 "Photo: Bruno Morlan")
With their cramped schedules, campus celebrity status and constant pressure to succeed in their respective sports, black athletes have different lives than their peers.
Leonard Moore, an associate history professor and assistant vice president of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, spoke Tuesday at the Gregory Games Room on "How to Mentor the African-American Athlete," addressing the difficulty many black student athletes face in managing their college careers inside and outside of the classroom.
According to the Office of Institutional Research, the cumulative grade point average for male student athletes was 2.68 for fall 2005 and 3.15 for male students overall in fall 2006.
Football players and male golfers had the lowest overall GPAs with 2.55 and 2.64, respectively. A recent study from the NCAA also shows many athletes' six-year graduation rates are significantly lower than UT students' overall. Only 42 percent of UT football
players and 33 percent of basketball players graduate within six years, compared to 77 percent of all UT students.
"My expectations in the classroom are higher than the expectations of the coaches on the field," Moore said.
While attending Jackson State University in Mississippi, Moore involved himself with a student athlete tutoring program. There, he said, he began to realize that although student athletes were initially entering college with the goal of graduating, pressures from fans, coaches and faculty, in addition to other problems, slowly diminished that goal.
"They begin to look at their academic career as secondary and their athletic career as primary," he said.
Working at Louisiana State University in 1999, Moore found that the university had the lowest graduation rate of black male football players at 27 percent. In the same year, 80 percent of athletes on scholarship fathered children.
"Again, nobody was raising an issue, and nobody cared," he said.
Moore also discussed a study performed at the University of North Carolina in 1994 that found that 90 percent of black athletes felt their professors were biased against them. A student athlete can sometimes feel out of place in the classroom, he said.
Moore blamed the inconsistencies of student athletes on numerous causes. A main factor is the common "dumb jock" stereotype that Moore defined as the mentality that student athletes are here just to play a sport and have it easy. This can cause faculty mentors or advisors to subconsciously lower their expectations for student athletes. Another point addressed the isolation of student athletes - they rarely join student organizations or pledge for fraternities anymore, Moore said.
Some athletes have addressed Moore and have claimed they feel they are only asked to attend student events to serve as celebrities and attract a larger crowd, he said.
Even the pressure that college football coaches feel can fuel the subconscious lowering of academic expectations of their players. Today, not only is every game scrutinized, but so is every play, which can cause coaches to focus on the pressure to win and lose focus on academics, he said.
"All coaches, despite philosophical differences, want their athletes to excel in the classroom," Moore said.
While at LSU, Moore established a mentoring program that incorporated a strong network of coaches, academic advisors, administrators and strength coaches, all committed to providing a support system for student athletes. The program was successful and received attention from The New York Times. He explained that any time a student was falling behind in a class, the supporters in the network quickly advised each other of the problem and then addressed the student. Moore said he does not want the expectations of a student athlete to be lower than that of a student solely focused on academics.
"It takes a high degree of intellectual activity to play football at this level; I'm trying to transfer this into the classroom," he said.
Having recently transferred to UT, Moore intends to address the same issues and form the same networks he built at LSU.
Faculty Council Chair Douglas Burger supports Moore's goals.
"UT is striving to become an even more elite institute and, as the University improves, the quality of the student athlete needs to improve along with it," Burger said.
Angel Wilson, Jester East hall coordinator, said she identified with much of Moore's discussion since many male athletes live in her dormitory.
Some athletes have told Wilson they sometimes wish they were treated as "regular" academic students devoid of their celebrity status. However, there is still a small number of athletes embracing their popularity, she said.
Electrical engineering senior Timi Adeyemi said he went to Moore's talk because he learned that his friend, a student athlete at an NCAA Division I school, was discouraged by his coach after he looked for scholarship opportunities outside athletics.
"I want to give athletes the chance to explore other opportunities career-wise," Adeyemi said. He said he wants to start a mentoring program for athletes, which has gotten their positive feedback.
Moore said that improving as a student will only help the individual improve as an athlete.
"I just want them to graduate. That's my agenda," he said.
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