Dec. 8, 2006
SAN DIEGO - Question: I am a San Diego State graduate, and I've felt for a long time that you and your programs receive a considerable amount of unfair criticism from the newspaper. Do you feel they are biased against the Aztecs?
Answer: In our business, I think we must understand something fundamental about the newspaper business and the people who write stories for those newspapers. They are not there to root for us. They are not there to be our best friends. They are not there to help us improve. They are trying to sell newspapers. As long as we understand and acknowledge that, we avoid falling into the trap of feeling that we are unfairly treated. If we can't take public criticism, we are definitely in the wrong business! By the same token, if we let media criticism affect how we do business, then we aren't very good at what we do and don't believe in ourselves in the way that we must. We always hope that the newspaper is accurate and fair. We also have to understand that if a writer wishes to take a particular angle or position in a story, that writer can always find somebody who's willing to give the author a quote to fit that position. In those cases, we just hope that editorials or opinions aren't written disguised as factual stories.
Question: We are hearing more and more how hard it is for high school seniors to get admitted to SDSU. Are exceptions made for high school athletes who are recruited?
Answer: It is definitely getting more difficult each year to get into San Diego State. I just heard in a recent campus meeting that there were over 57,000 applicants for next fall for approximately 8,000 spots! That's pretty amazing, and of course means that only the best students are accepted. The average GPA for last year's entering SDSU freshman class was approximately 3.6 and the average SAT score was 1100. Pretty impressive! As for student-athletes and others at SDSU, there is an admission exception process, although it is tougher than any I've been associated with in my years in the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-10. In fact, the Orlando Sentinel newspaper did a comprehensive story some months ago on all Division I-A conferences detailing which schools were easiest on admitting student-athletes and which were hardest. I'm proud to say that SDSU and Air Force were the two most difficult schools in the Mountain West Conference relative to admitting athletes. If we were in the Pac-10, the only schools more difficult than San Diego State for student-athletes to enter would be Stanford and UCLA. We obviously want to recruit the very best students we can, but we will continue to utilize admission exceptions on men and women whom we believe can be successful academically and make a difference for us competitively.
Question: Do the NCAA rules have academic requirements of athletes once they are in school on your campus, or do you just follow university standards?
Answer: Yes, of course. In fact there is an entire chapter (Chapter 14) in the NCAA rule book dedicated to academic requirements once the student-athletes are with us. For example, a student-athlete, by NCAA rule, must have 40 percent of his/her degree requirements completed by the end of the second year; 60 percent by the end of the third year; and 80 percent by the end of the fourth year. A student-athlete must always be enrolled in at least 12 hours or he/she is ineligible . A student-athlete must declare a major by the end of the second year. These are a just a few of many NCAA standards that are tougher than those of our institution. With the advent by the NCAA of APR, the standards have become even tougher, and the penalties for sports that don't pay attention to these academic standards and graduation rates include loss of scholarships, recruiting visits, and practice time.
Question: What are the graduation rates for SDSU athletes? How do they compare to the regular student body?
Answer: The graduation rate that I value the most is the one that measures the number of our student-athletes who graduate after exhausting their eligibility with us. In other words, those who finish their careers with us should graduate. Currently that rate is 81 percent. Even though that isn't bad, and is much better than the regular student body, it is my belief that we should graduate 100 percent of those student-athletes. That is our goal, and we are working hard every day to put the processes and resources in place to help make it happen.