believed slight from Canada West, there is also an air of excitement about the pending move. When the school was constructed in 1965, the administration’s intent was that its athletic programs would play exclusively in the United States. That held true until 1997, when Simon Fraser’s competition in the Pacific Northwest made the move to the NCAA.

They found refuge in the CIS for their football, men’s and women’s basketball programs, volleyball and wrestling. Their remaining programs held joint classification with the CIS and NAIA, giving them a chance to compete in both countries.

But as the costs of competing in the CIS — namely travel across four provinces — continued to rise, Simon Fraser began looking for an outlet for all its programs. Thanks to their rivals across Vancouver at the University of British Columbia, the Clan found their ticket to the NCAA. It was UBC at the forefront of the push to move its athletic programs to the NCAA, triggering the legislation two years ago that opened the door for Canadian schools looking to play in Division II.

Simon Fraser was the only school, so far, to walk through the opening. “What I found in doing my due diligence is there is so much misinformation and disinformation on the NCAA that most people are afraid of it,” Murphy said. “They only know the bowl games, December, January and March Madness. And they look at the amount of schools, all the bad news, they get wrapped up in it and don’t understand it. I had to do a lot of research and especially (at) Division II it’s about balancing life.”

The benefits are numerous for Simon Fraser. The travel costs drop significantly, with teams now able to take buses or short flights for most of their competitions. The recruiting pitch now raises eyebrows among Canadian athletes. While those talented enough to compete at a high, Division I level aren’t going to change their plans, it’s the athlete that might be going south to play for a lower-level Division I or a high Division II program that Simon Fraser wants to target.

The message: stay in your country and get a Canadian education; compete in the United States. “This is a very Canadian school, it has a lot of Canadian traditions, but Canadians want to compete at the highest level. They always have wanted to do that,” men’s basketball coach James Blake said. “And Simon Fraser going NCAA is a representation of what Canadians want to do. They want to compete at the highest level and they are at this school.”

But it’s not just Canadian athletes who are the focus. The school has a strong case for American athletes to look north, with tuition comparable to out-of-state tuition for athletes in the states. The cost becomes an even better deal if the American dollar strengthens against the Looney.

There are still obstacles to overcome for both Simon Fraser and their opponents. The rest of the schools in the GNAC are working to make sure all athletes and coaches have passports or enhanced drivers licenses for the border crossing. On campus, Murphy is working to make sure there is permanent seating for the football stadium. Even Johnson has to make a midseason switch for when the Clan play at rival British Columbia in October — using Canadian football rules.

And there’s educating the public and fans about the differences they will see between the CIS and the NCAA. “I think we can build something special here and we can be the flagship program in the nation,” Johnson said. “I think we can attract the best players from around the country. I’m an American guy but I can tote that Canadian maple leaf and talk about winning one for the country. It matters to our Canadian kids. I do believe we have the unique ingredients to build something special.”

The Canadian Press

Once admitted students must demonstrate academic progress

If grades make you a longshot for college, you’re much more likely to get a break if you can play ball. An Associated Press review of admissions data submitted to the NCAA by most of the 120 schools in college football’s top tier shows that athletes enjoy strikingly better odds of having admission requirements bent on their behalf.

The notion that college athletes’ talents give them a leg up in the admissions game isn’t a surprise. But in what NCAA officials called the most extensive review to date, the AP found the practice is widespread and can be found in every major conference.

The review identified at least 27 schools where athletes were at least 10 times more likely to benefit from special admission programs than students in the general population. That group includes 2009 Bowl Championship Series teams Oregon, Georgia Tech and Alabama, which is playing Texas for the national title Jan. 7.

At Alabama, 19 football players got in as part of a special admissions program from 2004 to 2006, the most recent years available in the NCAA report. The school tightened its standards for “special admits” in both 2004 and 2007, but from 2004 through 2006, Crimson Tide athletes were still more than 43 times more likely to benefit from such exemptions.

