THE TUTOR David Graham
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• Played tight end at Savannah State
• M.S. in Sports Administration/Education from Georgia Southern
• Came to OSU from Miami (Ohio) in January 2006
IT'S BEEN MORE than four years since Maurice Clarett played his last down for the Buckeyes. Yet the mere mention of his name still provokes visceral reactions on campus. Most hold him in the lowest possible esteem and blame him for singlehandedly bringing the athletic department into disrepute. Another faction sees Clarett as an exploited athlete, used and then summarily cast aside, triggering his tragic descent. (He's now serving at least 3 1/2 years in prison in Toledo, having pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a January 2006 armed robbery.)
But, inarguably, some good has come from L'Affaire Clarett. The sad saga — particularly his allegations, largely unproven, that he received preferential treatment in the classroom and that tutors wrote his papers — led OSU to take greater efforts to emphasize the "student" component of student-athlete. Says David Graham, director of Student-Athlete Support Services Office (SASSO), the athletic department's tutoring and academic counseling division, "We refer to these as the post-Clarett years."
Most notably, the university has become increasingly selective about admitting borderline recruits and has shifted SASSO out of the athletic department's control. Graham reports directly to a vice provost as well as to the AD. The tutoring operation has been relocated from the athletic complex to the gleaming Younkin Success Center ("Get to the Younkin or you'll be flunkin'") in the middle of campus.
With a full-time staff of 17 and a roster of nearly 100 tutors, SASSO exists, says the 37-year-old Graham, "to give student-athletes everything they need to succeed academically." The services range from on-demand tutoring to help coordinating a course schedule that will accommodate practice times. SASSO employs a tutor to travel on the road with the men's basketball team. It also seeks feedback from the 1,200 faculty members who have athletes in their classes, in hopes of preempting academic problems.
Psychology and neuroscience professor John Bruno, the faculty athletic representative, points to the TV-driven scheduling of games as one major concern. "Presidents can't beat their chests and say 'academic reform, scholar-athletes, blah blah blah' and then agree to the BCS schedule that made our kids lose a week of class," he says. The problem is worst for men's basketball, the sport with the most academic casualties. "Missing class is a way of life for kids who can't afford for it to be a way of life," Bruno says.
Graham will go to extreme lengths to minimize the damage. January's BCS title game coincided with the first week of the winter quarter. Commandeering conference rooms at the team hotel in Scottsdale, Ariz., SASSO set up a remote operation, stocked with computers, course syllabi and textbooks. Eight SASSO staffers made the trip. Based on their academic standing, 29 of the 121 football players were required to attend the study tables. The rest of the team was merely encouraged. "Especially when you're on a 10-week quarter system, missing the first week of classes is a big deal," says Graham. "We tried to make the best of a situation that was not ideal."
According to Graham's in-house figures, Ohio State's football graduation rate from 2001 to '06 was 52% — a figure diminished, he says, by the large number of players who jumped to the NFL in that span. Under the NCAA's new academic-progress rules, which have raised questions on some campuses (page 61), the Buckeyes have shown progress: During the '06 fall quarter more than half the football team had a grade-point average of 3.0 or better. Since Jim Tressel took over for John Cooper as football coach in '01, the cumulative GPA for football players has improved from 2.45 to 2.9. "There's no question it can be hard dancing to two different beats," says Graham of the conflict between athletics and academics, "but once you find a rhythm, you can succeed."
THE NONREVENUE ATHLETE Teresa Meyer
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• Will compete in 2007 Pan Am Games in Brazil; harbors Olympic ambitions
•Academic All — Big Ten
•Fires off 250 rounds of ammo a week
YOU KNOW THOSE silver-dollar-sized decals that adorn the helmets of Buckeyes football players? Teresa Meyer has scads of them too. Except that hers are arrayed on the case of her .22. They recognize the shooting prowess of Meyer, an ambitious, irrepressible junior and captain of the pistol team, a coed consortium that rivals synchronized swimming as the most obscure of OSU's 36 varsity squads.
Though pistol is not an official NCAA sport — it's governed by the NRA — Ohio State has conferred full varsity status upon it since the 1940s. The chance to be on the team was the decisive factor in the college choice of Meyer, who began shooting as a 10-year-old in her hometown of Dearborn, Mich. "Some people here might not even know we exist," she says, "but we get the same benefits as other varsity athletes."
That includes everything from Nike swag like polos and sweatshirts (under a deal worth $11.9 million over seven years, most of it in free product, Nike outfits the entire athletic department) to preference in course scheduling, to full access to training facilities, such as the hypoxic altitude chamber. Taking advantage of a top-flight conditioning staff (the "speed coach" is 1996 Olympic gold medal sprinter Butch Reynolds, class of '91), the 5'8", 180-pound Meyer says she's lost 60 pounds since freshman year.
As an out-of-state resident, Meyer pays upward of $30,000 a year in tuition, room and board. To cut costs, she lives off campus. Her financial situation soon should improve. Starting next fall, the pistol team will be armed with 3.6 scholarships. (The coaches can slice and dice as they see fit; in theory 10 team members could each get .36 of a scholarship.) In compliance with Title IX, 274 of the 621 athletic scholarships OSU confers go to females.
The shooters — and other nonrevenue athletes — recognize that their boat is lifted by the rising tide of football and men's basketball. As one nonrevenue coach puts it, "The more Nike OHIO STATE FOOTBALL sweatshirts I see people wearing, the fewer bus trips my team is going to have to take." The baseball team will go to Florida by charter flight four times in March, and the pistol team recently flew to Utah for a competition.
More money means more opportunity, be it competing against top-level opposition, traveling farther or training in state-of-the-art facilities. More opportunity lures better recruits. Better recruits spawn better programs. "We probably wouldn't be here without football and, to a lesser extent, basketball," says Layne Dreven, a senior on the volleyball team. "We all know that."
The finances have created a caste system. The football and basketball teams share a training table separate from the other teams. Only those two programs have a designated full-time tutor. Their locker rooms are appreciably more lavish. The refurbished football wing of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center will feature amenities on the order of a juice bar, an indoor basketball court and dozens of flat-screen televisions.
The nonrevenue sports are no less intense than football and basketball, however. Almost uniformly, the nonrevenue athletes interviewed by SI likened their commitment to a full-time job. Take men's volleyball, which held preseason practices and conditioning drills from eight to noon each morning last fall. Its season commenced in November and most likely will end in May. Because of the scheduling demands, it can be hard for the players to integrate into the student population. "It's like [we're in] a floating bubble," says senior captain Sam Stevens.
Though almost constantly busy with sports and studies (she's a human resources major), Meyer makes time to serve as a campus Bible-study leader. "For me, it's important to have stuff out of the sport — if not, the stress gets to you," she says. "But at the same time the pistol team is like my family here. It's all a balance."
