The NCAA Slams The Door On Prep Schools

Everyone knows the seediest side of college athletics is the part that occurs long before any of the players are old enough to wear a college uniform, with a morass of street agents, apparel companies and prep "schools" of less than upstanding academic reputations creating an entire industry off of 14-18 year old kids. In recent years, it's those prep "schools" that have become increasingly popular as a way for athletes to improve their grades to qualify for NCAA athletics. This has become more important as the NCAA went away from strict SAT/ACT guidelines for eligibility and moved to a sliding scale that weights GPA in core classes as well. Get high enough grades in your core classes and your test scores can be a bit lower.

Of course, when you start seeing things like this, it calls into question the legitimacy of those core course grades:

The Washington Post reported in February 2006 that Lutheran Christian Academy in Philadelphia, which sent players to Georgetown and George Washington among other programs, was operated out of a community center, had no textbooks and had only one full-time employee, a former sanitation worker with no college degree. The New York Times reported in November 2005 that University High, a correspondence school in Miami, offered diplomas to students despite having no classes or instructors. (Washington Post - 5/2/07)

The NCAA yesterday announced that that particular door has now been closed, by giving high school students only 4 years to complete their core classes if they wish to participate in intercollegiate athletics. No more prep schools, no more "5th year seniors" in high school, hopefully no more A's in Algebra from schools without instructors. This is a great move by the NCAA, as the prep "school" system was making a mockery of the entrance requirements. The biggest benefactors will be the junior college ranks, which have really struggled the past decade as their traditional source of talent (kids who couldn't qualify for NCAA entrance) moved to these prep "schools". Expect to see the quality and quantity of junior college players improve rapidly in the next couple of years. High school and AAU basketball still has a long way to go get out of the corrupt swamp it currently lives in, but this is a big step forward.

Oh, and shame on you Georgetown. One of the best academic schools in the country accepting a kid who got his degree from a former sanitation worker at a school with no textbooks? That's just embarrassing.