HomeLeaguesDrake Tightropes Between Athletic Success, Academic Reform

Drake Tightropes Between Athletic Success, Academic Reform

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The Missouri Valley Conference event championship was won by Drake on March 10 when they defeated Indiana State to claim the tournament title and make a third-round spot in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in the last four decades.
In order to achieve a balanced budget in July, Drake’s management recommended that eight undergraduate and graduate majors be discontinued. The list of possible section casualties, according to the statement, includes anthropology/sociology, science, physics, faith, health care management and rhetoric.
The juxtaposition of these developments, although generally accidental, yet captures an continued and age- old debate in higher ed about how athletics fits into and impacts the mission of the larger institution. This is especially serious at institutions where Division I athletic achievements does not come naturally.
Drake’s Des Moines, Iowa, school was once home center for a federal educational opposition movement against the perceived invasion of athletics, putting the school’s new basketball success—the women’s team also made this year’s NCAA Tournament—into a unique perspective. ( A college sports reform organization that grew out of the school’s inner- struggle, still carries its name: the Drake Group. )
Marty Martin, Drake’s current leader, is a devout believer in the social advantages of college sports and what it can do to enhance an organization. Martin’s philosophy was forged by his pre- Drake experience, when he worked for another breed of Bulldogs: Gonzaga, the modern mid- major triumph story.
In 1999, Gonzaga’s men’s basketball team—with only one previous NCAA tournament appearance in program history —journeyed all the way to the Elite Eight as a No. 10 seed. Suddenly, the nation now knew the name and location of a small and struggling private Jesuit college in Spokane, Wash.
In a recent Zoom interview, Martin cited how success in athletics can raise the profile of an institution so that it elevates everything else about the institution. ” You go back to that initial appearance, and at that point, ( Gonzaga ) was very different, much, much smaller, really struggling financially … Basketball created an opportunity for people to discover what was and remains a really great institution”.
Gonzaga’s 1999″ Cinderella” run, under coach Dan Monson, kicked off its current streak of 25 consecutive NCAA tourney bids—24 of them under current coach Mark Few—which includes national runner- up finishes in 2017 and 2021. Along the way, the Zags helped to legitimize the irrationality of fan bases and university leaders across the nation, that any Division I basketball program, regardless of its size or location, could rise to the top, and that it was worthwhile to try.
Martin spent five years as executive vice president at Gonzaga before moving on to the knock-on effects of the Zags ‘ March Madness runs.
” Included in my portfolio was the bookstore, for example”, Martin recalled. And I could tell you exactly what we’re going to do in terms of clothing sales based on the performance of the men’s basketball team. I was reporting to my parents about my admissions and financial aid, and it definitely had an impact on how many applications we received and what our [tuition ] discount rate looked like that year.
Gonzaga, to be sure, is much more popular than the famous expectation that behind it, launched a thousand abandoned or stranded ships. Butler, also known as the Bulldogs, is one of the few schools that has been able to replicate the Zags ‘ men’s basketball success. Under former coach Brad Stevens, the team made back-to-back NCAA national championship appearances in 2010 and 2011 as a No. 5- and 8- seed, respectively. Butler, now a member of the Big East, last made it to the NCAA Tournament in 2018, when it lost in the second round. That year, Cinderella’s torch was passed to Drake’s Missouri Valley foe, Loyola University in Chicago, which went to the Final Four as an 11- seed in 2018. The Ramblers followed that up with a Sweet 16 appearance in 2021, and they adapted the national attention into joining the Atlantic 10 as a result.
Martin acknowledges that the path that Gonzaga blazed still exists for another school with similar location, even though it has likely narrowed.
” Certainly, the circumstances have changed between when Gonzaga began its run in’ 98- ’99, to starting to try and crack that egg now”, said Martin. When you consider all the things that ( college sports is ) currently consumed with, such as the transfer portal, NIL, the conference reorganization, and what’s in store. It’s not the same environment in which we’re currently operating to try to use athletics.
While this dynamic can feed desperation, Martin insists that Drake’s athletic ambitions are well- grounded. For that, he credits an unlikely source: Jon Ericson, an emeritus who retired nearly a quarter- century ago.
A few days before Drake announced its recommended curriculum cuts this month, Ericson, the 87- year- old former Drake provost and rhetoric professor, received a courtesy call from John Smith, his one- time student. Smith, now Drake’s school’s vice president for advancement, wanted to give Ericson a heads up that his former department was going to be officially placed on the chopping block.
Ericson put his good fight days behind him, and he now has the good fight under his belt.
From the 1990s to the early 1990s, there was a period of time when faculty concerns about the impact of big-time college athletics actually gained national attention. Mostly thanks to Ericson, Drake became the staging ground of this cause célèbre. The main consternation of Ericson was that Drake and other schools were sacrificed academic integrity for competitive sports, a problem that has since been overshadowed by concerns over college athlete financial rights.
When Martin first contacted Drake to ask for a position as president, he assumed there would be a major pigskin issue.
