Category: Football

It does seem like a lifetime ago that I was a scholarship athlete at UCLA… but I do remember coming home, eating my dinner and then falling asleep. Somehow, I still managed to graduate in 4 years.

Since then, times have really changed for both students and student-athletes. Today, graduating in 4 years is a real challenge for many. It could be that economic times are tougher or maybe students are just dragging their collective heals; however, more often than not it is the university itself that slows the graduation rates. Sometimes, just getting 1) the required classes in majors whose unit requirements have inflated over the years and 2) obtaining the prerequisites in a timely manner slows the process to a crawl.

When I was at UCLA, I almost completed a triple major but opted to graduate ‘on-time.’ It is clear that by today’s hurdles and requirements, I would never have been able to be so adventurous and my graduation date would have been stretched out. With students taking longer and longer to complete their degrees often due to no fault of their own … it seems only logical that we reevaluate the support we offer student athletes with a fifth year of eligibility. Here’s a link and a copy of a letter I wrote to the Daily Trojan:

 Unequal standards

A favorite topic – by some – is to pick on athletes who struggle through the academic requirements set by the NCAA (Athlete graduation rate lags, Oct. 6, 2006). I always ask myself, “How many ‘regular’ students make progress to degree completion in the time allotted by the NCAA?” You’d be surprised to know the answer.

In the non-football powerhouse, academic community in which I live (San Luis Obispo), the “average” student graduates in 6.5 years. This is more of a pain to the parents than it is to the university or the NCAA, but it points out the fact that athletes everywhere are held to different and, in my opinion, unfair standards.

The unintended expectation of the NCAA academic progress regulations is that athletes are required to outperform their non-athletic peers, but this is unreasonable given the time, energy and recovery demands of Division I athletics.

Every effort should be made to aid athletes and non-athletes in earning their bachelor’s degrees. A big, positive step for athletes in reaching this goal would be in offering a fifth year of eligibility.

Roger Freberg
San Luis Obispo, Calif.

This is not to criticize the NCAA. The NCAA has made great strides in supporting athletes over the years… in particular , allowing athletes with remaining eligibility to continue through graduate school ( as did my daughter Karen) is a wonderful tweak to the system for the best students in the student-athlete mix. The addition of a fifth year would help everyone else towards earning their bachelor’s degree… which is the point, isn’t it?

As for me, I really did have an unfair advantage… I married my tutor.

Roger Freberg

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