March 2011 Archives

Bill James, the father of the statistical revolution in baseball known as sabermetrics, had a thought-provoking piece published on Slate yesterday that asked, "Why are we so good at developing athletes and so lousy at developing writers?"

The piece, an excerpt from his new book, Solid Fool's Gold: Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom, arrives at the conclusion that U.S. society ends up prioritizing the development of athletes over virtually all other professions, and doesn't emphasize or encourage excellence in literature:

We are not so good at developing great writers, it is true, but why is this? It is simply because we don't need them. We still have Shakespeare. We still have Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson; their books are still around. We don't genuinely need more literary geniuses. One can only read so many books in a lifetime. We need new athletes all the time because we need new games every day—fudging just a little on the definition of the word need. We like to have new games every day, and, if we are to have a constant and endless flow of games, we need a constant flow of athletes. We have gotten to be very, very good at developing the same.

Long story short: Remember all those supply and demand lessons from econ class? High-caliber athletes are in constant demand in the U.S., whereas we're already pretty set with our supply of literary geniuses.

James continues by suggesting that American society could actually learn from the sporting world how to develop talent. He identifies four key reasons why American society develops athletes well: 1) Athletes are given the opportunity to compete at a young age; 2) We recognize athletic ability at a young age; 3) We reward young athletes' successes; and 4) Athletes get paid for potential, "rather than simply paying them once they get to be among the best in the world" (the pay model excellent writers often must endure).

But James also notes that the sporting world "gets criticized constantly" for this method of talent development, saying, "People get squeamish about young people being 'too competitive,' as if somehow this would damage their tender souls, and complain about the 'undue attention' that is focused on young athletes."

He concludes the piece with this thought:

... there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through. This is unfortunate. We are very good at producing athletes, and maybe we are too good at producing athletes. Sometimes the cost is too high. We should do more to develop the next Shakespeare and less to develop the next Justin Verlander.

But this situation is not a failing of the sporting world. Rather, it is that the rest of society has been too proud to follow our lead.

Some food for thought, especially as the debate rages on over whether the four-year college route is right for all students.

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You may have noticed that this blog takes a particular liking to "using sports for good"—the idea that sports can transcend athletic competition and have a lasting impact on a large body of people.

For instance, after World War II, Japan rallied around professional baseball, as it "provided welcome distraction while serving as a symbol of the cooperation, hard work, and self-sacrifice needed to rebuild the devastated land," according to the Associated Press.

Now, as the AP reports, Japan has gone back to baseball as a source of national pride after the devastating earthquake and tsunami from earlier this month.

Now the nation is turning elsewhere for a glimmer of hope: fresh-faced adolescents who play their hearts out on the baseball field with a seriousness and integrity sometimes missing from their pro heroes.

Be sure to click through and read the whole story. It's a refreshing reminder of the healing power of sports.

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Remember that epic 11-hour, 5-minute Wimbledon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut last summer? Two Montana high school students had a tennis match this past weekend that lasted more than five times as long.

Sam Angel and Katie Martens, seniors at Hellgate High School in Missoula, Mont., played a tennis match for 60 hours, 59 minutes, and 58 seconds this past weekend, unofficially breaking the Guinness World Record for longest singles tennis match in history, according to The Missoulian. (Guinness has yet to confirm the record, which stood at 55:55:55 until now.)

The two seniors, who went by the name "The Guinness Tennis Menace," concocted their world-record-shattering idea as their senior graduation project, which most high school seniors in Missoula must complete before graduating. The graduation project required a "community service" element, so Sam and Katie secured more than $7,000 in pledges to donate to the Watson Children's Shelter if they broke the world record.

To qualify for the Guinness World Record, the students needed to meet four key requirements: 1) They needed two "upstanding" citizen witnesses at all times; 2) The entirety of the match had to be recorded, with a DVD or CD sent in with the application for the world record; 3) The students had to "maintain the integrity" of the sport by actually playing/keeping score; and 4) They were allowed one five-minute break every hour, which they could accumulate for longer periods of rest; however, the rest breaks didn't count in terms of the record.

Originally, when the idea first came to Sam, the world record for longest tennis match only stood at 36 hours, 36 minutes, and 36 seconds. Then, a German duo set the 55:55:55 record less than two months ago.

"The record went to 56 hours, but they had printed up fliers, so they had to do it," Amy McAllister, Sam's mother, told The Missoulian.

However, the students did almost fall short of their goal at one point on Sunday. "They were just out of gas," said Ray Angel, Sam's father, to the paper. "They hit a wall. For a while, Sam just stopped and let the tennis balls hit off of him."

After nurses tended to the two students, they returned to the court to finish off their 60-hour journey.

As The Missoulian reported, "Cogent comments from the Hellgate High School seniors were not possible late Sunday as the two took their final five-minute rest break."

"I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm really tired, I'm tired," were the only words that Sam could utter.

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Saying he wants to "deprofessionalize" college athletics, former presidential candidate Ralph Nader is proposing the elimination of athletic scholarships for college students.

The consumer activist believes "it's time we step back and finally address the myth of amateurism surrounding big-time college football and basketball in this country" by replacing athletic scholarships with need-based financial aid.

Nader called the proposal the first initiative for his newly reactivated League of Fans, a sports-reform project he founded. (Nader originally formed a now-defunct association called FANS—the Fight to Advance the Nation's Sports in the 1970s, then founded the League of Fans in 2001.)

In the proposal, he suggests that colleges either scrap athletic scholarships and integrate athletics into the educational mission, or "openly acknowledge the professionalism in big-time college sports, remove the tax-exempt status currently given to athletic departments, and make universities operate them as unrelated businesses."