” One of my initial ( concerns ) was,’ Boy, the next president there is going to have to kill football,'” said Martin. ” Because I believed the university was still trying to compete at FBS. And when I came and discovered the FCS and the Pioneer Football League model, I thought ]it was ] perfect, that somebody was really smart to create that and get that going. because it is the ideal setting for us to travel.
Ericson had already tried doing this in the 1980s, so Martin did n’t have to kill football. Ericson then spearheaded a faculty-driven campaign to get rid of the sport while serving as the school provost. His effort was partially successful, though it made him persona non grata on campus. ” I had more people call me dirty names than anything else”, Ericson recalled.
By the mid- 1980s, the school was reportedly spending$ 800, 000 on football, but seeing little dividends. After the Bulldogs finished 4-7 overall and had a pathetic home crowd of 9, 000, Drake’s president, Michael Ferrari, announced the school would stop football for a year and reinstate it as a Division III, pared-down program that forbids athletic scholarships. Ferrari, however, resisted the bigger push to abandon the sport entirely, because of what he said it did for the student experience. A lesser-known but still relevant benefit of football is that it attracts a small percentage of male students to a campus that has long been disproportionately female.
Drake reported to the Department of Education that it spent$ 3.34 million on its men’s basketball budget—the third- highest in its conference—compared to just$ 1.32 million on football.
In a telephone interview this week, Ericson made clear that the goal was elimination, as such, he believes he ultimately failed on that score. Undeterred, Ericson carried on as a faculty nuisance prodding Drake’s leadership about its priorities in the face of athletics. The results were mixed.
In 1989, he sent a memo to Ferrari recommending that Drake’s media guide include information about each athlete’s course work and their professors. ” Intercollegiate athletes have issues with recruiting violations and social misconduct,” Ericson wrote. ” These abuses, however, are minor compared to the major problem—the way universities use athletes when they claim to be providing academic preparation”. The memo later served as the introduction to a small, recently re-released paperback book called While Faculty Sleep: Athletics Academic Integrity and the Academy, which Ericson originally wrote in 2015.
In 1992, Drake’s faculty senate passed a resolution calling for the athletes ‘ coursework to be publicly disclosed. When Drake joined as a founding member of the Pioneer Football League, the program moved from Division III to Division I-AA ( now known as the Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS) the following year. The NCAA made the necessary changes after the NCAA established a requirement that Division I members must compete in all of their sports at or above the I-A level in order to remain eligible.
In 1999, the year before he retired, Ericson convened a two- day think tank of academics, such as University of New Haven sports management professor Allen Sack, to address academic corruption in college athletics. Out of the meetings emerged the Drake Group—a name given to it by Marc Hansen, a Des Moines Register columnist. Ericson served as the organization’s founding president.
Although Ericson claims that the Drake Group was initially backed up, that support appeared to have waned in 2002 when ESPN’s Outside the Lines traveled to Des Moines to interview Ericson for an episode about the general academic shortcomings of college athletes. According to Ericson, this was the only time ESPN had ever planned to visit Drake in recent memory.
ESPN wanted to film Ericson giving a guest lecture on college sports and academic integrity to Wanda Everage, who Ericson had hired years earlier to serve as assistant to the provost with a focus on academic integrity in athletics. The university’s leadership, according to Ericson and Everage, discouraged the filming from taking place on campus, a decision that left Ericson “dumbfounded and flabbergasted”.
Is there any doubt that if ESPN asked to visit Drake to cover an athletic event, they would be welcomed with open arms? Ericson said. ” Yet when they came to cover a faculty member’s speech about athletics, they were met with a closed fist”.
At the last minute, the lecture was moved to a Catholic center for Drake students.
Up until 2004, Ericson remained as president of the Drake Group. Although the organization has maintained its original name, it has long since lost contact with its namesake Des Moines university, whose official mailing address is now Westport, Connecticut. As Sportico reported previously, the organization’s focus has largely changed from its original goal of academic integrity to the welfare of college athletes and the sustainability of college athletics.
Prone to self- deprecation, Ericson dismisses his advocacy work as a defeat. And this would appear to be a fair assessment given the current state of the multibillion-dollar college sports industry, which is lording over higher education.
However, Everage—who retired from Drake in 2012 but still lives in Des Moines —says that Ericson’s constant barking kept the university from completely losing its way in the name of athletics.
” He took a lot of flak”, she said. It is amazing that his legacy continues even though people may not remember who he is or who he was, may have refuted his ideas and his opinions, but ultimately they came to the realization that he was right. Although I ca n’t say for certain what it is now, I did notice and appreciated it.
Martin similarly tips his hat to the rhetoric of Drake’s former provost.
” I think it’s in the DNA of everything”, said Martin,” that there is, you know, an accountability in athletics … Athletics is a phenomenal, phenomenal formative experience for a student athlete when done right. And that’s what we’re really about for all of our students. Education is the main component of this. 

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