Alabama coach Nick Saban offered no apologies. “Some people have ability and they have work ethic and really never get an opportunity,” he said. “I am really pleased and happy with the job that we do and how we manage our students here, and the responsibility and accountability they have toward academics and the success that they’ve had in academics.”

The NCAA defines special admissions programs as those designed for students who don’t meet “standard or normal entrance requirements.” The NCAA says such exceptions are fine as long as schools offer the same opportunities to everyone from dancers, French horn players and underrepresented minorities as they do to fleet-footed wide receivers and 300-pound offensive linemen.

Texas was one of seven schools that reported no use of special admissions, instead describing “holistic” standards that consider each applicant individually rather than relying on minimum test scores and grade-point averages.

But the school also acknowledged in its NCAA report that athletic recruits overall are less prepared. At Texas, the average SAT score for a freshman football player from 2003 to 2005 was 945 — or 320 points lower than the typical first-year student’s score on the entrance exam. School officials did not make coach Mack Brown or athletic director DeLoss Dodds available to comment.

College sports earn U.S. universities a lot of money, but arguably distort their mission

A couple of years ago I interview Dr. Carl Wieman, the American Nobel laureaute in physics who moved to the University of British Columbia to set up the Carl Wieman Science Education Initative, a project to improve the quality of undergraduate science teaching at UBC and across North America. Wieman’s interest is in figuring out how to improve teaching ad learning at universities. When we spoke, he surprised me by pointing to U.S. college sports as an obstacle to that mission. Last week, Simon Fraser University announced that it had become the first Canadian university to be admitted to the main U.S. college sports body, the NCAA. As for UBC — the other Canadian university that was seen as a prime candidate for NCAA membership — it recently announced that it is putting its expression of interest on hold for a year.

When I asked Wieman why he chose to come to UBC — he was previously at the University of Colorado, and as Nobel laureate could have landed a position and received funding at any major U.S. university — he mentioned a couple of factors. But the one that surprised me involved the way that for-profit sports are, in his view, distorting the mission of the U.S. university:

Wieman:… One feature I often point out is [UBC’s] football coach gets paid like an assistant professor, not, like, 10 times the university president. People just don’t realize that college athletics at public universities [in the U.S.] has become so dominant that the governing boards, the presidents, are thinking about the success of the football team first and undergraduate education second.
Q: I hadn’t thought about the fact that college sports might have played into your decision.
A It’s really so crazy. You go to a U.S. university and you look at what fraction of the governing board time is spent on athletic stuff as opposed to the rest of the university and, you know, it might be 50 per cent.
Q: And the NCAA recently opened its doors to non-American schools. Some Canadian universities are thinking about joining.
A: And UBC is one of them. I screamed when I found out!

Plan to become the first Canadian university in the main U.S. college sports league is delayed for at least a year

The University of British Columbia will wait until at least next year before deciding if it will join the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division II in the United States.

The NCAA, the main U.S. college sports league, opened membership beyond the U.S. for the first time in January 2009 as a pilot project with Canadian schools. UBC is currently a member of Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS).

A report by a UBC committee did not recommend for or against a UBC application to join the NCAA.

“A lack of answers to critical questions means deferral until at least 2010 of a decision on whether or not to apply for membership,” the university said in a release Thursday.

One of the reports co-authors said respondents to surveys and open houses were divided on the benefits of joining the NCAA. David Farrar, the UBC’s vice-president academic, also said there remains insufficient information to allow the university to determine NCAA suitability before a June 2009 window for application.

“There are some critical unanswered questions that leave open options as to whether or not NCAA participation is the appropriate way to go for the university and its student athletes,” Farrar said.

Among the questions is whether or not UBC could receive an exemption from the NCAA for its academic accreditation requirement.

Further unresolved issues revolve around discussions about the level of competitive opportunities and financial support for student athletes that UBC and other universities are having with CIS, the main body in which most UBC athletes currently compete.

It is also unlikely to be clear until after the June NCAA deadline whether or not CIS will allow universities to compete in both the CIS and the NCAA.

- The Canadian Press