And Nader even managed to tie his ideas back to K-12 sports, saying, "An entire industry has developed in the youth-sports arena—club teams, personal trainers, etc.—to prey on families' dreams of an athletic scholarship," he said. "The lure of the elusive athletic scholarship is the primary—sometimes the only—marketing tool these youth-sports entrepreneurs use." Without athletic scholarships, Nader suggests, the "win-at-all-costs" mentality in high school sports could become a thing of the past. (And, as I wrote about last week, many adults echo his concerns about how much winning is stressed in youth sports.)

The proposal echoes a number of points previously recommended by the Drake Group, an organization whose mission revolves around "defend[ing] academic integrity in the face of the burgeoning college-sport industry.

In May 2006, the Drake Group made Nader's exact same fundamental suggestion: Colleges should eliminate athletic scholarships in favor of need-based aid.

"The contract between the college athlete and the institution no longer represents the 'amateur' ideal of 'pay (scholarship) for education' when it is plain to everyone—coaches, fans, faculty members, media, and especially the athletes—that they are on the campus, first and foremost, to play ball," the proposal stated. "That, by any definition, is 'pay for play.' "

Having tutored a few student-athletes during my years at Georgetown, I believe it's impossible to deny that some collegiate athletes do prioritize their athletic career over their academic career. But is that any different from when college students on academic scholarships prioritize other extracurricular activities or jobs over schoolwork?

"Athletic scholarships are financial inducements to play sports at college," said Ken Reed, senior issues analyst for League of Fans. "Basically, they are one-year contracts between an athlete and a coach. Coaches can literally fire athletes for poor performance or injury. As such, a scholarship athlete's first priority in college is to play sports. Education is a secondary consideration. Paying for young people to come to college campuses to focus on sports—not education—is perverse."

Much like the Drake Group's statements, Reed managed to incorporate elements of truth in what he said—coaches can revoke athletic scholarships every year, as athletic scholarships technically only run on a year-to-year basis. Again, though ... how is that any different from a student with an academic scholarship? Either scholarship, academic or athletic, can be revoked if the student doesn't meet minimum academic requirements.

Bob Williams, the NCAA's vice president of communications, bristled at Nader's proposal. In a post on the NCAA's website, he said, "The assertion that student-athletes who receive athletics aid are professionals defies logic—they are students, just like any other student on campus who receives a merit-based scholarship."

Ultimately, Nader's proposition to remove all athletic scholarships may amount to using a sledgehammer to crack open a nut. ESPN's Jay Bilas summarized what may be the fundamental problem with Nader's proposal in 139 characters on Thursday night via Twitter.

"Ralph Nader calls for end of athletic schollys. Nader and NCAA are both wrong. The principle of amateurism is the real issue, not schollys."

Go back and re-read the first quote from Nader: "It's time we step back and finally address the myth of amateurism surrounding big-time college football and basketball (ed. note: emphasis added) in this country." He doesn't say there's an overall amateurism issue plaguing college athletics—the problem resides strictly with college athletics' two main moneymakers. So, why punish all college athletes for the actions of a select group? Sledgehammer, meet nut.

If Nader truly wanted to tackle the issue of jeopardized amateurism for student-athletes, he'd take his fight away from the NCAA and bring it down to the middle/high school levels. It's not like the problem suddenly appears once the student-athletes arrive on their college campuses, after all.

It's quite remarkable that the Amateur Athletic Union avoided any blame in this situation, as it's a nonprofit entity that oversees national youth competitions in more than 25 sports. The organization provides free education for coaches and "looks forward as being the trendsetter in coach education in years to come," yet a sitewide search for "academics" on the AAU website generates zero results. Compare that with the NCAA, which has a tab devoted specifically to academics on its website.

Granted, the missions of the organizations differ significantly—the NCAA refers to itself as a nonprofit educational association, while the AAU is "dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical-fitness programs." But is it logical to suggest that the underemphasis on education for student-athletes begins at the AAU level of competition, and only continues to fester as the student-athletes move on to collegiate sports?

That's not to say the AAU should start mandating a minimum GPA for student-athletes. Knowing that high schools across the country calculate GPA differently, the AAU can't realistically be expected to set a GPA standard for its young athletes.

That said, why stop with coaches' education? Why not make it mandatory for all AAU coaches to stress the importance of schoolwork and academic success to young athletes? After all, less than 2 percent of NCAA Division I athletes go on to professional careers in their respective sports.

Punishing the entirety of collegiate student-athletes for the perceived wrongs of college football and men's basketball players might prove to be nothing short of foolhardy. And placing the blame of student-athletes' jeopardized amateurism on the colleges handing out athletic scholarships could be construed as missing the point—that this battle begins at a far earlier age.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Gov. Bob McDonnell vetoed legislation on Thursday that would have required Virginia public schools to provide their K-8 students with 150 minutes of physical education per week by 2014, calling it an "unfunded mandate." (See Schooled in Sports' previous coverage of the bill here, here, and here.)

"In my inaugural address, I stated very clearly that Washington does not always know better than Richmond, and, equally, that Richmond does not always know better than Fairfax or Galax," McDonnell said in a press release. "I have long opposed significant unfunded mandates passed from one level of government to another. Thus, I cannot in good conscience sign this legislation."

McDonnell cited the potential costs of the mandate ("tens of millions") as one reason for his veto. Fairfax County had previously told McDonnell that the proposed phys. ed. requirements would have cost the district between $18 million and $24 million.

"In addition, this mandated time for physical education would exceed the time dedicated to any other subject in our public school system, and potentially cut into crucial time in the classroom needed for instruction in math, science, history and reading," McDonnell said. "Our local school districts are facing tough budgetary times, and we simply cannot ask them now to incorporate an expensive new policy with no new funding."

