How to Deal With the Student Athlete

Two years ago, they were on the practice field instead of in the library. Today, they are sitting next to you in a history, English or science lecture. And two years from now, they may be in the NBA, NFL or some European league.

All around us, in a wide variety of majors and classes, sit what are commonly termed as "student athletes." Some of them bring athletic talent, some are definite intellectuals and a few even possess an abundance of both. But the question often arises: Should these athletes even be in our classes?

The average Duke student--one who does not have the ability to run a 4.3 second 40-yard dash or dunk a basketball--is held up to a lofty set of admissions standards. According to Cristoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions at Duke, the middle 50% of freshmen entering Duke in the 1994-95 academic year scored between 1210 and 1420 on their SATs. Meanwhile, the prospective Division I student athlete often is asked to meet a more relaxed set of academic standards. This leads to several ethical questions, namely, should athletes be given a different set of standards for admissions? how low should these standards be? and how accountable should we hold these athletes once they enter Duke?

Those in positions of power at Duke overwhelmingly say that in the admissions process student athletes should be held to a different set of standards.

"We certainly take athletic ability into account," Guttentag says. "We take it into account in two ways. If a student is an accomplished athlete in high school--he's made a commitment, has accomplished something in that--we take that as seriously as we take any other commitment to any other extra-curricular activity.

"At the same time, if one of the coaches at Duke is actively recruiting an athlete--a student--thinks that they can help the team, thinks they are going to make a difference, we take that into account as well, and that's more beneficial to an applicant than if they're not being recruited by a coach. Every student that we accept, athlete or otherwise, we do so with the firm belief that they have the ability and capability of graduating in four years."

By and large, excelling at athletics is treated the same as excelling at a different type of activity, such as dancing or art. Guttentag believes that putting in your time and achieving goals in any activity will make you stand out in the application process; but due to society's idolization of athletes, he admits that someone who possesses a physical, athletic talent always will be looked at in a different light.

"I definitely believe that athletes, or other people with special talents, should receive a break in certain admissions requirements," says starting lacrosse goalie Joe Kirmser. "But I definitely think there is a limit to that idea. You do have to look at the environment of each individual. Eliminating someone only on the basis of a score doesn't make a school any better. Athletes give something back to the school."

"I don't have a problem with them getting into Duke," says Trinity senior Josh Brown. "I have a problem with them getting scholarship money. If they are staying here to get a diploma, they should have to go by the same requirements as the rest of us."

There are certainly those athletes who have no problems achieving those requirements. Sophomore basketball player Trajan Langdon, for instance, receives no scholarship money because he received payment for playing baseball in the summer; his exceptional SAT score--over 1200--and 3.9 high school GPA made him more than qualified to attend Duke. Similarly, Trinity '95 football player Zaid Abdul-Aleem may have been better known for his ability to speak five languages than his ability to shadow a wide receiver. Despite playing football for five years, Abdul-Aleem was able to take enough classes and do well enough in them to receive a prestigious Fulbright scholarship.

On the other side, there are those athletes who swagger into class only once a week, and when they grace everyone with that presence, they usually do it 10 minutes late and goof off during the rest of the lecture. Sociology professor Joel Smith has seen many athletes pass through his classes at Duke. He recalls one athlete who only showed up for class twice during the semester and never bothered to hand in any of the homework. Smith has no qualms giving an `F' to a student who gives not enough effort to even attempt the work.

Smith, however, adds that he also has taught many bright athletes who make it a point to attend class prepared and do the same workload as everyone else.

"I think it's fair to make special exemptions for athletes," he says. "But it's something you either make exemptions for or you don't. By and large, I think we do a good job of only letting in people who can handle the academic load. I've had one or two athletes who probably shouldn't have been let in, but I've also seen a handful of regular students who shouldn't have been let in."

That seems to be the majority opinion of students, professors and administrators alike: While not every athlete granted admission to Duke seizes the opportunity for higher education, neither does every regular student.

