PHILADELPHIA -- The NCAA's 302 Division I schools are on their own now in determining which freshmen are academically eligible to play college sports.
District Judge Ronald Buckwalter ruled Monday that the NCAA may not use a minimum test score to eliminate student-athletes from eligibility because the practice is unfair to blacks.The policy, known as Proposition 16, required freshmen athletes to have a minimum score of 820 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test regardless of their high school grades.
The judge cited the NCAA's own research showing that the practice harmed black students' chances of being declared academically eligible. He said there were other methods available to reach the goal of higher graduation rates that would be fairer to blacks -- such as a system that uses SAT scores together with grade-point averages in core subjects.
Former Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson, who boycotted two games in 1989 over a forerunner of Proposition 16 called Proposition 48, said he had mixed emotions about the ruling.
"I feel more upset than anything. Being right doesn't mean anything to me," he said. "What do you do for the kids who have been deprived, who needed athletics to be able to get out of their situations?
"Changes will obviously come about, but how do you go back and change the kids this hurt? All you can say is 'Sorry,' and there's something wrong, very wrong with that."
Four black student-athletes who were denied eligibility to take part in college sports challenged the rule.
The average for all 1.2 million students who took the test last year was 1,017. The highest possible SAT score is 1,600.
An NCAA attorney said the organization will seek a suspension of the judge's order "because at this point there is no rule at all" -- which she called a disservice to student-athletes.
"It means that there is no standard to guide the schools," NCAA general counsel Elsa Kircher Cole said. "Each school will have to decide itself whether a student can play the first year."
Cole added, however, that she was pleased that the court recognized that improving graduate rates was a legitimate goal of the NCAA.
Adele Kimmel, a staff lawyer with Trail Lawyers for Public Justice, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., said the NCAA staff had recommended a "sliding scale," in which test scores and grade-point averages in core academic courses would be given equal weight. But the NCAA surveyed its member schools last year, and a majority of them decided to reject that idea and keep Proposition 16, she said.
Plaintiffs' lawyers said the decision will be good for students of all races.
"Low-income white student-athletes will also benefit because the rule has had a disparate impact on them as well," said the plaintiffs' lead counsel, Andre Dennis of the Philadelphia firm of Stradley, Ronon, Stevens & Young.