THE COLLEGES / FERNANDO DOMINGUEZ : NCAA Shows Not Wisdom, but Ignorance

In their eternal mission to supposedly preserve the purity of college athletics, National Collegiate Athletic Assn. watchdogs are barking up yet another tree.

And some people don’t like the noise.

Last week, the NCAA Presidents Commission agreed to support a proposal by the NCAA Council to require junior college football and men’s basketball transfers who were partial qualifiers or non-qualifiers out of high school to sit out one year before they compete for Division I schools.

Low graduation rates prompted the proposal. The latest NCAA figures show a 38% graduation rate for junior college transfers in men’s basketball, compared to 44% for freshmen qualifiers. The rates for football players were 40% for transfers and 51% for freshmen.

Voting on the proposed legislation, which would apply only in Division I, will take place at the NCAA Convention in January. But at least two people with ties to junior colleges already don’t like the idea.

“I think it’s wrong,” said University of San Francisco basketball Coach Philip Mathews, former Ventura College coach. “I think it’s ludicrous for [the NCAA] to single out junior college kids, especially a kid who went to junior college to get the proper grades and to get himself ready to go to a four-year school. . . . That’s why you go to a JC in the first place, to improve your grades.”

That’s the same argument offered by Chuck Ferrero, athletic director at Valley. He perceives the proposal as another attempt by the NCAA to over-regulate athletics and add a few more yards to endless miles of bureaucratic red tape. Ferrero figures the NCAA has hit the panic button.

“It all comes down to the few guys who come back and sue the university and say they weren’t educated and were used as players,” Ferrero said. “‘They want to penalize all these JC kids because of things like that.”

Besides the umbrella effect the proposed regulation would have on the targeted junior college athletes, Mathews and Ferrero are concerned that the NCAA seems to be implying that junior colleges are academically inept.

Although Mathews left Ventura for San Francisco in July, the insinuation bothers him.

With good reason.

In Mathews’ 10 years at Ventura, 63 of 67 players in his program graduated and transferred to four-year schools. There were no loopholes in his agenda; no shortcuts. Players took care of their studies or had to deal with Mathews.

But now the NCAA is including programs such as the one Mathews ran at Ventura with others that are perhaps irresponsible. Now everyone is suspect, schools and athletes alike.

Which is unfortunate because there are countless athletes who didn’t perform well academically in high school but have taken monumental strides in junior college with the hope of transferring to a Division I school.

They have worked hard to correct their mistakes, but the NCAA says their academic rehabilitation in junior college isn’t good enough.

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The NCAA sages, in all their wisdom, look at the proverbial glass as half empty instead of half full. They focus on the classroom failures of academically marginal junior college athletes, instead of the achievements of those who labored to improve themselves.

They should take that 38% graduation rate in men’s basketball and 40% rate in football and realize that many of those are athletes who were going nowhere before they enrolled at a junior college.

From there, they should have a chance to play at a Division I program if they are talented enough without further delays.

“Why penalize the many for the wrongs of the few?” Mathews asked.

Why, indeed?