"One of the things that I like about Duke is the extent to which we can honestly accomplish having an outstanding academic program and an outstanding Division I athletic program at the same time," Guttentag says. "I think Duke is one of two schools in the country that do that exceptionally well [the other one being Stanford], especially with Division I scholarships."

Assuming a belief that student athletes can carry their own load and belong at the University, another question flows logically: Should there be a baseline standard below which no one can be admitted?

Athletic director Tom Butters doesn't think so. SAT scores, or other standardized test scores for that matter, do not give proof positive that a student can or can not make it through Duke University, Butters says.

"I think that there are certainly some reasonable cutoffs," he says. "But I don't know if they are the same for everyone. Everybody agrees that there is a point, but there are so many extenuating circumstances in regards to admissions. If a kid has a 980 on the boards--which would be considerably less than the 1300, or whatever our average may be--and he's done extraordinarily well in the classroom--he's graduating high in his class, he's made many contributions to the playing field, or to painting, or to dancing or to whatever it is his talents are--then I think the admissions office ought to take a look at him."

Butters, who prefers to leave the business of granting admission to that office, recalls only one time when he directly approached an admissions officer on behalf of an applicant. It was a minority student whose SATs were less than normally desired at Duke, but well above NCAA requirements. His rank in class was termed exceptional. The student lived in poverty in a home that had dirt floors. Butters remembers an old car parked out back that had two bumper stickers stuck to it: one from a service academy and one from Harvard. The recruit's two brothers had graduated from those institutions.

"I asked the admissions office at that time to take a very careful look and to reevaluate that young man. He was, by the way, not admitted." Butters noted that the student was accepted and later graduated from another university.

Proponents of student athletes will be quick to point out that there is no way to tell from a certain test or a certain number whether or not a student will succeed. Many people come from different backgrounds and were never given the opportunity to truly perform academically. The opponents of the SAT argue that the test can be culturally biased resulting in lower scores among blacks or other minorities. For these reasons and others, the University puts many variables into the acceptance equation.

"What we do with athletes is no different than what we do with anyone else in the sense that the very first thing we consider in reviewing any applicant--and this it true of athletes as well as regular students--we look at the transcript," Guttentag says. "On the transcript, we look at the strength of the transcript, we look at the performance in classes and we look at standardized testing. Those three things together, as a rule, give us a pretty good idea, often a very good idea, of whether a student has the potential to succeed at Duke. And not just to barely succeed at Duke, but to honestly succeed at Duke.

"Ultimately, we receive letters of recommendation from teachers, the students write essays for us, they discuss their own activities. " The result is scores that are oftentimes significantly lower than those achieved by a regular Duke student.

For the freshmen athletes entering Duke in the 1990-91 academic year through the 1993-94 academic year the average GPA was 3.31, the average SAT score was 1073 and the average ACT score was 25 according to the Official NCAA 1994 Graduation-Rates Report for the University. Translation: Duke athletes have SATs that, on average, are 200 points behind the average Duke student. It's a fact that, nevertheless, doesn't worry Butters.

"I don't [look at scores] for a variety of reasons," Butters says. "Number one, averages in basketball are so skewed because there are so few. So if you have one player with a lower score--and I can assure you that there are no seven hundreds--that would be like saying that our tennis program, which is ranked in the top five in the nation, must also have athletes that are low in SATs, which is not the case."

Butters maintains, "We have a lot of great programs here with fine student athletes with great board scores."

While the athletic director claims there is no student with a 700 or 710 SAT score in the program right now, it does not mean that the athletic department has not pursued student athletes with low scores in the past. In recent years, two of Duke's most publicized recruits were questionable when it came to academic requirements, not only for Duke, but for the NCAA. In an interview during the recruitment process last year, basketball recruit Vince Carter told The Chronicle that he maintained a 3.0 grade point average in high school and that he was close, but had not yet achieved the NCAA minimum ACT score of 17. Keith Booth, now a star with the Maryland Terrapins, did not achieve the minimum NCAA SAT score of 700 until mid-February of his senior year in high school according to the Washington Post, but still remained a top Duke recruit for nearly two years.

