Education Comes First at Ivy League Schools : Coaches Deal With Tough Academic Rules in a Different World of Athletics

A few days before the Princeton basketball team began its most critical road trip of the season, four players were late for practice because of class.

“We just wait until they get here,” Princeton coach Pete Carril says. “And tell them to hustle up.”

Nor does an important game assure the team the right to practice on the main court at Jadwin Gymnasium. When the Princeton women play at home they preempt the men at practice.

An hour’s drive down the New Jersey Turnpike at the University of Pennsylvania, Quaker coach Tom Schneider often does not have enough players for a full scrimmage because of class conflicts. Before a key set of weekend games, starting forward Phil Pitts left practice to take a statistics test.

“You learn to adapt to life in the Ivy League,” Penn forward Bruce Lefkowitz says. “I seriously doubt whether Georgia has to worry about having 10 guys to practice.”

The University of Georgia has other worries these days. Such as paying $2.5 million in damages to a professor who claimed she was fired for objecting to preferential treatment for athletes.

The Feb. 12 decision in federal court--which has been appealed--culminated a six-week trial that raised fundamental questions concerning the place of big-time athletics within a university.

The Georgia school is by no means the only university to have come under scrutiny. At the University of Texas it recently was reported that only 18% of the men’s basketball players graduate. From 1973 through 1978 only two of 23 freshmen basketball players at Minnesota were said to graduate. Former players at Tennessee and Kentucky told of receiving cash and favors from alumni. An ex-Creighton player enrolled in elementary school to learn how to read. And the list goes on.

The chronicle of abuses has spurred widespread concern by college coaches and administrators, indignant editorials in newspapers and on television and mild measures of reform by the NCAA.

“There’s no doubt about it, it’s a mess out there,” Carril says. “But it’s no more a mess than E.F. Hutton, than Watergate, than the State Department, than foreign trade.”

Carril has coached 19 seasons at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities. And in his singularly rumpled and raspy style--looking half the time as if he just rolled out of bed--he has built a gleaming basketball tradition at Princeton.

This year the Tigers scrambled to win half their games. And in a conference once ruled by Princeton and Penn, the order was shaken by Cornell and Brown, the league winner. It marked the first time since 1968 Penn or Princeton failed to win the Ivy League title.

At his Jadwin Gym office one morning, Carril is slicing garlic into a large cup of black coffee--an old Italian remedy he claims will lower his blood pressure. The scent is not mistaken for lilacs. (“I don’t have any friends left,” he says.”)

Carril refuses to single out Georgia for rebuke. He says he has not lived in the sort of environment in which athletic departments are a business, and therefore he does not understand the thinking that can lead to this kind of misconduct.

“It’s very easy to condemn somebody at another place that has to do this,” he says. “I don’t want to sound like some pretty boy sitting on some high lofty place telling these guys that what they’re doing is wrong, ‘cause I’ve never been in that situation.”

Carril’s situation is at the other end of the spectrum of college athletics. Education, not basketball, is paramount at the Ivy League--the only major athletic conference not to award athletic scholarships.

Financial aid--independent of athletic talent--is the sole means of economic assistance for Ivy League students. And at Penn and Princeton--where tuition, room and board totals $16,000 a year--the field of prospective players narrows quickly when a recruit learns he and his parents face such staggering costs.

“The Ivy League is the outermost limit of possible purity while still aspiring to athletic excellence,” says Marvin Bressler, a Princeton sociology professor and a voracious basketball fan. “The next step is no recruiting.”

Bill Bradley, a banker’s son turned senator, may have gone from Princeton to Oxford to the New York Knicks, but the Ivy League is clearly not the place to play with a professional career in mind: Players are more likely to think of a seat on the stock exchange than a seat on an NBA bench; to think of being a doctor does not mean emulating Julius Erving.

Says Skip Jarocki, Penn’s assistant athletic director: “There’s an Ivy philosophy that technically we shouldn’t treat our athletes differently than the rest of the student body.”

Take Walt Frazier. If the name is familiar it is because he is the son of the former Knicks star. He is a 6-2 freshman guard at Penn.

Coming out of high school in Chicago, he was sought by Brown and North Carolina A&T.; He chose Penn because of the respected Wharton School of business and the strong basketball program.

He spent most of the season on the bench, playing less than eight minutes a game. Occasionally, he receives advice from someone other than the coach.

“He was at the (Jan. 31) Columbia game,” Walt Frazier says of his father. “I was having a little trouble getting over picks. He just tells me little things to do here and there. He sees how my conditioning is coming.”

Sometimes the two go at each other one-on-one.

“I haven’t played him much recently,” the son says. “He used to beat me most of the time--no shame in that. But I’ve beaten him.”

The father used to play with the lean grace of a cheetah; the son is more compact. That same wide smile, however, connects the generations.

“I don’t put any expectations on myself,” he says. “People see you and say, ‘There’s Walt Frazier’s son.’ They want you to do something exceptional all the time. But I know what I can do and they’re going to have to judge me as me, not by what he did in comparison.”

Adds Coach Schneider: “People ask me if he has any of his father’s traits. And I think the one thing is he’s very heady and very calm--he’s cool. His dad was a very steady player and Walter has those trademarks.”

After practice Frazier is sitting in the bleachers of the Palestra, a creaky brick gym on the Philadelphia campus where it is impossible to walk a block without some reminder that the school was founded by Benjamin Franklin. He is asked about the trouble at Georgia and how Dr. Jan Kemp was ordered to give passing grades to athletes in remedial courses.

“I knew some of the players that went to Georgia,” he says. “And it (the trial) was kind of shocking.”

This semester Frazier is carrying four courses: calculus, sociology, astronomy and economics. His mother, Marsha, insisted on the importance of education.

