After two ESPN segments criticized the academic rigor of Duke athletes late last week, administrators are chiding the programs for their unfair bias.
A Thursday night segment on Sportscenter, entitled "Duke's Double Standard," implied that Duke's academic standards have fallen in the last 10 years as the basketball program has tried to recruit top players.
Friday night's "Outside the Lines" special on graduation rates and college athletics, said basketball players choose to concentrate in sociology more than any other major and cited criticism of Duke's summer courses, independent studies and other popular classes for athletes.
"Both programs were heavily tilted towards a particular version of the story the journalists wanted to tell," President Nan Keohane said in an e-mail. "The interview segments presented were disproportionately with those who are critical of our admissions and academic standards... whereas the other side of the story, and those who wanted to tell it, were given shorter shrift."
In response to the show, John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, sent a memo to administrators. He noted that Duke has one of the highest graduation rates in Division 1 athletics.
Chris Kennedy, associate director of athletics, said he, Director of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag and sociology department chair Kenneth Spenner were all interviewed for the program, but only a short piece of Kennedy's interview was part of the Friday segment.
"I don't know why people have to make things up," said men's basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski.
"It's that old thing--is the glass half full or half empty? I didn't understand why we were in the show, because the show was titled, OZero Percent Graduation Rates,' and we were in it and they said we had a 100 percent graduation rate."
Stuart Rojstaczer, an associate professor of earth sciences who appeared on the programs as a critical voice, also said he thought the program was biased against Duke.
In addition to Rojstaczer, ESPN showed interviews with Duke guard Jason Williams, former players Crawford Palmer and William Avery, former admissions officer Rachel Toor and Brody Greenwald, Trinity '01, who served as the sports editor of The Chronicle last year.
Most administrators said standards have not been lowered for athletes at Duke over the past 10 years but that the perception might exist since standards for non-athletes have become more stringent.
"So if the athletic standards remain pretty much the same as they were in 1990, I think relative to the general admissions standards, it could be perceived as a lowering," Kennedy said.
But ESPN noted a long string of basketball players who have had academic troubles, including Avery and Andre Sweet, who was on academic probation last year before transferring from Duke.
"It would be a double standard if they didn't flunk, if they weren't punished," Krzyzewski said. "It shows that if you're a basketball player and you do something wrong, you're going to be punished."
Kennedy said it is natural for athletes to have a hard time with schoolwork, but Rojstaczer said there are not enough hours in the day for revenue sports athletes to succeed in the classroom.
Avery, who left Duke after his freshman year in 1999 to go to the NBA, said in the report he was at Duke for basketball, not academics, and that even if he was interested in academics, he would not have had time to study as much as other students.
Kennedy said it may be ESPN, however, and not Duke that has the double standard.
"The most ironic thing about [the Thursday segment], as far as I was concerned, was the next promotion was a game on ESPN that night," Kennedy said.
"They just finished talking about Duke's double standards and then--boom--there's a promotion, OWatch Duke play Virginia on ESPN tonight.' They're trying to have their cake and eat it too."
Kevin Lloyd contributed to this story.
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