Senator Urges Approval of Bill to Tell Recruits Graduation Rates

WASHINGTON —  Calling on the nation’s schools to end their “single-minded devotion to athletics,” Sen. Bill Bradley Tuesday urged swift approval of a bill requiring colleges to inform recruits of the graduation rates of their student-athletes.

Under the proposed legislation, any athlete accepting a scholarship would have to sign a paper acknowledging that he understood the graduation rates of other athletes at the school. The statistics would be broken down by sport, race and sex.

Bradley, a Rhodes Scholar from Princeton and a former National Basketball Assn. star with the New York Knicks, said that recruits and families are entitled to know such information.

“I have yet to see a concrete proposal from the (National Collegiate Athletic Assn.) for full disclosure of reliable, informative graduation rate information to prospective student-athletes,” he said.

But NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz asked the committee to allow his organization to implement similar rules at its meeting next January before recommending federal legislation mandating the disclosure.

“Just give us a chance to provide this data on our own,” Schultz said. “If we don’t pass meaningful legislation, I will personally lobby for this bill.”

Bradley responded sharply to Schultz’s plea, delivered during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources.

“Now that legislation is pending, the NCAA is talking about releasing graduation rate data,” Bradley said. “The proposal to propose a plan at the 1990 meeting is too little too late.”

Richard E. Lapchick, director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society, said that there is urgent need for federal legislation on the matter. He said that the requirement would induce coaches “to pay more attention to their players’ academic development.”

Said Villanova basketball Coach Rollie Massimino: “If this bill can shift the pressures from victories in the athletic arena to victories in the academic arena, then I’m in favor of it.”

Not everyone was, however, and Bradley said: “I really thought I was introducing something that was apple pie and motherhood,” he said.