ATHLETE EXCEPTIONS IMPROVING THE SCHOOL
Oct 27, 2002 | General
Reprinted by permission.
By Ted Lewis and Marty Mul?
Staff writers/The Times-Picayune
Lynaris Elpheage is a Tulane success story.
But it's not because the Green Wave junior cornerback happens to be among the nation's leaders in interceptions. It's because he has managed to justify the athletic department's special admissions program.
While Tulane requires grades and test scores above the NCAA minimums for a signee to be admitted, the department is allowed up to 25 exceptions per year, the majority of which go to football. Tulane athletes who are not at least 15 percent above the NCAA minimum standard must apply as an academic exception.
Elpheage was one of them.
An All-State quarterback at Carver in 1999 who was recruited by Georgia, Clemson and Ole Miss, Elpheage lacked a qualifying test score even after graduation. Tulane signed him, using one of its exceptions, and held a scholarship for him until he made his standardized test requirement on his fifth try, just before the start of practice in 2000.
"Probably nobody thought I would make it," Elpheage said. "I wasn't always sure myself that I could handle football and class at the same time.
"But I knew if I came to Tulane I would get a good education, so I took it as a challenge."
It's hasn't been easy for him. The classroom experience was often intimidating during Elpheage's first semester and his two-year cumulative GPA of 2.3 won't make the honor roll. He had to pass a summer school course to remain eligible for this season.
But Elpheage is on track to graduate with a major in social science and a minor in computer science.
"We know there are players we can't sign or won't sign that could help us on Saturdays," said Green Wave football coach Chris Scelfo. "But you can't think of it as restrictions.
"We look for the student athletes who can be successful in our program -- and that's to help us win football games and, more importantly, graduate from here."
Among the best
While Tulane has had its troubles on the football field -- Scelfo owns one of the Green Wave's 10 winning seasons over the past 40 years and appears headed to another -- there is no arguing that Tulane is among the nation's leaders in graduating its football players.
"Our athletes really blend right in to regular academic situations, but when others are admitted from . . . from deprived backgrounds, then there is a big challenge," said classical studies professor Dennis Kehoe, former chairman of the university senate's committee on athletics.
"I think we do a very good job of helping them succeed. Just look at our graduation rate. It's way higher than most schools that are competing for national championships in basketball and football."
Tulane graduated 80 percent of its football players who entered school between 1992 and 1995, the fifth-highest rate in Division I-A, according to recent NCAA statistics, and higher than the school's rate for the entire student body. Tulane's overall athletic graduation rate for the same period was 70 percent, No. 11 in I-A.
"Our concern is that a lot of these students are less prepared than the regular Tulane students. But we feel we are doing our job by educating them rather than seeing them come in and fail out after a year," said Megan Drucker, director of compliance.
"They're true student-athletes, not just a football player who we let go to school."
In the oft-criticized area of African-American male graduation rate, Tulane's mark of 76 percent -- including 75 percent in football -- was sixth-highest in the nation.
The school does not reveal its graduation rate for students classified as "special admissions."
Regardless, those numbers have enabled Tulane athletic director Rick Dickson to persuade the university senate to raise the maximum number of special admissions from 18 to 25, although the number can drop as low as 12 if there is a severe dip in graduation rates. The maximum number represents about 40 percent of all signees per year, but all are not always used.
"Obviously, it's in everybody's interest to keep this formula healthy," Dickson said. "But it also needed some flexibility. We're being held accountable, so if we perform well, reward us for it."
While the university senate forms the special admission policy, there also is mandate from the school's board of administrators.
"Tulane competes academically with a whole different set of schools with which it competes athletically," said board chairman John Koerner. "So we want student-athletes.
"We don't want to bring in somebody who can't make it academically just so we can milk their skills for two years and then spit them out when they don't make their grades."
Bias against athletics among faculty has muted, if not changed outright, in part because of the high graduation rate. A decentralized management-control policy implemented by Scott Cowen after he became the school's president in 1998 has eased some financial concerns and helped shape attitudes toward sports.
"There is a group of the faculty that really supports athletics and is willing to work with them, such as being flexible in terms of knowing some are going to be away a lot and miss a lot of class," said political science instructor Andrea Talentino.
"And then there is a group that has much more traditional approach and think that if there is a class, they are supposed to be there."
"There was a time in our history, not so long ago, when it seemed to me that major function of our university was the undercutting of the faculty to support the athletic program," said Jeff Harpham, an English professor who will be leaving soon to become director of the National Humanities Center. "That doesn't seem to be the case anymore."
