4A
Thursday, January 19, 1995
OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: BAD DECISIONS BY THE NCAA
NCAA fails to consider effects of policies on student athletes
t just doesn't make sense. The NCAA is an organization of college and university leaders that was designed to speak for and act on behalf of national collegiate athletes.
But recently it decided not to let them earn even a minute amount of money. In addition, the NCAA punished partially qualifying athletes, regardless of their successes or failures in the classroom, by erasing an entire year of eligibility.
In its annual conference, the NCAA voted against allowing student athletes to have any paying job during the school year and in favor of increasing incoming freshmen eligibility requirements. By supporting such guidelines, the NCAA is severely punishing its most important asset — its student athletes.
No experience necessary
A proposal that would have allowed athletes on full scholarships to hold jobs paying as much as $1,500 a year was voted down by those attending the conference. Although the athletes do not have to pay for their schooling, they still have the same college expenses that other students have. Prohibiting a full-scholarship athlete from holding a job is unjust.
Students need to build their resumes while they are in school, and limiting full-scholarship athletes to unpaid internships for experience is restrictive. Students receiving other scholarships can seek any kind of employment they wish. Student athletes should have the same opportunity.
The NCAA and individual institutions collect multimillion dollar television contracts, money from bowl games and revenue from ticket sales. It is hypocritical not to allow the students, from whom they are making a profit, to earn $1,500 in a school year. The $1,500 limit included in the proposed rule would have prevented alumni from giving athletes exorbitant salaries. The NCAA would have to do only a little extra paper work to keep the $1,500 limit enforced.
The present rule denies full-scholarship athletes the bare minimum of finances and experience that every student needs,
In its annual conference, the NCAA said no to paid jobs and yes to higher requirements for student athletes
and the NCAA was wrong to keep it in place. But jobs were not the only target at the NCAA conference. Failure in success
Under the new rule concerning freshman eligibility requirements, incoming freshman must have a 2.5 grade point average in 13 college-prep courses and a 700 SAT or 17 ACT score. This recent rule change is especially ironic at the University of Kansas because in-state students only need a high school diploma to be admitted. Athletes actually are required to be smarter than in-state students.
The biggest injustice is for the partial qualifiers who must have a 2.5 GPA and a 600 SAT or 15 ACT score. Under NCAA rules, those athletes can receive a full athletic scholarship but cannot compete during their freshman years. Those athletes lose that year of eligibility and are only allowed to compete for three years. The NCAA is punishing those student athletes who come into college in academic trouble and then succeed in the classroom. The athletes should be rewarded for their hard work, not punished. KU did vote in favor of a fourth year of eligibility for the partial qualifiers, a gesture which should be commended.
An alternative would be to turn the first year for partial qualifiers into a redshirt year, which wouldn't allow them to compete but would give them the fourth year of eligibility they deserve.
The messages the NCAA sent from the conference were illogical and unfair. The NCAA can make millions, but its student athletes cannot make a mere $1,500. Not only that, certain athletes could be punished for hard work and success in the classroom. The next time an NCAA conference decides such issues, the representatives realistically need to consider the effects on the athletes, for whom the organization was formed in the first place.
It really doesn't make sense.
JENNY WIEDEKE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
STEPHEN MARTINO
Editor
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TOM EBLEN
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Michael Paul / KANSAN
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I have to make a confession.
Addict confesses to having the remote stuck on FOX
Before I do though, I must tell you that from time to time, confessions creep up my throat and escape before I even know what is happening. Fortunately, I usually confess philosophical inner beliefs rather than actual dirt and then only when I've had a few at a local watering hole in the safe company of friends. Sometimes I wonder if I'd have been a better Catholic if the good Father had drawn me a cold one and left a little basket of popcorn in that dark little closet with the curtain, but I'll never know.
The school thing is the real reason. Television is why all those K-State undergrads flunk out of "Intro to Animal Husbandry." With Rikki, Geraldo, Phil, Oraph and Eeea filling up the day they don't have time to mosey down to the barn for the weekly lab.
Fear stalks me like a bad metaphor, though. I can see life getting more and more hectic as the semester heats up. Extra study sessions or a meeting night crowd into those Monday and Wednesday night slots.
So, I go to a friend's place to do my watching. She clues me in to characters' nuances during commercials, and I ask dumb questions about why this and why that. She tells me to shut up and watch the show.
Television may not be that bad. It's decent, passive entertainment for a hard-working student — a relief from the stress of studying and an opportunity to catch up on old Nova shows, CNN, and countless shark attacks on the Discovery Channel. Better yet, it exists so I can catch the 'Hawks when they play on the road.