But even with the lower scores, plus the many commitments that result from being an athlete, most claim that they can handle the seemingly vast workload.

"I think [student athletes] are definitely good for the university for diversity," said Mike Stallmeyer, a senior football player and economics major at Duke. "They may not have as high an SAT as others, but that doesn't mean that they are not as intelligent. Often they can contribute a lot more to their classes. People with extra-curricular activities, like athletics, can be more disciplined and organized, more willing to put in an extra effort."

The requirements for being a Division I athlete go well beyond the maximum 20 hours of practice that the NCAA allows. Between travel time, cleaning up after practice and doing extra workouts on their own, the athlete can put in nearly 40 hours of work pertaining to athletics, thus exhibiting the effort of which Stallmeyer speaks.

"It's a lot on your plate," adds lacrosse's Kirmser. "I view it as a great challenge. It's almost like I have a full-time job that's physically demanding. When I get home some days, I am exhausted, but I still have three or four hours of homework like the normal Duke students."

Stallmeyer chose Duke over Ohio State, Penn State and Illinois because of the chance to get a first-rate education in addition to playing Division I football. Athletes like Stallmeyer, ones who chose a more academic school over an athletic powerhouse and then graduate, are what give student athletes a positive name. It may be the biggest reason why Duke has never assigned a bottom-line for its applicants.

"SAT is not particularly helpful [in gauging college performance]," says Chris Kennedy, a University vice president and head of Duke's academic support staff in the athletic department for the past 17 years. "It's always been helpful that we don't have a low SAT cutoff. A low SAT score doesn't worry me as much as other things. GPA is the best predictor of how they will do in college."

Coaches can recruit whoever they want to play sports, says Guttentag, but the recruit still has to pass through the admissions process without the help of the coach. Coaches know this and do not pursue athletes unless they feel that the recruit will be admitted and will be able to handle the workload.

"We're very involved in the recruiting process," Pressler says. "We try to find out what kind of student they are, what kind of grades and scores they have. When he's in that range of scores we look for, we go after him. We just can't go after an athlete if he isn't in the range.

"I don't care how good he or she is at a sport. We are not going to dip down below the admissions standards. Because if they get in, they'll have trouble. If that happens, everybody loses: the kid loses, the program loses, the school loses."

Although athletics is the first thing people think of when they talk about special standards, there are a wide variety of different of people who can be accepted despite certain faults.

"If my current [9:10 a.m.] class were taught in the afternoon, I would have 10 less students in the class because the athletes in there couldn't take it because of a time conflict with practice," Professor Smith says. "But there would probably be a few more students who would take the class [in the afternoon], but don't right now because it is in the morning. We don't discriminate against those students who can't perform academically in the morning and refuse to wake up before noon."

But admissions requirements are thrown out the window once the students arrive on campus. A coach can guide them on the practice field, but once they sit down for their first test in "Intro to Whatever," it's just them and the paper, which engenders the questions about how helpful the faculty can or should be.

"I don't know of any colleagues who have shown a bias one way or the other," Smith says. "Many of them have given athletes encouragement, but they don't make it any easier on them. If they cut classes, they fail."

Alan Biermann, a computer science professor who says that he recognizes many of the athletes in his class from articles in the newspaper, believes that while professors often recognize athletes quicker, biases don't factor into grading.

"As far as I know," Biermann says, "in the 21 years I've taught here, Duke is as clean as clean can be when it comes to athletes and scholarship. I've never heard of anything wrong."

Once the student enters the University, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions will keep a few statistics, but they have no responsibility in getting the new matriculants to graduation. That task falls upon Chris Kennedy and his staff, a group that advises, tutors and teaches better time-management skills. While Kennedy wants to make sure that Duke does the best possible job it can in helping students graduate, he takes a laid-back approach, making the athletes take on the responsibility.

