Balancing grades and gridiron
NBC recently renewed its television contract with Notre Dame football through the 2015 season, betting the bank that the Irish, who have not won a national championship since 1988 or a bowl game since 1993, can consistently deliver television ratings that keep corporate sponsors happy and revenue streams flowing.
Notre Dame's attempt to return to glory raises a fundamental question: Can the nation's top-25 academic institutions -- Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt and Michigan are examples -- successfully compete in the world of corporate college football without substantially compromising academic standards?
California's Division I schools suggest that the answer is no. Football players at USC, UCLA and UC Berkeley perform well on the field while struggling in the classroom. Stanford's players excel academically, but the team hasn't had a winning season since 2001. Notre Dame, however, is betting that it's still possible to field successful student athletes.
Although Notre Dame cuts football players a break in regard to admissions, its relatively high 79% federal graduation rate (FGR) -- the best measure of whether recruited athletes fit a school's academic profile -- indicates that the university recruits athletes who actually are likely to graduate from Notre Dame. The average FGR for last year's top 25 Football Bowl Subdivision teams was about 50%. Louisiana State University, the 2007 national champion, graduated 38% of its players; runner-up Ohio State University graduated 48%. (California's football powerhouses produce mediocre results at best, with USC at 54%, UCLA at 51% and UC Berkeley at 44%.)
Despite Notre Dame's success during Coach Charlie Weis' first two seasons -- 2005 and 2006 -- the Irish took a pounding in 2007, ending the season with a 3-9 record. Perennial powers such as LSU and the universities of Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma, on the other hand, have teams with graduation rates in the 35% range. Notre Dame endured a crushing loss to LSU in the 2007 Sugar Bowl.
These data suggest that schools that hold their ground on academic standards for athletes may be at a disadvantage in college sport's recruiting wars. Is it merely coincidence that Stanford and Duke, two of the teams the Irish were able to beat in 2007, have football graduation rates over 90%? The National Collegiate Athletic Assn. no longer discloses the average standardized test scores of various football teams. But would anyone be surprised to find that test scores, like federal graduation rates, correlate negatively with gridiron success?