McDonnell also said that "government cannot just pass legislation and make this problem [of childhood obesity] go away."

In his statement, the governor pledged to work with the bill's two sponsors, Sen. Ralph Northam and Del. John O'Bannon, "as part of a comprehensive review of the curriculum priorities for our public education system over the next year."

"Let me just say this: I'm disappointed in the veto," O'Bannon told the Associated Press. "I hope the governor holds to his word and will do something about this problem."

The state legislature will reconvene the first week of April and consider the governor's veto. Before moving to McDonnell's desk, the bill advanced through the Senate on a 37-2 vote, and it passed in the House by a vote of 55-40.

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LeBron James has been called all sorts of not-so-kind things since holding the NBA world hostage last summer with his free-agency decision. There's one thing he can't be accused of, however—being anything other than supportive of children this past year.

For instance: Whatever you thought of "The Decision" aside, James raised more than $3 million for Boys & Girls Clubs across the U.S. with his one-hour July 2010 special on ESPN.

Now, alongside State Farm, James has high school dropouts in his sights. The insurance giant recently launched a program called 26 Seconds, due to the staggering fact that a student drops out of high school every 26 seconds in the United States. The basketball star appears on the 26 Seconds website and helped launch the campaign.

James, who went straight to the NBA after high school, first announced his participation last Wednesday on Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski's weekly radio show. (Krzyzewski coached James in the 2008 Olympics.)

"First of all, '26 Seconds' is basically an initiative behind kids staying in school," James said on the show. "Every 26 seconds a kid drops out of school, and that's not good. I think in America, we all know when kids graduate, they have a better future in life."

"It's basically kids getting parents aware of the situation," James continued. "Kids with no education is not how it should be. Every kid should have the opportunity to have an education, and we're going to make sure we pinpoint those certain situations in whatever community it is to make it a huge awareness in people's lives."

If you're interested in the 26 Seconds program, my colleague Caralee Adams covered more specifics about it on her blog, College Bound.

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Coaches ranked as the No. 1 positive influence on today's student-athletes, according to a recent report released by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. (That sound you just heard was the parents of AAU basketball players taking one giant collective gulp.)

The report also uncovered some troubling findings regarding young athletes, role models, and cheating. More than two-fifths of the young athletes surveyed for the report said that if a well-known athlete breaks a rule in a game, children would then think it's acceptable to break the same rule.

The report, titled "What Sport Means in America: A Study of Sport's Role in Society", attempts to evaluate the impact that sport has in U.S. society, especially in terms of ethics and values.

The survey, conducted by Discovery Education on behalf of the USADA, reached out to almost 9,000 Americans—including teachers, students, coaches, and adults. Respondents were asked to answer an online questionnaire with close-ended questions about participation levels in sports, the values sport should reinforce and whether sport is meeting society's expectations, the problems facing sport today, and the impact of the emphasis on winning, among other things.

The report uncovers a number of interesting tidbits in terms of K-12 sports, especially. While coaches may rank as the top positive influence on today's youths, college and professional athletes ranked lowest among positive influences for young athletes. That said, the survey found that as student-athletes grow older and become teenagers, their rankings of positive influences shifted from coaches, parents, and teachers to Olympic and college athletes.

Among all the survey's respondents, Olympics athletes ranked higher than college and professional athletes in terms of being a positive influence on young athletes.

Other key findings from the survey for K-12 sports enthusiasts:

Sports' value to society: The survey found an overwhelming number of people who believed sports can reduce youth crime (84%) and can teach valuable life lessons (80%). Overall, three-fifths of the adults surveyed believed that sport, in general, promotes positive values, such as building character and promoting teamwork and dedication.

The value of sports to parents: Overall, parents hope their children learn personal and social values from participating in sports, such as learning to give a full effort, treating others with respect, being part of a team, and playing fair/not cheating.

The parents surveyed "strongly believe" that sports should reinforce positive values for youths, such as honesty, fairness, teamwork, and self-discipline; winning and competitiveness were ranked as the least important values that sports should promote.

On that note, however, the adults surveyed believed that competitiveness and winning were the two values sports promoted most of all—nearly two-thirds of the adults thought that sports overemphasized the importance of winning.

Impact of sports on today's youth: Around half the adults surveyed thought that professional athletes actually have a positive influence on young student-athletes, and "by wide margins," the adults said that athletes' off-the-field conduct is equally important to their athletic performance. (In other words? Sorry, Charles Barkley. If you're a professional athlete, you are a role model, like it or not.)

How cheaters affect student-athletes: This one is troubling. Forty-one percent of children in the general population who play sports responded that if a well-known athlete breaks any rules in a game, the children then think it's OK to cheat to win. Children in all types of sports also agreed that when well-known athletes take drugs, the children then think it's acceptable to follow their example and also take drugs.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Chalk this up under the "Agh, Why Didn't I Think of This Idea First?" category.

Both ProPublica and Inside Higher Ed have given March Madness an academic twist by filling out their traditional NCAA tournament brackets based on which schools' athletes perform better in the classroom.

To determine who advanced in each round, both groups used the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate, a metric developed by the NCAA in 2005 that measures whether or not student-athletes remain on track to graduate. (I can only imagine they took the APR data for the NCAA tournament teams from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports' report, "Keeping Score When It Counts,") that I wrote about yesterday.

To calculate APR, each player on a given roster earns a maximum of 2 points per school term—one for being academically eligible, one for staying with his/her school (i.e., not transferring/leaving early to turn professional). A team's total APR score is the total points of a team's roster divided by the total points possible. Long story short, an APR of 925 roughly equates to a team having 50 percent of its players on track to graduate.

To break ties between schools, Inside Higher Ed used the NCAA's Graduation Success Rate, which doesn't punish teams for students who leave college before graduation, so long as those students left in good academic standing.

