The NCAA college basketball tournament is known as "March Madness," but throughout the month two productions from HBO Sports have been airing a pair of hard-hitting reports about a different kind of madness, namely the often troubling state of student-athletics in revenue-producing programs.
"Costas Now," airing through April 8, features a report by Bob Costas in which several allegations of lax academic standards for student athletes at major programs are examined. Among those interviewed is a criminology professor at the University of Miami who claims he was pressured to give passing grades to undeserving athletes such as star wide receiver Andre Johnson, now with the NFL's Houston Texans. (The allegation was vehemently denied by UM president Donna Shalala.) The report was then followed up by a spirited roundtable discussion including Costas, NCAA president Myles Brand, NBA star-turned-broadcaster Reggie Miller and Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins. What stands out is Brand's dismissive defenses of examples cited by Miller and Jenkins. Perhaps Costas summed it up best when he noted, "The University of Nevada at Las Vegas had more NCAA tournament appearances than basketball players who graduated under (former coach) Jerry Tarkanian."
Meanwhile, "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel" is airing a piece that raises questions about academic integrity at prep school programs across the United States. One of the schools mentioned in correspondent Jon Frankel's report is Stoneridge Preparatory School in Simi Valley, Calif., where a private investor finances the team and players attend classes on their own schedules. The school's basketball program, first chronicled in a Washington Post story last year, is a fascinating account of a group of Senegalese athletes who found their way to California after being recruited to a Florida prep school that the Post said:
"Failed to provide enough beds in the off-campus houses for every player, instead of leaving a few to sleep on the floor; repair the broken septic tank in one off-campus house, instead of forcing players to urinate in bottles for two weeks; feed nutritional meals regularly, which might have kept three Africans from coming to the United States only to lose five pounds each."
Both reports illustrate the stark contrast at Stoneridge, where the same players and coaches that endured the squalid conditions at Florida Prep now enjoy the perks afforded student-athletes at major college programs.
The eye-opening HBO accounts remind us that there exists an underbelly of questionable business practices that undermine the academic process and ultimately shortchange the athletes themselves. Both are well worth watching no matter how much they cast a pall on the ritual we call March Madness.
