More than a dozen years ago, John Thompson walked off the court before a Georgetown University basketball game in protest of NCAA guidelines that he viewed as biased against high school athletes who came from academically deprived backgrounds.
The protest lasted two games, but Thompson's harangue against the use of standardized college entrance exams as a barometer for predicting the potential academic performance of those athletes continues even after his retirement from coaching in 1999.
Thompson, now host of a radio talk show and a television analyst on NBA games, applauded the news that the NCAA has approved a reform package that will eliminate the minimum test score needed to gain athletic eligibility on the college level.
"I felt that way a long time ago, because I didn't think we had a central educational system in this country, so it's kind of foolish to have a central test," Thompson said yesterday.
"Kids have different forms of being taught. Kids have different abilities to get education. It's very difficult to have a standardized test totally determine a person's ability to get an education in college. You have to have other means of evaluating them."
According to the plan that was proposed Thursday by the NCAA's Division I Board of Directors and will go into effect next summer, prospective athletes will be judged more on their grade point averages in core courses than on either the SAT or ACT exams.
It will immediately affect current high school seniors.
Bruce Malinowski, the athletic director at Overlea High School in Baltimore County, said the new proposal could be a catalyst for some students to apply themselves academically at an earlier age to fulfill a goal - and a need - to receive a college scholarship.
"It's tough to make up in four years what they didn't have in eight," Malinowski said. "It will open up another avenue to allow these kids to hold onto their dreams."
Maryland coach Gary Williams said the pressure will be not only on the high school athletes, but on college coaches and athletes as well.
As part of the reform package, college athletes will be allowed to count only six hours of remedial classes each year compared with the current 12. They will also have to complete 40 percent of their requirements by the end of their second year compared with 25 percent currently.
"It's going to force all of us to do a good job," Williams said. "A lot of kids really struggle to adjust that first year. Some of them are really good students. If you don't get off to a good start, it's going to make it very difficult [to stay eligible]."
Morgan State basketball coach Butch Beard said that he believes the impetus for the NCAA's decision might be based on the number of high school players who are opting to forgo college and try for the NBA.
Though a few players such as Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and Kevin Garnett have been successful making the jump, many more can't qualify academically to play in college and are not talented enough to make the pros.
"The real deal is that now there are some kids who are bypassing college and trying for the pros that don't have the [scores] or core courses that are required," Beard said. "This way, it now gives them the ability to come to college for a couple of years."
Thompson understands that this latest reversal by the NCAA has as much to do with dollars as sense.
"If they have a fear of losing the kid or losing the dollars, if that causes them to do the correct thing, it doesn't bother me one bit," Thompson said. "It's obvious they've never done [something] because it was right to do. A lot of things that are now being done are being done because it's influencing the income."
Beard expects that smaller, historically black schools such as Morgan State, Coppin State and the UMES will benefit in recruiting by the new guidelines, as will the traditional big-time powers.
"It's helping everybody," Beard said. "Some kids who think they can jump from high school to the pros, they're not great students, but now they can get into school and grow for a couple of years."
As part of the new guidelines, athletes must pass 24 semester hours during their freshman year. In the past, schools were allowed to set the minimum freshman GPA requirement to remain eligible. Now all Division I athletes must get a 1.8 (out of 4.0) GPA going into their sophomore year.
In addition, junior-college transfers who came in after two years as partial or non-qualifiers (meaning their high school grades didn't count) would be considered freshmen when they enrolled in four-year college.