College basketball player Kevin Ross, who's 23 and 6 feet 9 inches tall, started class this week [in September 1982] with seventh-and eighth-graders.
He has just spent four years at Creighton University in Omaha on an athletic scholarship without getting a degree, and he's intent on learning the basics that he somehow missed in high school and college.
Ross is quite talented at basketball, a captain of the team, but he wasn't wooed by the pros. And he has a clear-eyed determination to be ready academically for whatever life brings.
"I'm here to catch up," Ross said.
"My reading is about 65 percent; my spelling is about 40 percent. And reading comprehension, I can't get a percentage on.
"I just wish people in education would make sure students get an education."
Creighton officials said they agree with Ross on that.
Creighton is paying for his stay at Marva Collins' Westside Preparatory School, and athletic director Dan Offenburger went to Chicago today to help Ross find a place to live.
"We strongly encouraged Kevin" to attend Westside Prep, said Offenburger. "But basically it came down to Kevin accepting the challenge. He is a pioneer student, a 23-year-old man studying with grammar school and junior high kids."
Ross still wants to be a teacher, as he did when he entered Creighton.
Ross said he's considering looking for a job so he can afford to stay here. But Offenburger said that may not be necessary. "We found the (Creighton) stipend is sufficient in Omaha but not sufficient in Chicago. I've just got to get out in the streets with him and find a place for him to live. We're looking to schools or churches or private individuals."
Before Ross enrolled at Westside Prep, Creighton arranged for him and his mother to visit the school. Ross's mother, Opal Ross of Kansas City, Kan., is a postal worker who reared six children. Ross is her youngest. One of his sisters is a college graduate and pharmacist.
"I first heard of Westside Prep on TV," Ross said. The private school has 244 students, was founded by Collins, and is in its eighth year. It is basically for preschoolers through eighth-graders.
Collins, a former Chicago public school teacher, gained a national reputation for teaching youngsters who had been given up for lost educationally.
Ross's education deficit apparently started early. He was an "all-everything" at sports at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, where he finished 10th, 11th and 12th grades.
He feels he did not get a good education at Wyandotte. "Only once did a teacher lay it on the line and give me 5-that's like an F-in class. And a coach taught me two other classes. I'd get A's and B's in them.
"When I got out of high school, I had a 2.0 grade average, which is what you've got to have to get into Creighton."
When Ross was recruited by Creighton, he said, "They told me you’re going to be starting (at basketball), you're going to get your degree.
"All those school years, I gave 150 percent in basketball and I got 50 percent of an education."
His first two years at Creighton, Ross said, "I took courses that were not required for my major, a lot of Mickey Mouse courses, Ceramics, Introduction to Football."
But Offenburger said, "I would hate to see us look bad" on that. "With the dean's approval, we arranged, as we do for many students with particular problems, a lighter load in number of hours and types of courses."
When Ross finished his junior year, he said he felt "they were just trying to keep me eligible for basketball. And I was a good jumper and scorer."
Offenburger said, "Midway in his career, we found he had some difficulty with advanced courses in the curriculum. We worked with him through a special testing service in the summertime two years ago at the University of Missouri-Kansas City."
Ross was a forward and center on Creighton's Bluejays, and a captain.
In Ross' junior year, when Tom Apke was coach, the Bluejays won 21 and lost 9. In his senior year, former Knickerbocker star Willis Reed became coach and the team won 7 and lost 20.
Ross felt things changed for him with Reed as coach. "In the next to the last game, everybody played but me." he said. "I was captain but I was getting a backseat. And my worst grade card was in my senior year. My best were as a freshman and sophomore."
Offenburger said Creighton offered to pay for Westside.
"I think we've been working the last two years to best figure out how best to meet our obligations to Kevin," Offenburger said.
Ross said he is determined to stick it out at Westside Prep the full academic year.
Collins called Ross's motives in joining Westside Prep "very admirable" and added that "he hopes to make up in one year what he wasn't able to do in four years."