So, who ended up as the 2011 NCAA tournament's academic champion? None other than the Butler University Bulldogs, who, as you may remember, came within a missed half-court shot of winning the real kit and kaboodle last year.

The academic Final Four would be made up of Butler, the University of Kansas, the University of Texas at Austin, and Princeton University.

Olga Pierce of ProPublica makes an astute observation about the disparity of rankings, however. "The schools that have the highest academic ranking overall often have less-than-stellar records with the performance of student-athletes. This raises the question: Are the best schools best for all their students, or are student-athletes being left behind?"

And it seems that my alma mater was trying to prove her point. Georgetown (APR of 937, ranked 21st by U.S. News & World Report) would be waxed in their first game by Virginia Commonwealth University (APR of 975, ranked 167th by U.S. News & World Report), academically speaking. This blog author is officially hoping that the academic bracket doesn't hold true to form during that game later tonight.

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Today, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan held a conference call with reporters to discuss the latest NCAA graduation rates, including the rates of teams participating in men's postseason basketball play, and his recommendations for improving academics in collegiate basketball.

Also joining the secretary on the call were Ben Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, and Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, University of Central Florida.

The call came on the heels of the release of the institute's annual report, "Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Success and Academic Progress Rates for the 2011 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament Teams." The report uncovered some troubling findings for the NCAA: 10 of the 68 teams participating in this year's March Madness have academic-progress rates below 925 (meaning the team has less than 50 percent of its athletes on track to graduate).

With that in mind...

Duncan first recommended that "teams not on track to graduate half of their players should not have their chance at postseason glory," pointing out that the Knight Commission made that exact suggestion back in 2001. The secretary asked how serious a school who graduates half its players is about its students' success—which, admittedly, is a tough point to argue against.

Next, he threw his support behind two academic-progress measures developed by the NCAA: the aforementioned APR, and the Graduation Success Rate, developed in 2005. While the federal government counts student-athletes in good academic standing who transfer as "nongraduates" for the original school, the GSR allows schools to exclude those student-athletes from consideration, as long as they would have been academically eligible to compete had they stayed.

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports also excluded the federal graduation rates from consideration in its report, saying they "give an unfair depiction of a school because [they] do not account for transfer students.

Finally, Duncan suggested restructuring the NCAA tournament money-distribution formula, citing a Knight Commission report released today that found men's basketball teams who failed to meet minimal academic standards earned nearly $179 million from the past five NCAA tournaments. The NCAA's current revenue-distribution plan awards more than $1.4 million to a team's conference for every game the team plays in the tournament. In the five most recent tournaments, nearly 44 percent of the total $409 million distributed was earned by teams with APRs below 925.

"I simply cannot understand why we continue to reward teams for failing to meet the most basic of academic standards off the court," Duncan said.

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports' report also found that while the overall graduation rate for Division I players increased by 2 percent, the achievement gap between white and minority athletes is only expanding. More than half the NCAA tournament teams had a gap of at least 30 percentage points between the graduation rates of their white and black athletes. White players had an overall graduation rate of 91 percent, while black student-athletes only graduated at a 59 percent rate—a disparity Duncan called "absolutely unconscionable."

Luckily for Duncan, he may have an unlikely ally on his academic bully pulpit: the Round Mound of Rebound himself, Charles Barkley. As part of the NCAA tournament's new TV contract with TNT, TBS, truTV, and CBS, Barkley will be on the broadcast team calling tournament games this year, and he'll be shining a spotlight on teams' poor graduation rates.

"That's the only reason I'm doing this," Barkley told Newsday. "I want to talk to them about not graduating players. That's my concern. I'm not going to just jump on the bandwagon and let y'all make all this money on these kids and just not say anything. I sat them down before I said I would do this."

"You can't be giving them basket-weaving degrees," Barkley continued. "These colleges have an obligation to make sure they're going toward graduation. You can't just put them in classes to keep them eligible."

So, how does this all tie back to K-12 sports? Well, when asked if the academic problems found in college could be traced back to high school sports (and the AAU basketball circuit in particular), Duncan largely glossed over the issue. He pointed out, "We have students from very similar backgrounds of challenges and disadvantages going into these programs, with wildly different results."

He then tossed the question to Jealous, who continued hammering home his theory on who's to blame: the college coaches.

"The only thing that these schools have in common (when you look at the schools who are failing) is that they have a lack of leadership from the coach. These are schools that simply have coaches who have decided that it's not their job to make sure their athletes succeed in life."

Jealous said that the college-basketball equation has constants and variables: The constant is kids coming from challenging backgrounds; the variable is the priorities of the coach.

Legendary Georgetown coach John Thompson Jr. would likely agree with the secretary and Jealous, as Thompson developed a reputation for caring about his players' success off the court as much as on the court during his coaching career (which is becoming more and more of a novel idea in this day and age).

But, as Michael Kinney from The Norman Transcript points out, it's easy to blame the coaches and administrators for their student-athletes' academic failings. Too easy, in fact.

"The main responsibility is with the players, their families, and a culture where education not only takes a backseat to athletics, it's no longer valued," Kinney wrote.

To be fair to Duncan and Jealous, there's no question that some folks in the college-coaching ranks aren't exactly Good Samaritans. There are undoubtedly some seedy coaches in Division I, thinking more about their own job security and job prospects than their students' success in the classroom and future after basketball.

But the eagerness of Duncan and Jealous to put coaches in the crosshairs reminds me of a larger, ongoing debate in the world of education: Are teachers entirely to blame for their students' shortcomings, or must their students take some personal responsibility before succeeding academically?

