So the NCAA has finally decided on its approach with regards to the unaccredited schools that seem like diploma mills for kids — especially regarding basketball. The approach is, some of you are under the gun.
Early next week, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is expected to release its first list of high schools lacking proper academic rigor, which means those schools’ transcripts will no longer be accepted by the N.C.A.A. The Southeastern Conference is expected to pass legislation today that will give the commissioner’s office final authority on questionable transcripts, Vanderbilt Chancellor Gordon Gee said.
The N.C.A.A. vice president Kevin Lennon said in a telephone interview yesterday that the N.C.A.A. had been making unannounced visits to schools to research their legitimacy.
Lennon said that the N.C.A.A. sent out a questionnaire to about 50 schools requesting more information on their academics. He said that the schools that did not respond would be removed from the N.C.A.A.’s list of approved schools, which would essentially mean that students who attend those schools could not qualify for athletic scholarships.
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“We’ve identified those schools that we need to make contact with immediately,” Lennon said. “We know that kids are waiting for decisions, and schools are waiting for decisions. We’re trying to put some priority and order to this.”
The list of high schools lacking proper academic rigor is expected to affect college basketball the most, as many of the questionable schools were set up around basketball teams.
This is arguably fair and unfair. It’s fair since there are private prep schools and high schools that are completely legit and have never had questions about them even if they lack accreditation from a state, while other states accreditation procedures are so meaningless that they are of practically no value. So you can’t simply go by accreditation, and given the large volume of schools in the country, you need to start somewhere. The NCAA and the member institutions are ostensibly about education first (try not to laugh). Let’s face it, there aren’t going to be many people able to articulate a good reason to oppose the NCAA at least asking some of these places to simply provide some documentation and proof that they are more than diploma mills.
It’s unfair since they are picking and choosing which schools to prove they are legit without explaining why they were targeted. It could be because certain coaches whining about a player going to a conference foe or losing out on the player, and looking for a way to make things more difficult. It could be from evaluating academic results in the NCAA schools and picking out the students from certain schools on the list that seem to struggle. Maybe simply because they received negative press *cough* Philadelphia Lutheran Academy *cough*.
Some of the targeted or potentially targeted schools are looking into options.
Don Jackson, a lawyer based in Montgomery, Ala., who said he had handled more than 20 N.C.A.A. cases the past four years, said that he had already been contacted by 10 high schools to seek his legal advice.
“I fully expect a wave of lawsuits,” Jackson said. “The N.C.A.A. is not an accrediting agency and not the state department of education. They have no legal authority to make value judgments on the quality of education in a school.”
But will anyone actually sue? A lawsuit would still cause an examination of their academics and operations.
What is a big potential danger for a lot of programs is that this policy will affect kids coming in this season. So if, say Lutheran Christian Academy gets tagged, that is going to matter to kids who will be going to George Washington and Texas A&M among others. Suddenly, they are not academically eligible and therefore there goes that scholarship. The basketball program just wasted a scholarship and the kid is back to trying to get to legit standards for admission.
