There's more to school than making Final Four

It's back to classes for frenzied fans and players alike, butoh, what a week. There is no parallel to the excitement of the FinalFour.

But, it is back to school. And that is the part of collegeathletics and high schools athletics that is becoming increasinglyscary. While there is usually no great difficulty for the talentedathlete to gain admittance to a college or university, too manyinstitutions deliver eligibility, but not education, as their end ofthe bargain. The athlete continues to play, but all too often makeslittle progress toward academic successes.

The figures are astonishing. Division I basketball playersgraduate at a rate of 27 percent. Between 25 percent to 30 percentof the nation's high school seniors who are football and basketballplayers are functionally illiterate. That is more than double thenational average.

Public skepticism about the potential benefits of athleticparticipation are at an all-time high. Headlines in the dailynewspaper shout of scandal-ridden athletic programs.

As educators, we have to ask, what are we doing wrong?

The very characteristics that make someone a great athlete canalso make a great student or a great citizen. Dedication,discipline, hard work, goal orientation, teamwork and the ability todeal with victory and defeat are just as important in the classroomas on the playing field.

Competition is good in its purest form. It sours when it is atthe expense of others.

Student-athletes need to be made aware of the enormous odds.The high school athlete has a 10,000-1 shot of ever getting paid forplaying and 100-1 odds of ever competing for a Division I school. Ina good year, fewer than 200 players break into football andbasketball combined, and only 2,500 per year, baseball included, playin the big leagues.

As long as our educational institutions are administeringathletic programs, education should come first.

Illinois and 40 other states as well as the U.S. Congress havedeclared April 6 Student-Athlete Day in hopes of encouraging ouryoung people to take a look at both sides of the fence and balancethem evenly. It's not a day to take dreams away but to refocusathletic dreams in the context of achievement in the classroom aswell as the playing field.

In spite of the highly publicized scandals surroundingathletics, participation still has many virtues. We can't let ouryouth waste golden educational opportunities by chasing invisibleathletic opportunities. We also can't conveniently use our nation'spowerful academic institutions as a minor league program for footballand basketball. We need to make this commitment to the 3.3 millionboys and 1.8 million girls who participate in high school athleticprograms.

These students need to realize that education is the real no-cutcontract.

Tom Kowalski is the coordinator of Project Academus, DePaulUniversity's professional athlete degree completion program. ProjectAcademus is a member of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society,a 40-school consortium centered at Northeastern University in Boston.