University of Virginia Library

Dropping Below 800

Reprinted from the Daily Tar Heel, student newspaper of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The University of South Carolina and
Clemson University have both dropped the
800 SAT requirement for incoming athletes in
favor of the 1.6 projected quality point
average endorsed by the NCAA.

The two schools plan to request that the
Atlantic Coast Conference change its
eligibility rule to meet with the NCAA
guidelines at the league meeting Dec. 9-11 in
Greensboro.

The other school supporting the
UCS-Clemson move will probably be the
University of Maryland, which provided the
third of three votes for the proposed change
when it was brought up last winter in
Pinehurst. Leading the opposition last winter
were the University of Virginia and Duke
University. North Carolina, State and Wake
Forest voted to retain the 800 rule last
winter. The action insured that the ACC
would remain a conference where the
emphasis is placed on education of athletes,
not on turning out professional jocks destined
to make millions in the pro ranks for
endorsing shaving creams.

UNC and Clemson, two of the
conference's weakest schools academically,
are now threatening the basic philosophy
behind ACC sports since the league was
organized in the early 1950's — a belief that
athletes are also students and must be
declared eligible only after they have met the
normal entrance requirements of the schools
where they play.

Greensboro Daily News Sports columnist
Larry Keech, who has been covering ACC
sports for seven years for papers in both
Virginia and North Carolina, said earlier this
week that North Carolina's vote will be the
key to whether the rule change will be
approved.

USC, Clemson and Maryland will vote for
the change, Keech said, and Virginia and
Duke will oppose it. Wake Forest and N.C.
State, he continued, will vote the same way
UNC does.

The UNC votes, according to Keech, will
be against the change. We hope that he is
right.

Adoption of the 1.6 rule by the ACC
would mean that athletes would be accepted
for enrollment when all indications were that
they would not be able to attain the 2.0 QPA
necessary for graduation.

The Charlotte Observer suggested Monday
that prospective athletes be admitted on the
basis of the 1.6 rule but not be eligible for
competition until they had achieved a 2.0
average.

That compromise would make athletes an
even more select group than they are now. It
would lead to the creation of so many
"basket-weaving" courses that this University
would lose much, if not most, of its academic
reputation.

The same results would occur if the
conference were to accept a compromise put
forth by Mr. Keech in his column. He
advocated dropping the 800 rule for in-state
recruits on the grounds that it would not only
"placate South Carolina and Clemson, it
would alleviate HEW pressure on all ACC
members."

Mr. Keech also suggests a quota of five
athletes per year who would be accepted
under the 1.6 rule.

The basis behind these offers of
compromise is a fear that South Carolina and
Clemson and perhaps Maryland would
withdraw from the conference.

If those schools wish to withdraw from the
conference, then they may do so. We doubt
they will. They could only become
independents, and without winning teams,
which take several years to develop, there is
no financial security for the independent
school's athletic department.

The loss of the three schools would,
admittedly, pose a problem for the ACC, but
we find it hard to believe there are not a
number of area schools, including Virginia
Tech, who are interested in becoming
members of the ACC.

Besides, the question here is not the
survival of an athletic conference, but the
survival of academics on the campuses,
especially this campus.

Dropping the 800 rule would be a serious
detriment to the quality of education on this
campus.

The student-athletes who represent their
schools on the playing field must be just that
— students first and athletes second.

Consequently, we are opposed to any
measure which would subservient academics
to athletics on this University campus.