Pitzer in the News 2004-2005 Academic Year

Pace Setter for Graduating College Athletes

This article appeared in the Opinon section of the December 29, 2004 edition of the Boston Globe.

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | December 29, 2004

SOME COLLEGE students know how to run for their lives. Take cross-country athletes. They do not get the ink. They do not get the television time. They do not have governors, alumni, and 70,000 fans fawning all over them, telling them how critical they are to the mental health of an entire state.

But to borrow from the Wizard of Oz, they have one thing a whole lot of their big and bad brethren in football do not have -- a diploma.

As college football players and coaches breathe fire and roar, "I am the great and all-powerful," the meek and mild pitter-patter of little munchkins in the woods reminds us that "student-athletes" need not be a fantasy. According to recommendations by the Knight Commission on college sports, teams should not be allowed in post-season bowls, tournaments, or meets if they do not have a graduation rate of 50 percent or more. That recommendation would knock out 27 of the 56 colleges -- one short of half -- from the current holiday bowl games for big Division 1 schools.

Contrast that semipro farce to the squads in November's National Collegiate Athletic Association women's and men's cross-country championships. Of the 31 teams that competed in the Division 1 women's meet in Terre Haute, Ind., 30 had a graduation rate of 50 percent or higher for their scholarship cross-country and track athletes. The average graduation rate for all the teams was 76 percent, way above the 61 percent average graduation rate for all women in Division 1 universities.

The schools that had graduation rates of 80 percent or higher were: Duke, Providence, Notre Dame, Stanford, Michigan, Missouri, Columbia, California-Santa Barbara, Princeton, Wake Forest, Washington, Colorado State, Marquette, and Butler (I substituted the general women's graduation rate for Columbia and Princeton, which do not give out scholarships).

Even more impressive was women's Division III for the smallest schools. Those schools are so tiny that they do not offer athletic scholarships. But the general graduation rate for women for the 24 teams that went to Colfax, Wis., was 79 percent. All 24 schools had a female graduation rate at least 50 percent. Among the colleges that had graduation rates of 80 percent or more were Williams, Middlebury, Amherst, Colby, Washington (Mo.), Carleton, SUNY-Geneseo, Wesleyan (Conn.), Colorado College, and Haverford.

The average for the 24 teams at the women's Division II meet in Evansville, Ind., was 63 percent, significantly above the 48 percent for all women in Division II schools. Going by whichever graduation rate came up first, for either cross-country and track, for "other" athletes or for the general female student body, schools at 70 percent or more were UMass-Lowell, Stonehill, Adams State, Harding, Central Missouri State, North Florida, Colorado-Colorado Springs, Kutztown, Truman State, and Mars Hill.

The 24 teams in the Division III men's meet in Colfax were almost right up there with the women. Again, those schools generally do not give athletic scholarships, but their overall male graduation rate was 74 percent. The schools 80 percent or higher were Tufts, Bates, Williams, Haverford, Carleton, Chicago, Emory, and Pomona-Pitzer.

Division 1 male cross-country runners were not as impressive as Division 1 women, but easily sprinted past big-time football teams. Of the 30 squads at the national men's meet in Terre Haute, 25 had graduation rates of 50 percent or higher. Providence, Butler, Stanford, Notre Dame, Air Force, Georgetown, North Carolina State, American, Michigan State, and Colorado State had cross-country/track graduation rates 75 percent or more.

None of the winners of the NCAA cross-country championships are household names. There is no national holding of the breath for a Heisman Trophy, no silly national debate over computer rankings for the bowls, no draft into the pros.

From the graduation rates, that obviously does not matter to cross-country runners. They are running for something greater than a bowl. They are running for their lives, toward the rest of their lives.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.