Kevin Ross's educational experience as a college athlete sounds extreme, but it is not all that unusual. More than a few athletes spend four years in college with little to show for it but memories and a few stray credits. Where Kevin's case becomes unusual is in the help that people at Creighton and elsewhere gave him after his four years of playing eligibility expired. Although Kevin could no longer play basketball, Creighton, to its credit, extended his scholarship for another year and encouraged him to go back to junior high school to pick up the basic skills that he had somehow missed his first time around. To Kevin's credit, he agreed. Only a person with an uncommonly strong drive to learn and to grow, along with the personal strength to ignore ridicule could have done this. Needless to say, most athletes who have been cheated out of their education just accept their fate as "the way it is" and fail to recover their lost educational skills-ever.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE WHEN ATHLETES DONT GET THEIR FAIR SHARE?
Knowing who is responsible for the athlete getting a good education is far more important than assigning blame. Parents of athletes, high school and college coaches, and most important, the athletes themselves must keep alert that they as students are headed in the right direction. Unfortunately, parents are often seen as intruders in the relationship between coaches and athletes. Parents sometimes even see themselves in this light and avoid becoming involved. But it is clearly all parents' right and responsibility to be aware of what is occurring in their children's education, including the athletic part. The trick is for parents to approach their sons and daughters and their coaches in a concerned, inquisitive way rather than in a challenging way. A coach who has nothing to hide is likely to welcome parents who inquire about their son's or daughter's performance in school and request hard data about his or her progress toward a degree.
Many high school and college coaches want to be concerned with the overall welfare, growth, and progress of their student-athletes. But in reality, coaches have to weigh those concerns against the task that keeps them in their job-namely, building and running a competitive and profitable athletic program. When one concern-the long-term welfare of athletes-is weighed against the other-producing a winning team and, in the process, ensuring job security-the latter often tips the scale.
Responsibility for the athlete's welfare is primarily up to the athlete. Knowing that coaches face often intense pressures to produce winning teams should give you incentive to protect yourself. The plight of Kevin Ross illustrates only too well that you can't count on anyone else to look out for your academic interests.
SIGNS OF TROUBLE: HOW TO TELL IF YOU ARE BEING EXPLOITED
Kevin Ross was passing classes, he just wasn't learning anything. If he had it to do over, only Kevin himself could have made the situation any different. Only he knew how little he was progressing as a student. Passing only the minimum number of units necessary to stay eligible for sports does not "take care of business." Your business as a student is to get a good education, the kind that will help you thrive in the world after college and athletics. To take care of your educational business, you need:
- more than 12 units each term so as to graduate in a reasonable amount of time and before your funds dry up (whether that money comes from a scholarship, a loan, or your parents); and
- the right classes (i.e., meaningful and useful ones that make you struggle and stretch your abilities, not just those that provide easy grades)
The following fictitious scenarios represent real situations that many college athletes find themselves in. Each is followed by a likely (and harmful) result.
SCENARIO: All Billy Joe ever wanted to do was be an athlete. He doesn't really care about college; instead, he is just happy to be a college athlete. The coaching staff is all too happy to have Billy Joe be nothing more than an athlete and devote all his time to training. They are "taking care of him" and Billy Joe may even graduate, although the few times he goes to class he realizes how much more everyone else knows.
RESULT: Billy Joe may, indeed, be given a diploma, but it won't be worth much. Even if he gets through a job interview and is hired, Billy Joe won't last long, because in the world of work, employers don't tolerate dead weight. Billy Joe may not even be able to get a job as a truck driver because the employer will wonder why someone with a college degree wants to drive a truck for a living.
SCENARIO: Bubba is staying eligible for sports, but he has been avoiding all the tough classes he'll have to take to graduate. He plans to take them after his eligibility expires and he can devote more time to such classes. Coach told him to do this and it sounded pretty reasonable, especially when Coach said he would try to extend Bubba's scholarship or find him a job to help him through that extra year or two of school. "One thing at a time," Coach always says.
RESULT: Bubba couldn't handle all those tough classes at once, especially after having taken easy ones for four years. Bubba hung it up and decided a college degree wasn't worth the effort anyway.
