Left behind on the gridiron

Earlier this month the Center for the Study of Race & Equality in Education at the University of Pennsylvania released information about the graduation rates of African-American football players at the 10 universities that will play in the Bowl Championship Series this winter. 

In 2012, I spent two months investigating the graduation rates of African-American football players at the ten Football Bowl Subdivision schools in the state of Texas. The post below is the result of that reporting.

By Will Brown

His goal was simple: make the traveling squad.

Robert Blackmon was not thinking about getting his degree in the Fall of 1986. He wanted to prove he was good enough to not only line up for the Baylor University football team, but travel to games outside of Waco.

The former Van Vleck defensive back was warned to also focus on the classroom, but Blackmon was more devoted to football.

Though graduation rates for football players are on the rise, the number of African-Americans graduating continues to pale in comparison to their teammates. Whether it’s the Graduation Success Rate or the Federal Graduation rate that are touted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or other metrics complied by researchers, that fact does not change.

“I wasn’t the greatest student,” Blackmon recalls. “(When it came to) graduating, the counselors and coaches always talked about it. But my main thing was staying eligible and trying to play football. It wasn’t until my junior year that I thought about graduating.”

Blackmon left Baylor for a career in the NFL after his junior season. He wound up earning his degree after his football career was over, before embarking on a coaching career.

Blackmon took the road less traveled when it came to earning his undergraduate degree and he knows it.

Of the 10 Division I schools in the state that participate at the Football Bowl Subdivision level, Baylor is the only program where the black graduation rate has been on par, or greater than, the overall team average at any point in the last five years.

“Kids are different nowadays. They want that quick fix and they want that money right now,” Blackmon said. “Everything good is going to take time. If it’s worth it, it will take time and effort.”

“I would share my life story with any kid who will listen about getting an education. That’s something they can’t take away from you. The NFL is not promised. Your chances of playing in the NFL are limited, but you degree can take you a long way.”

Blackmon wound up earning a degree in criminal justice from the University of Houston-Downtown in 2002. He and older brother, Terry, are the only two of his seven siblings to earn college degrees.

Because the former Bay City football coach did not earn his degree six years after originally enrolling his eventual graduation would not have been considered a success by either metric used by the NCAA.

The Crossroads region may not perennially produce blue chip prospects like other regions of the state, but each February area athletes sign National Letters of Intent to play football at some of the premier programs in the country.

Not everyone on a football scholarship at the state’s 10 Football Bowl Subdivision schools is black. But, according to figures submitted to the NCAA, many are.

More than 70 percent of scholarship football players at the University of Texas-Austin are black. Rice and Southern Methodist are the only in-state schools where blacks do not possess a majority of the football scholarships.

“It is more difficult, not impossible, to get a quality education at a university when you are working your way through school,” said Richard Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“In my opinion, college football players in the state of Texas should more accurately be classified as university employees. They are holding down a full-time job that they’d devote 40-plus hours a week. Parents should recognize this reality. The likelihood is high that their son is not going to graduate in the same period as regular students. The statistics show that.”

The graduation gap

First-time, full-time freshmen students are only considered academic successes if they graduate from the college they originally enrolled within six years.

Southall, who spent a decade coaching varsity basketball in Tennessee and Colorado, said deciphering college graduation rates is a complex issue, one that is not assisted by the difference in the metrics used to calculate those numbers.

To further muddy the waters the NCAA has sponsored a series of commercials throughout the Division I men’s basketball tournament noting its athletes go pro in something other than sports. One spot even states “African-American males, who are student athletes, are 10 percent more likely to graduate.”

Southall believes both the Graduation Success Rate and the Federal Graduation Rate have inherent flaws.

For the 10 FBS football programs in the state, the success rate is usually between five and 10 percentage points higher than the federal graduation rate. The 2010-11 graduation percentages feature students that originally enrolled in college in 2004.

Baylor’s overall success rate for the 2010-11 academic year was 62 percent. The graduation success rate for the black football players at the school was also 62 percent, while the white rate was 68 percent and the Hispanic graduation success rate was 33 percent.

For the 2010-11 academic year Rice had the highest overall success rate at 93 percent and highest black graduation rate at 92 percent. Texas A&M had the lowest for black football players, and the University of Texas and Houston had the lowest overall football success rate at 57 percent.

Nationally, Rice was 19^th in Graduation Success Rate for the 2010-11 academic year. The top four schools were all Ivy League institutions. Meanwhile, the five schools with the lowest GSR were all historically black colleges, including Florida A&M.

In the past five years Rice has perennially had the highest graduation rates among black football players of the 10 Texas schools in the top-tier of Division I football.

Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin is only African-American coaching at the Football Bowl Subdivision level in the state. The first-year head coach was not made available to discuss graduation rates at his new school, or during his four-year tenure at Houston.

