Former collegiate athletic stars discussed Tuesday the struggles many Black scholarship athletes in Division I college basketball and football face in graduating with a degree.
Maurice Clarett is a former running back whose controversial behavior led Ohio State University to expel him after his freshman season in 2002, leaving him ineligible for the NFL draft. During a symposium in Washington, D.C., he blamed his “ignorance” for years of drug addiction, arrests and prison time.
Now a public speaker who credits God for helping him recover from those personal demons, Mr. Clarett said he gradually realized the university was only trying to get the most out of its “brand.”
“I made peace with Ohio State when I was in prison,” Mr. Clarett said at a morning panel of the Allen Sack National Symposium at the National Press Club. “In regards to the institution, it’s a business.”
The Drake Group, a Connecticut-based think tank that lobbies Congress for policy changes in NCAA intercollegiate athletics, sponsored the daylong symposium, which featured former athletes, coaches, sports writers and others.
According to Drake, 52% of NCAA Division I men’s basketball players, 38% of all Division I football players and 38% of all Division I women’s basketball players who receive full athletic scholarships to attend college do not graduate within six years.
According to its website, the Drake Group supports several bills in Congress that would redistribute athletic income from sponsors and coaches to players as a way of fighting “systemic racism” against Black scholarship athletes. They include the College Athletes Bill of Rights, which would guarantee players income from any marketing of their names, images and likenesses.
Former WNBA star Sherill Baker, an all-American basketball player at the University of Georgia, said she did not like school and might have dropped out had the team not insisted on her getting academic help with her classes.
“My tutoring, my study hall sessions helped a lot, but I was ready to get out of school,” said Ms. Baker, an assistant women’s basketball coach and running recruiter at George Washington University.
In addition to providing academic support, panelists said coaches and schools need to be sensitive to the impact of racism on Black student-athletes at majority-White colleges.
Jackson Matteo, a former captain of the University of Virginia football team who graduated from college in 2016, said he works to be sensitive to racial issues as a high school football coach today, despite not being able as a White man to share the “lived experience” of his Black players.
“There is a significant gap between the lived experiences of a Black man in our country and a White man in our country,” said Mr. Matteo, the head football coach at Woodberry Forest School, a private boarding school for boys in Woodberry Forest, Virginia.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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