What’s next in the vast array of tactics used by schools to compete at the highest levels of big-time college sports? Leading the way in this latest workaround, is a school tarnished by a well known men’s basketball scandal in the late 1990s in which sports officials engaged in academic fraud to try to help athletes stay eligible to compete. Ostensibly, this tactic is aimed at easing compliance with NCAA rules that threaten penalties, including the loss of scholarships, against Division I colleges that fail to keep a significant proportion of their athletes on track to graduation. This may very well be, even though the new NCAA rules can be easily foiled.
