College athletics, especially the high-revenue sports of football and basketball, are increasingly tarnished by academic fraud, dismal graduation rates and commercialization, a high-powered commission found in a report released Tuesday.
The Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics recommends sweeping changes to narrow what it calls "the widening chasm between higher education's ideals and big-time college sports."
The commission calls for athletes to face the same admission standards as other students. Teams would be banned from lucrative postseason games if they did not graduate at least half of their players.
The report states that, despite recommendations for reform issued a decade ago by the same commission, the danger of athletic success overshadowing academic values has grown rather than diminished. The authors describe the environment in college sports as "disgraceful."
"At the core of the problem is a prevailing money madness," the commissioners said in reference to football and basketball at the most competitive level.
Commissioners cited the huge influx of money from lucrative television contracts for basketball playoffs and bowl games, deals with shoe companies and the growing influence of other advertisers.
"With the money comes manipulation," according to the report. "Schools and conferences prostrate themselves to win and get on television. . . . So much for classroom commitments."
According to the report, just 48% of football players and 34% of men's basketball players in Division I schools earn degrees. Among African Americans the numbers are worse: Only 42% of black football players graduate.
Commissioners also cited instances of outright fraud. In the 1990s, they said, more than half the schools competing at the highest level were caught breaking National Collegiate Athletic Assn. rules. "Wrongdoing as a way of life seems to represent the status quo," the report states.
A first test for the proposed reforms will come Friday, when commission members meet in Chicago with officials from the six athletic conferences that make up college football's Bowl Championship Series.
The 28 members of the 12-year-old Knight Commission include current and former university presidents, representatives of higher education associations and business leaders.