One school’s solutions

Graduation figures for football players, not solely African-Americans, at the University of Houston — the closest FBS school to Victoria — have been among the lowest among the Division I schools in Texas.

Out of 235 Division I schools, Houston ranked 179^th in Graduation Success Rate, on par with New Mexico State and Texas.

Maria Peden, Associate Director of Athletics for Student Athlete Development said, that goal will be met in part by focusing on student retention and cultivating an atmosphere that encourages athletes, of all backgrounds and ethnicities, to remain in school.

“We try to talk about graduation,” Peden said. …”If that is all you see yourself as you might not have the same academic goals. If we instill in you that I can do something else, then I think they are more likely to stay on the path toward graduation, or at least keep trying.”

Houdfad

The university has made a goal of increasing the four-year average of its Graduation Success Rate to 80 percent in the near future. Currently, that average is 68 percent for the nearly 400 student athletes in the university’s 16 sports programs.

Former Louise linebacker Desmond Pulliam is a former Crossroads athlete on scholarship at Houston. This fall he will be joined by Victoria West volleyball player Brooke Smith and Edna football players Mac Long and Devin Parks.

Peden recently visited Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Central Florida and other schools to get a glimpse of the tactics other universities use to assist their athletes.

In February, Houston hired a learning specialist, who will work with students that might need additional individual instruction that an academic counselor may not provide.

Another program the school instituted was the Cougar Pride Leadership Academy. Freshmen and sophomores are required to attend the semimonthly meetings that discuss commitment and ethics, but also provide career panels and skills that will assist their acclimation to college, as well as college athletics.

“Graduation is so important to everyone. You have these young people in your program for four or five years and you can’t help but want the best for them,” Peden said. “Obviously, the focus is on the athletics, but I think the game has changed. I think all of us are committed to the graduation of students. It’s a big commitment and it’s a two-way street.”

Adjusting expectations, graduation figures

“There is more pressure on these athletes, self-imposed and from athletic departments subtly, that they need to produce on the court,” Southall said.

For the past two years the College Sport Research Institute has produced an Adjusted Graduation Gap report, a study that compares graduation rates between student athletes and full-time students.

Among Southall’s findings: Black football players at flagship schools in BCS conference like Texas, Oklahoma, LSU, Alabama, Florida and others have graduation figures 25 percent lower than full-time students at that institution.

Football players at those same flagship schools have graduation percentages four percent lower than black male students at that institution.

Conversely, for white football players at flagship BC S schools the graduation gap between football players and all full-time students is eight points, and five points for white football players and white male students.

“The graduation game should not be seen as a negative,” Southall said. “Maybe it’s that you do a good job of graduating your full-time students, which is not a bad thing. The next question is if football or basketball players in XYZ conference are not graduating at a rate comparable of their fellow male students, let’s ask why.”

To answer that question the College Sport Research Institute is developing a database where they track the characteristics of football and men’s basketball players at the Division I level.

There will always be those that buck trends, but the institute hopes to track the academic preparedness of athletes in the two primary revenue sports as they enter college. Their goal is to see whether football and men’s basketball players come from the same socio-economic and educational backgrounds as their classmates.

Road to graduation begins in high school

Linda DeAngelo has studied issues related to students and student success during the last decade. She has found the academic preparedness of students does make a difference when it comes to their graduation percentages, whether they are athletes or regular undergraduates.

DeAngelo is the lead author of Completing College: Assessing Graduation Rates at Four-Year Institutions, which was recently published by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles.

In the 2011 study DeAngelo co-wrote it was stated a true measure of a university’s quest to doling out degrees may be in understanding the difference between the number of students that are expected to graduate and those that actually earn degrees.

The UCLA study arrived at a handful of conclusions that do not specifically note football graduation rates. But, it still provides context about why Rice, TCU and SMU have generally produced a higher percentage of football graduates than Texas, Texas A&M and Houston in the past half-decade.

Private schools produce more graduates in four and five years than public universities in part because they “enroll a much higher proportion of the most academically prepared students.”

Women earn degrees at higher percentages than men, with the gender gap widening in the past decade. Also, first-generation college students, of both sexes, graduate at a lower rate than their classmates whose parents have attended college.

Though it might seem a natural connection, the UCLA study found that students with higher high school grade point averages and standardized test scores graduated at a higher percentage than their collegiate peers.

Nevertheless, to DeAngelo when it comes to graduation it’s not a question of rigor for student-athletes. The same on-field skills and willingness to go the extra mile are transferrable.

“The same things that make them a college football player will help them academically and help them obtain a degree,” DeAngelo said. “I am sure there are a ton of athletes that know the playbook inside and out. Those same types of skills are learning skills.”

Tony Brooks agrees with DeAngelo. The former Texas Christian linebacker has always found athletics as a means to an education.

