Faculty and Male Football and Basketball Players on University Campuses: An Empirical Investigation of the 'Intellectual' as Mentor to the Student Athlete

This study explores the relationship between student athletes and faculty and the impact of specific forms of student athlete and faculty interaction on academic achievement. Specifically, this study examines selected faculty interaction measures of academic achievement among student athletes in the revenue-producing sports of men's basketball and football. The data in this study are from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Student Information Form (SIF; CIRP, 1996) and the College Student Survey (CSS; CIRP,2000). The CIRP data used in this study include information drawn from two surveys: SIF and CSS. The 1996 SIF was administered to first-time college freshmen while the CSS was administered to fourth-year students. The primary purpose of the CIRP is to provide baseline data on entering college freshmen in order to follow them over time to assess how college contributes to their development. The final sample for this study included 693 football and basketball players attending predominantly White institutions. Given the longitudinal nature of this study, only students who completed all items of interest on both surveys were included. The present investigation supported the impact of interaction between student characteristics and the college environment on academic achievement, at least for the male student athletes in this study. Such a finding is not surprising, because student athletes are a subsample of college students. Racial differences were also found in terms of academic preparation between Black and White student athletes. With White student athletes receiving higher high school GPAs than Blacks, it appeared that many Black student athletes matriculated from high schools and environments with inferior academic resources and preparation. The results obtained from this research will be most useful to faculty who are exposed to the sport model and its constraints, as they attempt to empower student athletes in American higher education. Moreover, faculty should be cognizant of their role as mentor and use this role as an opportunity to cultivate in students the best that academics and sports offers: dedication, commitment, perseverance, and teamwork. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)