“She always used to kid me,” he says. “‘You can play basketball but you can be a doctor, too.”’

Take Chris Elzey. He is a 6-5 junior swingman from Oxford, Ohio, and a co-captain of the Penn team. Elzey was one of the squad’s top scorers, averaging 12.3 points a game. He has a delicate outside shot and is one of the country’s better foul shooters.

His course load this term is American and British literature, the history and sociology of science, the history of the South and a sociology class concerning nuclear war.

He stops at Schneider’s office to watch films of a recent Yale game. Later, he is at Bennett Hall for a 1 p.m. class in English, his major. English 289 is taught by Alan Filreis and covers works by Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner and Edmund Wilson. On this day the discussion is of black writers Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Sterling Brown.

The notion of special treatment for athletes does not sit well with Filreis: “That sort of thing sends me in the opposite direction, and I’m a basketball fan.”

Take John Thompson. He is a 6-4 sophomore forward at Princeton from Washington, D.C. He is also the son of the Georgetown coach by the same name.

“It was my dream to play at Georgetown,” he says. “But I realized it would not be in the best interest of the family. Mom would be caught in the middle.”

Princeton, with its books and basketball, was “the best place for me.” His father’s celebrity has not been an issue.

“Actually, there’s been no problem,” he says. “I’ve been John Thompson’s son all my life. You get used to it. There’s no added pressure.”

Then again, this is Princeton, the stately and sprawling campus where F. Scott Fitzgerald could only dream of playing quarterback, where Bill Bradley retreated to the library after Saturday night games and where Brooke Shields was turned down for a student singing group.

Says Bressler, the Princeton professor: “I would guess the bulk of the faculty doesn’t know who is or who is not an athlete.”

Thompson is leaning toward a major in politics. He is taking politics (nuclear weapons), sociology (the power elite), history (America since since 1940) and psychology (the personality).

“Classes are going pretty well,” he says. “You learn to budget your time.”

Thompson started every game this year, averaging 5.8 points. He passes well and has an intuitive understanding of basketball, characteristics put to good use at Princeton. However, he runs little and jumps less.

“He’s a real nice kid,” Carril says, laughing. “I wish he were as mean as his old man.”

During the Georgia dispute, university officials challenged Kemp with a simple question: Who is more important at this school, you or a prominent basketball player?

In many ways, that struck to the heart of the academics vs. athletics issue. In the Ivy League, the answer is self-evident. More important, to even raise the question is preposterous.

“I think there would be no one on this university campus who could be pressured in that way,” Schneider says.

Adds Carril: “If you want a player to flunk out of school, that’s what you do.”

Schneider, in his first year at Penn after coaching Lehigh last season, is at Weightman Hall, speaking about a prospect--a point guard from Florida. He ticks off his credentials: college board scores of 630 and 690, achievement tests over 600, top third ranking in a class with 24 Merit finalists. What’s more, his mother was graduated from Penn.

“And we’re worried about getting him in,” Schneider says.

It was perhaps not always so difficult. In 1979, Penn advanced to the Final Four before being routed by eventual champion Michigan State. There were reports then suggesting the Quakers lowered admission standards for players.

Today, all Ivy League schools essentially are on equal footing in this regard as a result of indexing, a measurement of class rank and standardized tests. If a player falls under the minimum index number he may not be admitted.

“He has to be representative of the student body,” says Jarocki, the assistant AD. “There are students who go above the average, students who go below. But there are some Ivy League restrictions as to how low we can go.”

Carril used to tussle with the admissions office, pushing for players the university deemed not of Princeton caliber. Those skirmishes are long over.

“I know what they want now,” he says. “I know how to behave here.”

Schneider estimates that the graduation rate of Penn basketball players matches the rest of the student population. He may have sold his players short.

A 1983 university study cited an 80% graduation rate for the student body. A 1985 USA Today survey found during a 10-year period that 42 of 49 Quaker players were graduated from Penn. And five others transferred and received degrees elsewhere.

Carril recalls only one player who failed to earn his Princeton degree. And he thinks that player may have graduated from another school. Two former stars, Brian Taylor and Armond Hill, recently returned to complete their studies.

The Ivy League, however, is not immaculate in its pursuit of athletes. Carril will “plead the Fifth Amendment” on this subject, claiming it would be irresponsible to make charges without all the facts.

Says Jarocki: “If there are any abuses, and I’m sure it’s limited, it’s done out of naivete. And the most difficult part for any administration, whether it’s Ivy League or not, is making coaches aware of what all the rules are.”

One thing is clear. No player is tooling around campus in a new BMW courtesy of a generous alum.

“I’ve never even heard that rumored here,” Bressler says.

Adds Schneider: “I really don’t know what abuses there could be since we don’t give scholarships. It doesn’t appear any of these kids have had summer jobs that are out of the question. You know, sitting by a pool for $12 an hour. . . . Other than keeping the dining hall open until 8 o’clock I don’t think any real accommodations are made.”

Carril finds it ironic that the nationwide spate of athletic abuses has led to even greater restrictions in his conference.

“One of the things that’s funny in the Ivy League is that as these scandals occur throughout the country that just makes them more scared and they tighten up even more,” he says. “They say, ‘This is never gonna happen here,’ so they get worse than they already are--which is tough.”

And so it gets tougher when making the recruiting pitch. Not only must a recruit have top grades and test scores, he and his family must shell out a small fortune.

“I had a kid’s father here,” Carril recalls. “He leaned over the desk and the sweat was coming down on his paper work as he tried to figure out how he could get his kid to come here. He finally decided he could do it, and the kid made it. . . . I ask ‘em right off the bat, ‘Are you willing to pay?’ If they say no, OK. That’s it. There are no shortcuts.”