Should college coaches value their players' academics for more reasons than just "will my player stay academically eligible?" Without question. In fact, Duncan's suggestion of tying postseason eligibility to graduation rates seems entirely reasonable—it shouldn't be a tall order for a team to have at least half its players on track to graduate.

But to place all the blame on coaches seems to ignore the fact that players are the ones ultimately in control of their academic destinies. And for Duncan to implore the NCAA to raise academic standards for teams entering postseason play, then turn around and blame schools and coaches for players' academic struggles, there's not much question about why the NCAA hasn't been quicker to act on these academic findings.

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In the ongoing battle against student-athlete concussions, New York may be raising the stakes for the rest of the country. (Remember, the NFL has encouraged all 50 states and D.C. to pass concussion laws.)

State Sen. Kemp Hannon, chair of the Senate Health Committee, introduced legislation yesterday that would force New York schools to prevent student-athletes from returning to play for at least 24 hours after suffering concussions, even with approval from a doctor, according to the Associated Press.

Many other states, such as Washington, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Oregon passed concussion laws in the past few years requiring student-athletes to obtain a physician's clearance before returning to competition. However, New York's "at least 24 hours before returning" element is a first for state concussion legislation (to this author's knowledge).

That being said ... is it really all that groundbreaking of a step? What are the realistic chances someone's getting a doctor's clearance within 24 hours of sustaining a concussion anyway? I'll admit I have zero medical experience, but I've watched enough sports to know players aren't returning from concussions in a day.

The bill's true impact, as it turns out, may be on the administrative side of things. It would require the state health and education departments to adopt rules for treating and monitoring students with mild brain injuries such as concussions, according to NewsLI.com.

That's not all—every school district in the state would be required to have a concussion-management team (of health professionals and coaches) that helps with the education efforts with students and parents and helps student-athletes return to the field after sustaining concussions.

While this bill does go further than most states' concussion legislation, there's plenty of room for improvement, as the New York State Public High School Athletic Association would likely point out. Last year, it issued a suggested sample list of concussion guidelines and rules for districts' usage, and one item sticks out in particular: a five-day weaning process for concussed student-athletes. After receiving a doctor's clearance, the formerly concussed athlete would be limited to light aerobic activity the first day, move on to sport-specific activity on day two, participate in noncontact training drills on day three, graduate to full contact practice on day four, and return to competition on day five.

If New York truly wanted to set a new bar for concussion legislation, it's surprising that lawmakers didn't include that five-day progression in their proposal.

In other concussion-related news, the Rhode Island House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare held a hearing yesterday to discuss legislation aimed at revising a state law passed last year intended to help educate parents, student-athletes, and coaches about concussions. The lawmakers hope to extend that law this year by (tell me if this sounds familiar) requiring a student-athlete who displays concussion symptoms to obtain a doctor's clearance before returning to competition.

And Inside the Beltway, two congressmen introduced legislation on Wednesday that targets the safety of football helmets for high school players. Believe it or not, the industry currently only requires football helmets "to withstand only the extremely high-level force that would otherwise fracture skulls," according to the New York Times.

That's not good enough for New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall and New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell. Their bill would give football-helmet makers nine months to improve the safety standards of their helmets. If they failed to make any changes, the bill would force the Consumer Product Safety Commission to establish safety standards for all helmet makers.

According to 2006 statistics from the National Center for Injury Prevention, 47 percent of high school football players suffer concussions each season.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Members of the South Carolina House are discussing a proposed state budget that slashes physical education spending by 15 percent for fiscal 2011.

The legislators are currently debating a $5.2 billion spending plan that doesn't include any of the $174 million federal bailout money present in last year's budget, according to the Associated Press. To counter the shortfall, the House budget writers suggested tapping $100 million in reserves.

A total of $12 million gets lopped off nearly a dozen school programs, including P.E. and guidance counseling, but the state's Department of Education budget grows enough to devote $25 million towards the expansion of public charter schools.

"It's hard to imagine the districts being able to make up these cuts at the local level," said Scott Price, a lobbyist for the state School Boards Association, according to the AP.

The House approved the $1.9 billion public schools budget "with little debate" on Monday.

Megan Wolfe, who oversees legislative trends for the National Association of Sport and Physical Education, said AP that schools have little incentive to make up the differences in physical education spending if the 15 percent cut is approved.

The House plans on finishing discussions of the budget bill by Thursday and moving it along to the state Senate.

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If you're a high school athlete in Virginia, here's hoping you really love the sport you play. And if you're a multi-sport athlete, a new state rule may seriously cramp your lifestyle.

The Virginia High School League Executive Committee voted 20-6 late last month in favor of a new practice rule that would allow student-athletes to receive almost year-round coaching, effective Aug. 1, according to InsideNOVA.com.

Before this new rule was passed, Virginia coaches could only work with their athletes while their respective sports were in season. Now, beyond a 10-day "dead period" at the beginning of the fall, winter, and spring preseason practice periods (according to the VHSL calendar) and a dead-period during the first week of July (week one of the National Federation of State High School Associations' calendar), coaches will be allowed to instruct, observe, or contact their athletes at any time during the calendar year except Sundays. The seasonal dead periods were designed to coincide with tryouts for sports in other seasons, Manassas Park activities director Mike Peters told InsideNOVA.com.

"It's one of the biggest changes that I have seen in the 33 years I have been involved in high school athletics," E.C. Glass Athletic Director Chip Berry said to The Lynchburg News & Advance. "When it came out and [the VHSL] sent [an e-mail] out to all of the athletic directors, I [forwarded] it to our coaches with a huge 'WOW,' with about 75 Os and 10 exclamation points, to say 'Take a look at this,' to make them aware of the rule change. Within an hour, I had 10 coaches come by the office."