My friends always smile politely as I rumble, and all of us are afforded the opportunity to blow it off the next day as tipsy babble. Unless, of course, the babble made sense, which happens about as often as newt and Hillary go out to Karaoke night to sing, "I Only Have Eyes For You." Enough piddling around ... out with it already!
And I think I might be hooked.
What was I thinking? What am I doing? This might be an enormous mistake. How could I get a television and not get a VCR at the same time?
Know anyone that wants to unload one really cheap?
John Martin is a Lawrence first-year law student.
And I think I might be hooked.
My confession: I have now watched the "zip code" show and "Melrose RFD" two, maybe three straight weeks in a row. I will probably watch again. I even know the characters now, although sometimes (understandably) I mix up the shows. I know that the blond who married the heavy metal dude is a certifiable bitch every week. Jo, who was babe-like in "The Sure Thing" and "Gross Anatomy" loses her kid about every other show. What's his name, the skinny brown-
STAFF COLUMNIST
haired guy with the attitude — that could be any one of them — lost his stage fright and can now torment us with his weekly song in front of a gaggle of SoCal groupies. The pain in the butt from "A Different World" just showed up with a Josephine Baker hairdow. Two other dudes bonded in a Native-American steambath ritual. And the other blond, the producer's kid, well she doesn't do much, does she?
I would like to say that this newfound knowledge has all been an accident, a result of getting stuck on Fox because the remote battery went dead.
Not true. I don't even own a television. Well, I have a little black and white with a screen the size of a pop tart, but it's less a television than a shoebox-sized conversation piece that makes Letterman's Top Ten list look like an eye chart at ten paces. I don't have a real television because they are oppressors of a democratic people, tyrants against intellectualism, thieves of creativity. Yeah, right.
SUA fails to announce scheduling changes
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Frank Janzen Lawrence resident
Are they asleep at the wheel?
About 30 people showed up for the holiday movie, found the doors locked and stood around waiting. We called the University Information Center and heard the recording, "closed in honor of the holiday."
The Student Union Activities film schedule listed "Spanking the Monkey" at 8 p.m. Monday in the Kansas Union.
Surely someone with SUA could have put a sign on the doors to acknowledge the mistake.
Literary Excerpt
From "Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas," by Tom Robbins
"You read somewhere that in Botswana, the word pula means both money and hello. You like that arrangement. Whenever you meet somebody, you say 'money', and they say 'money' back. What a happy greeting! How honest and to the point! You read, further, that pula also may be translated as 'rain.' That's nice, too. Pennies from heaven, so to speak. Old Botswanans knowing it's going to rain because their wallets get stiff. And never a need to save for a rainy day. Staring into the sheet music of precipitation, you try to think of it as cascading cash, yet you remain at least partially aware that somewhere out there, not many blocks away, failed businessmen and their families are taking refuge from the weather beneath freeway ramps and in cardboard shacks. Maybe money would be better expressed by aloha than by pula. In each hello an implied good-bye."
Yellowstone wolves take rightful place after 60 years
Wolves are returning to Yellowstone National Park after they were exterminated by the National Park Service almost 60 years ago in order to alleviate ranchers' and farmers' fears that the wolves would prey on their livestock. The farmers and ranchers around the park show that
same fear today, and took legal action in an attempt to block the Park Service's efforts to reintroduce the wolf from Alberta. This fear reveals a basic misunderstanding of the predator's role in nature. Furthermore, it demonstrates the lack of understanding on the part of farmers
and ranchers that the federal government has set aside funds to compensate them for any livestock lost to predation on the part of the wolves, but that's another story.
I must admit, I'm happy to see the wolf return to Yellowstone. I've always rooted for predators and am always glad to see them take their rightful place in nature as an essential strand in the web of life. I always wanted the Coyote to catch the Roadrunner. I always get tears in my eyes when the majestic, powerful lioness finally brings down the gangly, scrawny gazelle on the National Geographic specials. I cheered for the shark in all the "Jaws" movies. I even laughed when they shot Bambi's mother. Maybe it's just me.
But I can't help thinking that the National Park Service should do more to educate people on the essential role of the predator in nature. And what better way to do that than to expose as many camp visitors as possible to predation in America's National Parks? Therefore the Park Service should drop sharks and killer whales into Lake Yellowstone and gators into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Releasing Siberian tigers into the Park would be another possibility, and many a vacationer certainly would be delighted to come across a pack of hyenas gnawing on the carcass of some poor biker who was just passing through the Park on the way to the biker convention in Sturgis, S.D., or to bump into polar bears rummaging through the garbage at the visitor's center or to step on cobras and boa constrictors on their way to hook up the RV generator as they prepare to "rough-it."
Yes, it's great to see the wolf return to Yellowstone.
Michael Paul is a Lawrence graduate student In political science.
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MIXED MEDIA
By Jack Ohman