Court ruling negates Proposition 16
A Philadephia district court has ruled that the NCAA may not use a minimum test score to determine student-athletes eligibility. The policy, known as Proposition 16, required freshmen athletes to have a minimum score of 820 on the Scholastic Assessment Test regardless of their high school grades. On March 8, District Judge Ronald Buckwalter ruled that the practice was unfair to black students.
The judge, citing the NCAA's own research showing that the practice harmed black students' chances of being declared academically eligible, declared that other methods should be used to reach the goal of higher graduation while being fairer to blacks. A system that uses SAT scores together with grade-point averages in core subjects, for example. The lawsuit was filed by four black student-athletes who were denied eligibility to take part in college sports because of low SAT scores.
The NCAA plans to seek a suspension of the judge's order.
"At this point there is no rule at all... there is no standard to guide the schools," NCAA general counsel Elsa Kircher Cole told the Associated Press. "Each school will have to decide itself whether a student can play the first year." Cole called the ruling a disservice to student athletes, adding however that she was pleased that the court recognized that improving graduate rates was a legitimate goal of the NCAA.
Most colleges currently use do not use a minimum test score a combination of test scores, grades, application essays and in-person interviews to determine admission for students who are not athletes. The average SAT score for the 1.2 million students who took the test last year was 1,017. The highest possible score is 1,600.
NCAA agrees to pay coaches - The NCAA has agreed to divide a total of $54.5 million among entry-level coaches who sued the organization, claiming their earning potential had been unfairly limited. The college athletics governing body has also agreed to drop its appeal of a judge's ruling in favor of about 2,000 Division I assistant coaches who had come under the "restricted-earnings" plan.
Now the NCAA must figure out how to allocate the monetary damges. The settlement, minus attorneys' fees, must be split among the 302 Division I schools. Executive director Cedric Dempsey speculated that an NCAA committee is considering two plans of allocation - one, dividing the total equally among all Division I schools, the other based on division of revenue according to the size of the school. However, he said that it was "not likely the subcommittee's allocation plan will embrace either of these solutions."
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