Principals from the state could have overturned the executive committee vote at the VHSL's two-day group board meetings in Richmond with a majority vote from the full membership committee; however, none of the principals brought the vote before the committee. Thus, the rule goes into effect on Aug. 1.

Each school, district, and region is allowed to further restrict their coaches' access to student-athletes. The new rule also limits VHSL catastrophic insurance to only in-season activities, which may dissuade coaches from running full-contact out-of-season practices in sports such as football.

The reaction to this new rule from coaches is understandably varied. Some value the extra time they'll now have with their athletes; others worry that the days of multi-sport student-athletes will become a thing of the past.

"I think it's great for our kids as far as getting prepared for the next season," Heritage football coach Doug Smith said to the News & Advance. "It tries to level the playing field a little bit between our schools and the schools in other states that have spring practice, such as in North Carolina, where they're allowed to play in pads in the spring. We've been holding our kids back."

"The good thing is it allows coaches to actually be active with their athletes ... to improve their skills," Brookville Athletic Director Larry Kidd also told the paper. "It allows you to develop your own kids and you're not relying on AAU or USA volleyball coaches." (As someone who just finished reading George Dohrmann's Play Their Hearts Out, a book about the corruption in the AAU youth-basketball circuit, Kidd's comments about wanting to shield student-athletes from AAU coaches hit home for this particular writer.)

That said, Kidd also recognized the potential pitfalls of this rule, especially in terms of his school.

"We don't have the student body that the [Group] AAA school has," Kidd said to the paper. "We don't fight amongst ourselves for athletes, [but] we have to share athletes. Whether this causes more athletes to specialize in sports remains to be seen."

"As far as how are (coaches) going to be compensated, who knows?" Kidd also said. "The way money is now, I don't see any more compensation."

Potomac boys' basketball coach Keith Honore was another coach in favor of the rule for instructional purposes.

"Right now as it stands, we get two weeks to prepare for our first game," Honore said to InsideNOVA.com. "That's not a lot of fundamentals you're going to learn in two weeks. If I have an entire summer, I can work on the little things like jump-stopping, ball-handling, ball-handling without the carries, proper shooting."

But Battlefield football coach Mark Cox told the Washington Post that he officially falls into the "worried about this rule" camp.

"Most coaches would like for their kids to spend as much time as possible on their sport," Cox said. "Kids will specialize way too much. I think you'll have less cooperation among coaches within schools.

"I had good basketball players on my football team. Now they might not play football if they can do organized stuff in the fall for basketball to get ready for their season."

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The West Virginia Bureau for Public Health sent out warnings on Friday to alert schools of the risk of a skin herpes outbreak for any wrestlers who competed in the state tournament at the end of February.

Five members of a high school wrestling team in the state contracted herpes gladiatorum, according to the department's press release. Potential cases of the virus have been reported in other schools, and the department is investigating.

"We all must be diligent in preventing the spread of communicable diseases through visible open lesions," said state schools Superintendent Jorea Marple in the press release. "It is vital that athletes with open lesions do not participate in practice sessions or sporting events."

According to the Associated Press, the herpes gladiatorum virus is highly contagious, spread by skin-to-skin contact, and could result in lesions on the face, head, and neck.

The Bureau of Public Health warned schools that new cases of the herpes virus may occur in exposed wrestlers through at least March 10, if they haven't already. The department urged coaches and physicians to be watchful of symptoms in their student-athletes, and to report any further outbreaks immediately as to prevent the further spread of the disease.

This certainly isn't the first outbreak of herpes gladiatorum in student wrestlers. (See this WebMD article from 2000, titled "Herpes Gladiatorum Is Common Among Wrestlers.")

In fact, the NCAA has specific guidelines as to how to handle the herpes gladiatorum virus in collegiate-level wrestlers.

On that note: The blog will be taking a break for the rest of the week. Come back on Monday for your regularly scheduled Schooled in Sports updates.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Pending legislation in Virginia that would make 150 minutes of physical education per week mandatory for K-8 students has some school officials in the state feeling queasy.

"Any time we get another unfunded mandate from the state, it worries us," Albemarle Assistant Superintendent Billy Haun told the Charlottesville Daily Progress. "It's going to be a problem."

The legislation, which only awaits Gov. Bob McDonnell's signature at this point, is seen as an effort to promote physical well-being and combat obesity of the state's youngsters. If McDonnell does sign the bill, it won't take effect until the 2014-15 school year, giving districts a few years to adjust their schedules accordingly.

However, with districts across the state already facing budget concerns, some administrators aren't thrilled with the prospect of adding more programs to their schools' curricula.

"I'd really like to have more time for physical education," Diane Ehrens, coordinator for the Charlottesville city schools' health and P.E. department, said to the Daily Progress. "However, the reality of increasing mandates, decreasing funding from the state, as well as the finite amount of time to meet all standards, will have an impact on our resources."

"The part that really worries me from an instructional standpoint is, even if we have P.E. teachers that can cover this, we're taking another 30 minutes away from what?" Haun said. "It's going to put us in a really tough situation about making some really tough choices."

According to the Daily Progress, Fairfax County, which is the state's largest school district, estimates that the bill could cost the district between $18 and $24 million. One member of the county's delegation said that district leaders told him three weeks ago that the bill would cost Fairfax $8 million per year. The district is urging the governor to veto the bill.

The bill, in its current form, was rewritten to change "physical fitness" to "physical education" to allow schools to include health/wellness classes as part of the 150 minutes/week requirement. Half-day kindergarten programs are also excluded from the requirement in the current version of the bill.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The rate of concussions in student-athletes may have more than quadrupled in the past decade, according to a new study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

The study, which examines 25 schools in a large public high school system, found that for every 10,000 times student-athletes stepped onto a playing field in 1997, there was slightly more than one concussion reported. Compare that with 2008, where there were roughly five concussions reported for every 10,000 times student-athletes went onto playing fields.