SCENARIO: Barbie competed for four years, used up her eligibility, and then dropped out of school lacking about a year's worth of credits for graduation. She just "got tired of being in school." She thought that, maybe after working for a year or two, she would return and finish her degree. That was five years ago. Besides, she doesn't really mind being a waitress. Rotten hours, and people can be pretty nasty to waitresses, but tips are good and...
RESULT: Barbie probably won't ever return to school. The cost of school is so much more now and the longer she waits, the more she is likely to be intimidated by professors, other students, loss of her study skills, computers, and whatever else is new on the college scene. Waitresses can earn a good living, but work conditions aren't the greatest and there isn't much room for advancement.
SCENARIO: Betty Lou cares about getting an education, but her coach demands so much time that she can't give all she would like to her schoolwork. In fact, her coach has tried to advise her against taking a couple of tough courses that would help Betty Lou get into graduate school. ("Part of the price you pay for being an athlete," the coach said.) Betty Lou took the courses anyway (risking her coach's wrath), but didn't do well since she couldn't devote enough time to them because of team commitments.
RESULT: Betty Lou got into graduate school (although not the one she wanted) but is struggling to keep up with the other students. The stuff that she didn't learn in her undergraduate major they know backwards and forwards. And in graduate school there is no time to go back and learn the basics, especially since she also has to hold down a part-time job to make ends meet. Besides, graduate schools require students to maintain at least a B average. Betty Lou is considering dropping out before they kick her out.
SCENARIO: Bruce's friend Bart did only what was necessary to stay eligible for sports, then dropped out of school, and is now making a lot of money at a pretty good job. Bruce looks at Bart's life and wonders what's so all-fired necessary about making sure he gets a good and complete college education.
RESULT: For every Bart you hear about, there are twenty you don't hear about who are pushing a broom, driving a taxi, or selling used cars.
Other situations that can keep you from getting your fair share from your years in college include:
- majoring in a field that is not of your own choosing
- taking nothing but gut courses so as to remain eligible for sports; this is called "majoring in eligibility"
- being assigned to courses with other athletes mainly to keep you together
- avoiding socializing with non-athletes
- accepting the coach's suggestion (which you construe as a direct order) to take a summer job that will build your body, when you would rather take a job that helps in your major or career plans
- by demanding so much time that you cannot perform your best in courses that you want or need for your future
- by steering you into courses that are easy but less valuable for your future, so that you won't take time and energy away from team commitments
- by arranging aspects of your life (such as meals, housing, or leisure activities) so that you will interact primarily with other athletes and also be more completely under the control of the coaching staff
Grant Darkow majored in biology and played linebacker for the University of Missouri. Honored as an Academic All-America, Darkow believes that the people who run college athletic programs have a responsibility to their student-athletes. Focusing on football, he says:
So many kids are going to colleges who have their hearts set on playing pro football but end up just being used. When they get through, what have they got if they didn't study? It's not only the responsibility of the student to study and get a degree, but it's also the responsibility of the administrators and the coaches to see he doesn't waste his time there and gets an education as well as the experience of being an athlete.
It may seem that at times in this chapter we've painted a bleak picture of college athletics, in which athletes invariably are forced to battle the system if they really want an education. In fact, at many schools that is just how it was for many years (and maybe still is). But you are fortunate in that those who run college athletics, from coaches to administrators to national college athletic associations, are becoming increasingly aware and concerned about athletes getting a fair chance at receiving a solid, well-rounded education and strong career preparation. As a result, the administrators and sports personnel you deal with are more likely to encourage and support you in these pursuits than in the past. Don't expect them to lead you to your academic and career rewards, because many people you will be involved with still may view student-athletes primarily as athletes. However, if you stand up for your rights as a student, your chances of getting all that should be coming your way in terms of a college education are better today than they were for athletes in the past. Being an athlete no longer necessarily means sacrificing important parts of your education. But the responsibility is still yours to make the system work for you, to get your full 110 percent from college in return for the extra effort that coaches expect from you as an athlete.