Harpham, who had been among the leaders of a movement in the arts and sciences faculty to eliminate football in the early 1990s, added that the special admissions program promotes campus diversity.
"When you bring in a student with some deficit in his educational background and socialize them into the university environment, I see that as a good thing," he said.
Likewise, while student support for athletics is generally regarded as apathetic, there is a generally favorable attitude toward athletes as fellow students.
"You don't hear too many complaints about athletes getting breaks here," student body president Joseph Steinschriber said. "In fact, I think most students regard our athletes being held to higher standards than they are at most other universities.
"We see them in classes with us and respect what they do, because they're competing on the highest level and still working towards their degree requirements."
Compromise program
Tulane's special admissions program was first developed on the recomendation of a committee that reviewed athletics at Tulane following twin traumas in the 1980s. The Wally English regime in football, viewed by many Tulane people as out of control, and a point-shaving basketball scandal had hardened faculty attitudes toward athletics. A faculty backlash caused standards to be raised so high that the football staff had trouble competing for top recruits.
The special admissions program was born as a compromise and has been modified several times, particularly during the regime of former Athletic Director Kevin White. White and his successor, Sandy Barbour, also made several improvements to the school's academic support system. Athletes in the program started performing better in the classroom, which enabled Dickson, who became athletic director in 2000, to seek increases in the number of exceptions.
Several restrictions remain. Special admissions prospects must go before a faculty committee and Tulane will not admit partial qualifiers, athletes who have either the minimum standardized test score or grade-point average, but not both. The partial-qualifier ban puts Tulane at odds with the rest of Conference USA, with the exception of football-only member Army.
Non-qualifiers can even enroll at schools like Southern Mississippi where tuition, room and board for a year is $8,100 and gain eligibility after a year while Tulane's admission policies not to mention prohibitive costs (in excess of $30,000) make that virtually impossible. Also, junior college signees are rare because of the difficulty in accumulating enough transferable hours to be eligible.
"You always would like ways to supplement your team," Scelfo said. "But we can't worry about what we don't have."
Similarly, men's basketball coach Sean Finney said the restrictions are something he has learned to deal with.
"It's a factor you have to deal with to get kids in here," he said. "But any place you coach you've got to sign kids who can do the work."
And sometimes you don't. Finney signed local basketball standout Derrick Burditt even though his test scores were far below NCAA minimums. Burditt retook the test but was still a non-qualifier and is now in a Florida junior college.
"He was a local kid we wanted in our program, but unfortunately for him, it didn't work out," Finney said. "There's always a risk and reward involved and sometimes you have to lay yourself out there."
Women's basketball coach Lisa Stockton said she feels Tulane's academic image is a positive in her recruiting.
"Sure, there are student-athletes who might be intimidated by our academics," he said. "But I think there are so many good players out there to whom academics is important that it hasn't hurt our program."
Dickson said that, while he thinks C-USA is hurting itself by not limiting partial qualifiers, Tulane can nonetheless be competitive within the league.
"We have a different formula from the others, except Army, so we've got to be very good within our formula," he said. "We pride ourselves in signing kids who are good student-athletes, and we hold ourselves accountable for how we succeed with them as student-athletes."
Dickson also said he favors the proposed new NCAA standards that would increase the number of core courses required for freshman eligibility as well as the number of hours earned toward graduation after athletes are in school.
The majority of freshmen athletes begin in University College, which many students attend on a part-time basis and which advertises itself as having an open admissions policy -- although athletes admitted as exceptions still are subject to NCAA elibibility rules.
But school officials point out that University College should no longer carry the stigma from several decades ago, when it was viewed as a haven for athletes because they would not have to face the same academic standards as those in other divisions of the school.
"What people may not appreciate is the tremendous acceleration in the credentials of Tulane students," Cowen said. "If you look at the academic profile of University College, that profile almost looks like the profile for the entire university a decade or so ago."
That's not lost on Elpheage.
"It took me a while to get used to it all, especially the reading, and all of the other time you have to put in," Elpheage said. "And there's still times the teacher says something and I don't know what he's talking about and everybody else does."
Still, Elpheage takes pride in his accomplishments and talks of plans to be part of a high graduation rate in a future year.
"We're not just jocks here," he said. "We put in our time for football and for school and we're serious about both.
"They don't give you anything here either. You have to earn it."
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Ted Lewis can be reached at tlewis@timespicayune.com or 826-3405.
10/24/02