The study examines six boys' and six girls' sports and observed a total of 2,651 concussions throughout 10,926,892 "athlete exposures" (times an athlete was on the playing field), with boys' sports accounting for 75 percent of all the concussions. The study found that the concussion rate among all student-athletes in the study rose 15.5 percent annually between 1997 and 2008, and found that in similar boys'/girls' sports, girls had approximately twice the concussion risk of boys. The concussion rate in all 12 sports increased over the duration of the study.

"Certainly the recognition of signs and symptoms of concussion have increased dramatically among the players, coaches, athletic trainers, and physicians," study author Andrew Lincoln told Reuters Health. "Also, there's the issue of players performing better, getting stronger and getting faster." Lincoln heads the Sports Medicine Research Center at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore.

If Lincoln's comments sound familiar, that's probably because a panel of doctors from Children's Hospital of Alabama also recently attributed concussion awareness to the rise in diagnosis of concussions in student-athletes. In other words, many of these same concussions that were caught and diagnosed in 2008 may have simply been ignored in 1997.

In other concussion-related news, legislation is advancing in three states aimed specifically at student-athletes.

In Illinois, the state House passed a bill on Wednesday that would bar student-athletes suspected of concussions from returning to competition until receiving a doctor's clearance. Schools will also be forced to educate teachers, students, and parents on concussions symptoms, requiring parents and student-athletes to sign a waiver. The bill is now off to the Senate.

In Wyoming, the Senate and House passed a compromise bill that requires the state Dept. of Ed. to design a model protocol for districts to reference when they're developing their own concussion standards. The bill also requires coaches to receive training regarding the recognition of concussions and prohibits student-athletes suspected of a concussion from returning to the field of competition without receiving a doctor's clearance. The bill is headed to Gov. Matt Mead's desk for his signature.

And in Iowa, former NFL player Matt Blair has thrown his support behind student-athlete concussion legislation that was introduced Monday in a state Senate committee. The bill passed the committee unanimously. Kenneth Edmonds, director of government relations and public policy for the NFL, also spoke out in support of the Iowa legislation on Monday.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over in Walt Gardner's Reality Check Blog today, Gardner reviews a recent New York Times article about Coastal Carolina's attempt to build a brand name through athletics instead of academics. It's well worth a read, and certainly raises questions about what's taking priority on college campuses these days: academics or athletics?

Here's an excerpt from Gardner's entry:

[Coastal Carolina President David] DeCenzo's second mistake was to hire Cliff Ellis as coach, even though his programs at Clemson and Auburn had been found guilty of major NCAA infractions, and placed on two years' probation. These cases involved grade-fixing, illicit payments to recruits, and improper dealings with an agent.

It's hard to understand DeCenzo's thinking. If he genuinely wanted to build a reputation for Coastal Carolina, why didn't he make his first order of business recruiting star professors? After all, academics is supposed to be the reason for college. But once he decided to place his bet on athletics, DeCenzo could have at least searched for a coach without the baggage that Ellis brought with him.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In light of a new Sports Illustrated/CBS News investigation into the criminal backgrounds of high-profile college football players, student-athletes hoping to play at the college level may soon be facing background checks in their recruiting future.

The report, released today, lays out the results of a criminal background check SI/CBS News ran on all 2,837 players on the preseason rosters of the teams in Sports Illustrated's 2010 preseason Top 25. The findings were chilling: Seven percent of the players in the preseason Top 25, a total of 204 student-athletes, had been charged with or cited for a crime, and dozens of players had multiple arrests on their records. The report didn't specify whether the crimes occurred before the recruits arrived on their college campuses.

"[It is] a set of facts that obviously should concern all of us," new NCAA President Mark Emmert told SI/CBS News after learning of the report's findings. "Seven percent, that's way too high. I think 2 percent is too high. You certainly don't want a large number of people with criminal backgrounds involved in activities that represent the NCAA."

More chilling: Virtually all the coaches interviewed by SI/CBS News had no idea. According to the report, only two of the 25 schools in the investigation—TCU and Oklahoma—run any type of criminal background checks on recruits. Yet neither TCU nor Oklahoma looks into a recruit's juvenile record—not a single school in the Top 25 does. In those schools' defense, neither SI or CBS News had access to juvenile arrest records of approximately 80 percent of the players in the study sample, as most states don't allow juvenile records to be a public record.

As the report points out, some states, such as Florida, make background checks almost painfully easy, with a person's complete criminal history, including juvenile arrests, available through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for a total of $24. That said, not a single state contacted by SI/CBS News utilized this service. SI/CBS News did, though: They checked all 318 Florida-based players in their investigation and found that 31 players (9.5 percent) had a criminal record.

The study did not provide data about what percentage of total incoming college freshmen had criminal records.

SI/CBS News asked a number of college coaches why they didn't run background checks on recruits, and according to the report, most echoed the words of Ohio State coach Jim Tressel. "We don't really go into anything outside of the school system," said Tressel. "Hopefully, through the school system we can find out just what we need."

The problem with that logic is, as the report addresses, high school coaches are often their student-athletes' most valuable advocates—would they really bring up an arrest record if they're trying to land their kids a scholarship? That's not even to mention certain privacy laws that could tie the high school coaches' hands in terms of sharing details about a student's criminal past.

The report concludes:

The issue isn't that colleges should never accept a kid who has made a mistake; part of education is second chances. But too many football programs, out of a desire to win more games, either overlook a player's past or don't bother looking into it at all. That's a flaw in the system that has to change.

