Sigelman, Lee. "It's Academic-Or is it? Admissions Standards and Big-Time College Football." Social Science Quarterly (University of Texas Press) 76.2 (1995): 247-61. Print.
The data explored by Lee Sigelman in this article is that of the relationship between football recruit admissions in institutions of higher education and a schools deviation from standardized test acceptance standards. Sigelman focuses on data from USA Today which depicts the relationship between the average acceptance standards for normal students to that of student athletes at universities with big-time football programs. According to the data in which Sigelman bases his research, the gap between normal students and student athletes SAT scores is pretty substantial. It is true that the more selective a university is the more academically qualified their athletes are, but there is still a hefty gap between mean test scores. Less academically qualified athletes find themselves struggling to match the performance of fellow students; athletes that spend 30+ hours a week preparing and participating in a sport spend 12 hours a week preparing for class and doing school work. Sigelman concludes that a school academic quality and its ability to surround football recruits with students who will be intellectually superior, creates a recruiting advantage. These schools attract more talented athletes because of their high academic quality, which may give the university an edge on the field and court, but not in the classroom.
Lee Sigelman was a Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. He was awarded the Frank J Goodnow distinguished service award and the Walter Beach Pi Sigma Alpha award. What makes Sigelman a credible source on this topic is his knowledge and respect for academics. His research was focused on Political Science involving public opinion, mass communication, and electoral behavior. Sigelman offers an unbiased view of the relationship between academics and athletics, because he research is based solely on facts; his pieces lack opinion, and seek to prove his point based on factual evidence.
SAT Admissions Standards- Sigelman uses the mean SAT scores of universities with big-time athletic programs as the basis of his article. The average SAT scores of normal students is representative of a universities acceptance standards.
Schools academic quality vs. gap of entrance scores- there is a wide gap between the acceptance scores of normal students and that of athletes, and the more selective a school is academically (higher quality), the wider the gap is. Sigelman focuses on this gap to depict that higher quality institutions have an advantage in athletic recruiting.
"There appears to be no connection between football players' scores and a team's success in football, but there is a negative correlation between a school's success on the football field and the proximity of football players' mean SAT scores to all students' SAT scores". - It is clear that football players with higher SAT scores are not the best athletes; the more academically inclined athletes a football team has , the less likely they are to be successful on the field. Schools pick athletes with lower scores, but better athletic skills in order to ensure success on the field.
"New scholarship football players have substantially lower entrance scores than all new students at the same school. There is not a single Divison I-A school where the average entrance exam score of football recruits exceeds that of all new students". - The fact is that acceptations are mad for student athletes; schools that hold athletics in high regards, such as Div I-A schools lower their admission standards for good athletes.
"...a school's academic quality, and more specifically its ability to surround its football recruits with students who will be their intellectual superiors rather than their peers, constitutes a recruiting advantage". - Student athletes that attend universities are not regarded the same as normal students; normal students are perceived as being superior to athletes because athletes lack the academic integrity of the rest of the student body. Schools that are better ranked academically are more successful in recruiting top athletes.
The material that Lee Sigelman bases his research will prove to be extremely helpful in my research. I've been looking for a piece the touches on the average admission SAT scores of student athletes compared to that of normal students. There is a table in the article that I'd like to incorporate into my paper which compares the mean SAT scores of normal students to that of football recruits. The findings of this article show that institutions are willing to lower the bar on academic integrity in order to give them on edge in sports, but the question still remains if whether accepting these essentially non-qualified athletes negatively impacts the intellectual community of higher education?
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