"[The program] depends on the athlete," Kennedy says. "What we are trying to do is answer a need, not impose a program on everyone. What's going to help one person may be a waste of time for another.

"Ideally you want the students to be responsible for everything themselves. You don't want a senior leaving this school looking for someone to hold their hand--that's where the responsibility needs to be... in the student."

Apparently the approach is working, for Duke athletics is not only a perennial powerhouse on the court and field, but in the classroom as well. According to the 1995 NCAA Graduation-Rates Report released in the July 7, 1995 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Duke graduated 90 percent of the student athletes that entered in the academic year of 1987-88, and 94 percent of the student athletes who matriculated in 1988-89. These numbers not only put Duke at the top of the Atlantic Coast Conference, but also at the top of the nation. In comparison, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduated 75 and 76 percent of its athletes in those two years, while North Carolina State graduated 48 and 59 percent, respectively.

While these numbers make Duke something of the model program, in some respects, they might be considered a little low. Because the NCAA considers transfer students as undergraduates who didn't graduate, Duke's graduation rate--not considering those athletes who transfer, is, in fact, closer to 100 percent. This is best shown through the Duke men's basketball team. While the NCAA often has the Blue Devils listed at a 70 or 80 percent graduation rate, the fact is that only two basketball players in the past 25 years have not graduated from Duke or another four-year university, according to Kennedy.

In another sport often pointed to as having students with dubious academic skills, the Duke football team for the last three years has captured the College Football Association's Academic Achievement Award for having the most players graduate within a five-year period, and seven times since the award's inception in 1981. In the past decade, Duke has graduated approximately 93 percent of its scholarship players.

Even with all of the success, however, the athletic department sees this as nothing out of the ordinary.

"I think a lot of people are incorrect in always pointing the finger towards graduation rates," Butters says. "My interest is not in graduating, as much as it is in educating. The fact is they do graduate here--some 96 percent--but there would be something wrong to graduate them, [and] to not have them educated to the point where they can go into society and make a contribution. So [academic services] tries to provide for these young student athletes an opportunity to grow totally. And I think we've been relatively successful doing it."

Butters also dislikes the comparison of Duke to other schools around the nation. Although Duke consistently leads the country in academic categories, and has put more athletes on the ACC Honor Roll in four of the past five years than any other school, Butters only wants recognition for what Duke does compared to its own standards.

"The charge of Duke University is substantially different than the charge of a land-grant state institution," Butters says. "Our requirements are different, our selectivity is different, what we are afforded of doing or not doing is not the same as at all other universities.

"So if institution X is graduating 60 percent of its student athletes, that may be remarkably successful given the parameters and circumstances under which they find themselves. So while we're proud of the fact that we graduate 96 percent of our student-athletes, my wonder, at times, is what about that other 4 percent. Given our requirements, and given the attention that is given to the recruitment of student athletes, not only by us, but by the admissions office, we should be graduating 96 percent. So I can't take a lot of satisfaction from that number, we should be expected to do that."

The value of student athletes at universities will continue to be a hot topic of debate in the future. With the continued upward spiral of professional salaries, colleges are becoming minor league systems where athletes can showboat their wares for prospective teams. This is a polar opposite to the primary goal of most schools--to educate and prepare students for a world where athletic ability may not be the main determinant of success.

Duke, nevertheless, seemingly has remained upon a pedestal. Meanwhile some programs have become mired in the difficult swamp of graduating athletes not qualified to be at that institution in the first place. While the numbers achieved by Duke's incoming freshmen athletes may be lower than the general incoming freshman, the graduation rate of athletes proves that Guttentag and his staff have not compromised the mission of this university.

And when the issues surrounding student athletes are couched in those terms, the notion of lower standards becomes all the more viable.