Richard Lapchick, founder of the Center for Sport in Society and president and CEO of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports at the University of Central Florida, was quoted in the report as saying: "I think it's almost incumbent on all those universities who play at this level to do criminal background checks on the people they're recruiting. Not only for the nature of the football program itself, but for public safety on campus."

While Lapchick isn't clear on whether the NCAA has the authority to require schools to conduct criminal background checks on recruits, he believes Emmert should "use this as a kind of bully pulpit" to ask schools around the nation to run background checks on an individual school basis.

Whether or not the NCAA has the authority to mandate background checks for every college athlete (something that's unlikely to happen in this economic era), one thing is true: These college athletes are receiving scholarships worth thousands upon thousands of dollars. Is it unreasonable to expect said students to keep their noses clean, even before they move onto college?

Now, it's worth noting that this study didn't investigate every Division I college in the U.S., and only looked at one specific sport (football). Whether a similar pattern of criminal activity would hold for college athletes in other sports is anyone's guess at this point.

But, as Emmert said, the NCAA can't be thrilled that 7 percent of its most high-profile college football players have criminal backgrounds—heck, Emmert said 2 percent is still too high.

So, what's the solution? Short of Congress passing a law mandating that high schools and high school coaches divulge all students' criminal records to their prospective colleges, there likely won't be a quick fix to this problem. (And something tells me Congress has something a bit more important to focus on currently.)

Certainly, no college will jump at the thought of dropping thousands of dollars on background checks of prospective athletes, either. And quite honestly, there's no feasible way to run a background check on every student interested in every sport at a given college.

However, why not make a background check the final step in the recruiting process? Before offering a prospective athlete an official Letter of Intent, why not see if they've ever been accused or convicted of a crime?

It's not a perfect solution by any means. But, much like the federal budget, this issue needs as much of a short-term fix as it does a permanent solution.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 6:30 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin introduced a bill last week seeking to repeal legislation that empowers the state schools superintendent to force school districts to change team names, mascots, nicknames, and logos that are based on race or ethnicity.

Last year, former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, signed the law into effect that allowed school district residents to challenge nicknames, logos, or mascots they find offensive. The state schools superintendent would then hold a hearing and could order districts to change the mascots within a year's time.

At the time of the law's passage, 36 districts had been highlighted as having potential for name changes. Since then, the department received complaints involving three school districts: Two, with the nickname of "Chieftains," were ordered to change the name; the other, nicknamed the "Indians," dropped the name voluntarily.

GOP Rep. Steve Nass, along with 16 other Assembly Republicans, now hope to undo Doyle's mascot name-changing work, according to The Janesville Gazette.

The legislation they propose would move the decisions on nicknames back to the local district level; the bill also includes a provision that would void any past naming mandates handed down by the state superintendent. The proposal would still allow residents to file complaints with their local school boards and appeal to the state superintendent if the school boards reach a "negative determination." Nass has been targeting the mascot law since December, as he believes that the decision should be made locally, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal.

Wisconsin was the first state to enact such a law; however, the NCAA banned schools from using American Indian mascots during NCAA postseason competitions back in 2005. Schools with American Indian mascots were also banned from hosting NCAA championships.

Nass and his colleagues introduced the bill last week, and it's now been sent to the state Assembly's Committee on Homeland Security and State Affairs for consideration.

And here you thought they were too busy in Wisconsin with protesters banging down their doors at the state Capitol to get anything else done.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

All 500+ 4th and 5th graders in a Kentucky school district will be receiving pedometers as part of a new fitness initiative to motivate them to stay active and healthy.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that the initiative, which lifted off Feb. 14, is a collaboration between the Clay County schools, Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, and Manchester Memorial Hospital. Kosair is providing the district with the pedometers, which will cost approximately $15,000.

Students will be challenged to walk as many steps per day as possible, and the program will tie in nutrition education. The information from the pedometers can be downloaded onto computers, so school administrators can trace the students' progress.

Students will earn prizes for winning "challenges" (for example, a geography-based challenge will ask students to walk enough steps to get to Houston). Granted, instead of rewarding them with chocolate bars or other unhealthy sweets, they'll win footballs, frisbees, and other activity-based prizes.

For Clay County, a program such as this couldn't have come soon enough. Last July, an article in the Washington Post highlighted Clay County as the unhealthiest county in Kentucky, with 41 percent of its population either in fair or poor health. Administrators in the school system hope that the students will take their healthy habits home with them to motivate their parents to become more active.

Clay County will be the first rural county in the state to adopt the pedometer fitness program. Kosair began a similar program with 4th graders in six Jefferson County, Ky., elementary schools last year, and the hospital has continued to track the Louisville students' weight and body mass indexes to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.

Humana Inc. also piloted a pedometers-in-schools program with 100 middle school students in Louisville back in 2008. According to a press release from Humana, they walked a collective 6,364 miles over the course of four weeks, and 62 percent of the students reported that they exercised more than usual during the challenge.

It appears that the pedometer craze is headed upstream on the Ohio River, as Indiana's Greater Clark County district also recently launched a 14-week pedometer program for roughly 5,000 students, according to the Evening News and Tribune. In one of the district's schools, Parkwood Elementary, physical education instructor Lori Gavin challenged her students to take between 8,000 and 10,000 steps per day.

Now, if you're like me, and you sit in your office chair far too much to walk 10,000 steps a day, you should know that Gavin's expectations of her students aren't necessarily ludicrous. In fact, Gavin's got the first lady on her side.

The President's Council on Physical Fitness, alongside Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" Campaign, launched the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award—a six-week physical-activity challenge—in September. Lo and behold, the challenge laid out goals for pedometer steps: for adults, 8,500+ steps/day; for female kids/teens, 11,000+ steps/day; and for male kids/teens, 13,000+ steps per day.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend