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Page 22 • UGA: An Independent Look • May 1990
REFORM
From page 21
ran, he commissioned a special task force to
study issues involving student-athletes. He
denies any connection between the article
and the task force.
The Committee on Intercollegiate
Athletics will examine year-by-year
information on football and male basketball
scholarship players. The focal point of the
study, according to Nancy Rubin, the
subcommittee's chairwoman, will be the
admissions office's prediction of academic
success as compared to the final outcome.
Throughout the decade, the athletic
department has taken its share of abuse and
according to Dooley, the criticism has been
anything but sweet to swallow.
"It was very difficult to respond to all of
the criticism, but we understood it," Dooley
says. "However, in any crisis, you have the
opportunity to make the program better if
the program is strong to begin with."
Since the dark cloud and stigma of the
Kemp trial, the University has found a silver
lining through years of hard work and
dedication to make its Bulldog athletes
superior performers in the classroom as well
as on their respective fields of competition.
UGA takes reform role in early '80s
Actually, the University began the current
national movement to raise the standards
and academic level of the student-athlete in
1980 — two years after Kemp was hired.
Fred Davison, then University president,
organized a meeting at Sapelo Island, which
brought together some of the country’s
foremost authorities on college athletics,
including Indiana Basketball Coach Bobby
Knight, Penn State Head Football Coach Joe
Patemo as well as presidents from four
major universities.
"In 1980, college coaches and
administrators around the country saw how
academic requirements for athletes were
extremely low," Dooley says. "The University
of Georgia agreed to host a meeting of
representatives from colleges around the
country where college presidents, athletic
directors and football and basketball coaches
could come together and engage in dialogue
together about how to solve these problems."
The meeting was conducted in a round
table manner, with the participants
receiving the opportunity to voice their
opinions on which issue was the most
important for the survival of college
athletics. Raising the admissions standards
of student-athletes was a recurring topic.
"From that meeting, we came up with a
formula for admissions being a 700
Scholastic Aptitude Test and a 2.0 grade
point average in core high school classes,"
Dooley says.
The committees' recommendation was
forwarded to the NCAA and it was the seed
of the Proposition 48 legislation that went
into effect in 1983.
'The NCAA watered down our work,
though," Dooley said. "We recommended
that the policy be enacted nationwide and
that if a high school student did not meet the
requirements, he or she would not be
admitted into school. The National
Collegiate Athletic Association, with the
adoption of Proposition 48, allowed partial
qualifiers to enroll."
Proposition 48 requires all high school
athletes to achieve a 2.0 grade point average
and a 700 on the SAT in order to be admitted;
Jan Kemp
however, if an athlete fails to meet one of
these standards, he or she is admitted and
given an athletic scholarship, but not
allowed to compete or practice with the team
for one season.
Although this is the rule and has been the
mode of recruiting among most colleges since
its inception in 1983, the University decided
not to enroll partial qualifiers. In the
beginning, according to Dooley, Georgia's
self-imposed rule made it difficult for the
Bulldogs to recruit against other schools
which had less stringent admissions
requirements.
"It put us at a little recruiting
disadvantage at first and I'm sure we lost
some student-athletes because of our
tougher rules," Dooley says. "But other
schools, such as Notre Dame, have followed
our lead and soon the SEC will place the
same rule we have already have in place.
"We are sort of at a disadvantage,"
women's tennis coach Jeff Wallace says. "We
are naturally looking for talent, but we must
also focus on getting good students. Soon
everyone will be playing by our rules and we
will already be doing this, and the others will
be just trying to adjust."
At the 1988 SEC's annual spring meeting
of athletic directors, the member schools
passed a resolution which will prevent any
school from admitting partial qualifiers,
beginning in 1993.
McWhorter audits program
Closer to home, the University had to heal
the wounds left by the Kemp trial. Davison
resigned in March 1986 and Henry King
Stanford took over as interim president that
July.
Dooley, Stanford and the entire athletic
department worked together to build a
program which renewed its focus of
producing young men and women with not
only sound bodies but sound minds as well.
"One of the first things Dr. Stanford did was
hire Dr. Boyd McWhorter," Dooley says.
McWhorter, who came to Georgia in 1986
after serving as SEC commissioner of the
SEC for 14 years, is the academic consultant
to the president. According to McWhorter,
his job is to be the academic "watchdog" of
the athletic department and although his
office is located in the Butts-Mehre Building
along with the other athletic administrators
and coaches, he works closely with Dooley
but doesn't call him boss.
"I act as an auditor of the athletic
department and if there is any wrongdoing, I
report it. I answer directly to the president —
not to Coach Dooley," McWhorter says.
"I have great trust in Dr. McWhorter and
his judgment and if things are not right, he
will go directly to the president. We were the
first school in the country to have a position
like this," Dooley says.
McWhorter's role of auditor includes
making sure all University athletes have
met eligibility requirements and he makes
detailed quarterly reports on the academic
progress of each athlete and the
department's overall performance.
Universities around the country face the
same double-edged sword when it comes to
dealing with the athletic program. There is
extreme competition for universities to field
strong teams that consistently win. Alumni
and fans place immense pressure on coaches
and players to build winning programs and
colleges make millions of dollars in revenue
and contributions from successful sports
teams.
Coaches are then placed in the situation of
trying to recruit the best players for their
system, but they also must be mindful that
these prep players must be able to achieve
academically in college as well.
Georgia is working to solve this problem of
being able to educate its athletes while still
maintaining successful sports teams. Along
with the stricter entrance requirements,
some of the coaches are using their own
screening techniques to help improve the
chances that the athletes they bring to
Athens as freshmen will graduate four years
later.
"I am looking, naturally, for good athletes
to bring to Georgia when I recruit," says Ray
Goff, who took the head football coach reins
in 1989. "But I always tell them that if they
don't plan on working for a degree, then they
don't need to come to Georgia."
'There is a lot of life to live when the