Brooks’ daughter Krysten graduated in the Top 10 percent of her class before accepting a track scholarship to UT-Arlington, his son Daniel signed a football scholarship at Oklahoma in February.

As Daniel, a former Calhoun running back and defensive back, weighed offers from Texas, Texas Christian and Oklahoma State the family put an emphasis on the education he would receive the next four years.

“We asked the different schools that were recruiting Daniel the graduation rate and the size of the classrooms,” Tony Brooks said. “We asked about the study hall program and things like that so we could get an idea how much they were emphasizing graduates along with sports.”

Football is finite; education is not

Brooks and Blackmon are well aware that only a minute percentage of boys will have an opportunity to play college, let alone professional football.

Florida, Texas and California are the primary producers of collegiate and professional players. However, the odds might be longer for those who play in the Lone Star State as more boys play high school football in Texas than Florida and California combined.

According to the NFL Players Association, the average career is less than four years. And, that is if someone makes it to the NFL. The NFLPA calculates that 0.2 percent of college football players are invited to the NFL Scouting Combine.

In his four years at the Bay City helm, Blackmon coached three Division I football players, including 2012 signees Derek Brown and John Paul De La Rosa. The coach said athletics are a means to an education, a lesson he has told his children and those he coaches.

“Every recruiter that called me, grades were the No. 1 priority,” said the former Bay City football coach. “They didn’t call and ask to see film. They asked, ‘How are the grades? How are they as a person?’ And then they asked about film. Grades were always the top question I was asked.”

Daniel Brooks also added potential recruiters were just as concerned with his off-field performance and exploits as his accomplishments for Rockdale, then Calhoun.

Daniel, along with younger brother Elijah was a member of the National Honor Society while enrolled at Calhoun. The Sandcrabs other Division I signee last month, Nick McCrory, was also a member.

“Every school, whatever school I went to, I was going to get my degree,” Daniel said. “I did look at that. I was concentrating on a place where I could go, play and get my degree.”

Daniel made that that statement in late January, more than month before he tore his ACL competing in the long jump for the first time.

As of December 2013, Brooks has yet to appear in a game for Oklahoma; however, he was named one of the Players of the Year for the Sooners scout team.

Even before tearing up his knee, Daniel said earning a degree was primarily about exhibiting discipline. He believed that if he handled his business things, like a NFL career and a post-football career as a businessman, will take care of themselves.

“It all falls back on your goals and your importance (to adhering them) once you get to college,” Tony Brooks said. “There are a lot of distractions out there. I can only speak for me and the guys I went to school with, our goal at the time was the NFL and then it was school, it kind of flips on you after a while.

“A lot of times, it’s your priorities and your goals. With the black community, you can see the pros, you see the nice fancy cars and you get out of focus.”

It’s possible to excel at both

For all the dropouts and cautionary tales, there are successes, locally and beyond.

Edna running back Devin Parks has aspirations of playing in the NFL. Parks plans to study kinesiology and become a football coach when his playing days are done.

“I know one day I’m not going to be a football player,” Parks said moments after signing with the University of Houston. “I would love to stick around the sport, so coaching would be the best thing to do.”

Parks is well aware that one cannot become a high school football coach in Texas, or most other states, without first earning a degree. When he signed, the three things he aspired to accomplish were to get away from home, play football and earn a degree.

Daniel Brooks has a similar mindset to Parks when it comes to parlaying his scholarship into something bigger. “It’s all up to me,” Brooks said. “Whether its 98 percent or that 20 percent, it’s all up to me and I am going to handle my business, so I don’t pay attention to (graduation statistics)”

Of course the personification of athletic and academic excellence is 2011 Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III. Before embarking on a record-setting season, the former Copperas Cove resident earned his degree in political science in December 2010.

It takes a village

In his Heisman acceptance speech Griffin thanked everyone from his parents, his family, friends, coaches, and even school administrators.

DeAngelo and Southall are among those that said those entities that made things “unbelievably believable” for Griffin are instrumental to athletes achieving success inside out the classroom.

The Brooks family has always found Griffin a role model, because of his track background, discipline and focus in the classroom. They can only hope the similarities include returning to form following an ACL tear.

“I know with our kids we have told them from Day 1, when you go to college the main thing is to get your degree,” the elder Brooks said. “Getting your degree won’t guarantee you a job, but it’s giving you a lot better opportunity to secure a job than you have without it. Plus, the job selection will be greater.”

At some point the college football players have to accept some of the responsibility. But, DeAngelo said that if faculty, athletic staff and coaches are more encouraging, then athletes will take the classroom more seriously. Though additional measures to ensure that is the case, more can be done.

“There has been more focus on having athletes graduate. If I am a big-time sports coach, we need to talk about it,” DeAngelo said. “We need to talk not only about winning on the field. They are student-athletes, we need to talk to them about how graduating is important.

“The students need to know that their coaches and athletic departments want them to graduate.”