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Monday, December 06, 2004 For Willingham, no more "Mission Impossible"ROANOKE.COM COLUMNIST Tyrone Willingham, head football coach at Notre Dame, was fired last week after his team ended the season with a 6-5 record. His firing leaves only two African-American football head coaches at NCAA Division I schools. Many sportswriters such as Michael Ventre of NBC Sports believe that a "subtle form of racism masquerades itself as impatience" at major college football powers because most black coaches are terminated before their contracts expire. There may be merit in Ventre’s assertion but I don’t think this is the case in Willingham’s dismissal. He was victimized, as were his two white predecessors, by Notre Dame’s refusal to lower its admissions standards to attract players who will perform well on the football field but poorly in the university’s classrooms. The "lower admission" question had been a contentious issue for Fighting Irish fans well before Willingham arrived on campus three years ago. A 1999 column by writer Frank Vitovitch, "Should Notre Dame Lower Standards?" concluded by stating, "It’s easy to say that Notre Dame should lower standards, but if you were trying to get in and had a 3.7 GPA with a 1300 SAT score, how would you feel if you got turned down while somebody with an 800 SAT score and 2.3 GPA got in just because they can play football? I want to see Notre Dame win the national championship every year, but we have to remember that Notre Dame is an institute of higher education and not a football grooming school." Notre Dame fans who pushed for Willingham’s release, in their quest to recapture past gridiron glory, want to sacrifice rigorous academic standards for football prominence. They are comparing themselves with such traditional football powers as Florida State, Nebraska, Florida and Tennessee. That’s like comparing apples with oranges. Notre Dame has the fourth-highest graduation rate (94 percent) of its overall student population. Only Harvard, Princeton and Yale do better. While the school’s academic ranking places it among the nation’s elite, this year’s football recruiting class was so lowly regarded by recruiting experts that it barely ranked in the nation’s top 30. Freshman star running back Darius Walker is the type of athlete Notre Dame recruits. He had a 4.0 GPA in high school and scored 1100 on the SAT. Recruiting student-athletes like Walker leads to the following impressive graduation rates for ND football players: Eighty percent of African American football graduate from Notre Dame 99 percent of the football players from the 2003 class graduated. Since 1963, only six football player who stayed the entire four years have not completed their degrees. Placed in this academic context, Willingham’s record over the past three years is nothing short of amazing. Yet, many Irish fans wanted his head on a platter. Go figure! In South Bend, Ind., lowering academic standards has been a code word for recruiting lesser academically qualified black athletes. Earlier this year, former ND football great Paul Hornung broke the code and publicly said that "As far as Notre Dame is concerned, we have to ease up a little. We can’t stay as strict as we are because we have to get the black athlete. We must get the black athlete to compete." Hornung was criticized for his comments and later apologized for being insensitive. Yet, he spoke the truth. Young players like Darius Walker are the exception. If ND wants to compete on the football field with rivals such as Michigan and the University of Southern California, it will have to admit "faster athletes, game breakers and difference makers" (i.e., black athletes) under NCAA admission requirements. Unfortunately, there is often an opposing relationship between the athletic ability of outstanding black players and their GPA/test scores. The NCAA Clearinghouse euphemistically notes that its admission standards operate on a "sliding scale." For instance, if a high school athlete has a 2.5 (or above) GPA, he or she only needs an 820 on the SAT to be offered an athletic scholarship to a Division I school. A 2.4 GPA requires an 860 SAT score while a 2.0 GPA requires a 1010 SAT for admission. Notre Dame football, as Paul Hornung correctly suggested, could get all the blue-chip black athletes it wants by admitting them under NCAA guidelines. It is truly the classic zero-sum game for Notre Dame and its football crazy fans: "Dumb down" the admission standards and possibly win the college football national championship; or maintain current admission standards, graduate athletes and non-athletes at a comparable rate, and exemplify how a college that requires "student athletes" to be "student athletes" operates. For me, it’s a no-brainer. ND should maintain current admission standards. Meanwhile, Willingham should be glad to leave South Bend. His physical and emotional health will improve because he will no longer be trying to do the impossible. Previously, he had been the head coach at Stanford University and compiled a similar record as he did at ND. He will likely be the next head coach at the University of Washington where the former coach was fired last year for betting on college basketball games. At Washington, Willingham can recruit players under NCAA admission standards. He will be highly successful there. In a press conference this week, Willingham apologized for the football team’s lack of on-field success during his tenure. He thought the team should have done better in spite of the admissions structure. I really felt sorry for the guy. Willingham, 47, has been so socially and culturally conditioned his entire life to be "twice as good" that he actually believed he could take less-gifted athletes and compete week-in and week-out with truly gifted athletes on the football field. That position put him in a Tom Cruise "Mission Impossible" role that is only real in Hollywood movies. ND was a reality check for Willingham. He now knows that "Mission Impossible" scenarios succeed on the silver screen -- but not in South Bend. |
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