I think I understood what Butch Davis meant by "if y'all wanted an education, you should've gone to Harvard," even before he gave his own explanation.
I have a niece who is in her second year at a Division I university, attending on an athletic scholarship, playing a non-revenue sport. Her freshman year, she was honored as an academic All-American, carrying a 4.0 GPA in a major "un-clustered" by student-athletes.
If I told you the name of the school, chances are you would not have it listed among those with stellar reputations for NCAA compliance or academic prestige. The school's athletics programs are, however, perennial powerhouses, including the sport she plays. For this blog, I'll just call it Athletic U.
Not quite a year ago, at a family gathering over the holidays, she shared with me an anecdote that dropped my jaw a bit. She loves her coach and the whole staff, so she'd never want to disparage them publicly; but she did relate to me how, at the very first team meeting her freshman year, the coach made absolutely clear that commitment to the team was to be priority number one; even superior to the classroom. Schedules, workouts, training -- they all trumped the classroom, at least up to the point that inadequate classroom performance started to impact eligibility. The staff would do what they could to accommodate class needs, but if push came to shove, the team's needs would supersede.
The working logic behind this philosophy is that the school is paying for the student-athletes' attendance with the expectation that they be committed primarily to athletic excellence. Attention to academics is vital, of course, but academic excellence, or even "above-average-ness," is not the priority. If the student-athlete's priority is education over sports, then it needs to be done on her own dime and absent the demands of the athletic program. Where Butch Davis perhaps hyperbolic cited "Harvard", my niece's coach was saying, non-hyperbolically, here at Athletic U, you can "quit now and pay your own way if you don't like this contract," Davis and she were conveying the same meaning: something's going to give, and it isn't going to be sports.
It wasn't subtle. It wasn't spoken in hushed tones or with cameras shut off. It was loud and clear. At Athletics U., where tension might arise between athletics and academics, athletics has priority because athletics is footing the bill. The guidance to student-athletes is you get what you can out of your educational opportunity, but only insofar as it doesn't compromise commitment to the team.
It does make some business sense, I guess. After all, the coach wasn't saying attention to classroom performance was not important, which is how Tydreke appears to have understood UNC's Coach Davis. In fact, being responsible academically IS part of the "team commitment" thing; not because of some ideal about the primacy of educational goals; but rather because the academic goal as far as athletics was concerned is mainly to avoid disrupting eligibility and impacting the team (or Academic Performance Rate or Graduate Success Rate metrics). In this philosophical framework, student-athletes are athletes first and foremost (athlete-students), with an education being an available secondary benefit of sports participation. This is flip-flopped from the NCAA's pitch that student-athletes can exploit their athletic ability for the primary purpose of achieving an education and secondary goal of competing in sports.
I give kudos to my niece for managing to strike a successful balance and not feel she's getting short-changed on her academic goals due to pressure from athletics. She knows that in 2 years, her playing days will be over (except maybe as an amateur and -- fingers crossed -- an Olympian), and she does have career aspirations beyond that of sports. She's a sharp woman and was well-prepared going into college. She had no disadvantages to overcome like a learning disability, low-income social hurdles or a sub-par pre-collegiate education. She's exploiting her athletic talents to get a free education, and she's taken full advantage of it. Her achievement in the classroom has not been compromised by her coach's requirement that the team comes first. Good for her.
But is she typical? She's, perhaps, the ideal. She's the model that the NCAA tries to put on a poster. But is she truly representative?
She'd be loathe to have to answer to an investigative reporter and criticize her coach or the school's tolerance -- nay, fostering -- of athletics-first priorities. Why would she dare do that? After all, the vast majority of student-athletes accept the bargain, make the sacrifice, and there are even some who have no qualms settling for a mediocre educational experience as long as they get to play their sport, have the University pay their way and graduate with an easy paper diploma, however diluted it may have been. It's a good deal. No reason to spit in that bowl of Cheerios. She told me this story in private and I hope I've "anonymized" it enough to not trace back to her.
If, later in life, the education that some of these student-athletes bargained for winds up being lacking, it will not have been -- and least for most -- because anyone forced them to skate through a series of check-the-box graduation requirements. It's ultimately one's personal responsibility to take full advantage of the opportunity given, isn't it? It's not the responsibility of counselors or coaches or advisors to force student-athletes to maximize their educational experience.
But having the onus rest mainly on the student-athlete doesn't relieve academic counselors and advisors from providing proper guidance. Responsibility is shared by the student-athlete and by those who assume a position of caretaker for these young adults. And never should student-athletes be barred by coaches or counselors from taking full advantage of the school's educational resources just because it's inconvenient to the sporting goals.
This bargain apparently works for most, but it doesn't work for everyone; and the philosophy of sports-first/education-second may be a reality in the business of college athletics, but it's upside-down from the claimed NCAA model, and it's a point source for the possible erosion of academic principles, making the ground ripe for abuse (at least in my opinion.)
The Athletic U. in this anecdote is far away from Chapel Hill in both geography and reputation. It doesn't have the sort of status UNC has in terms of academic prestige nor balance between academics/athletics, even with the current UNC scandal considered.
But the rationale Butch Davis (as well as Davis defenders Matt Merletti and Bryn Renner) gave explaining away the "if you wanted an education" comment belies the supposed distinction between UNC and Athletics U. It's identical, and sadly, the more driven for competitive success and profit the program is, the more prominent "if you wanted an education" philosophy tends to become.
It's nearly impossible to be a powerhouse on the court/field/arena AND expect the "student" element in the student-athlete equation not to be compromised at least a little, even at the Dukes and UNCs -- or Stanfords or Northwesterns or Harvards -- of Division I college athletics.
Personally, I think I'm comfortable in the belief that some academic compromise can be reasonably managed, in exchange for the demands of athletics, while maintaining academic integrity. I think in the case of students like Matt Merletti or Marcus Paige or Nelson Vick, and probably a great majority of student-athletes -- particularly in non-revenue sports -- it works and is an acceptable trade-off that student-athletes accept in exchange for tuition assistance and other allowable benefits. It's when education starts needing to be manipulated, engineered, diluted or compromised, in order to strike that balance, that the bargain becomes sullied. For those who do struggle with a learning disadvantage in the classroom, or who have been socialized into viewing coursework as a necessary evil, or who simply don't care enough to put forth an effort, the equation must be changed and the sport/education priority reversed until the obstacle to gaining the desired value out of the educational component is remedied.
"If y'all wanted an education..." is a bad way for any college coach to start off a sentence, unless one is okay with the athletic tail wagging the academic dog.
