JUDGE DENIES NCAA REQUEST

PHILADELPHIA -- A federal judge Tuesday denied the NCAA's request to delay enforcement of a court order barring it from using minimum standardized test scores as an eligibility requirement for freshmen athletes.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter denied the NCAA's request for a stay a week and a day after striking down Proposition 16. The NCAA, college athletics' national governing body, had said it needed more time to form new guidelines and to work on appeals.

The ruling could cause chaos among the 302 Division I schools who would suddenly be without a critical recruiting guideline, NCAA counsel David Bruton argued in court Monday. The NCAA also said the ruling could cause "irreparable harm" and affect teams participating in the men's and women's basketball tournaments that are under way.

"With the court's denial of our request for a stay, our membership is left with many unknowns about how to address eligibility standards," NCAA President Cedric Dempsey said. The NCAA said its Division I Board of Directors would meet in the next several weeks to determine how to proceed.

The NCAA said Tuesday it would now seek a stay from the 3rd Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals; it also plans to appeal the original ruling.

In an eight-page opinion, Buckwalter wrote he did not believe the NCAA would suffer irreparable harm.

"After almost 100 years of administering intercollegiate athletics, the establishment of any prospective initial eligibility rule and the policing of its own members is a task the NCAA is more than well-equipped to handle," Buckwalter wrote. "By contrast, the named plaintiffs and other similarly situated student-athletes would incur substantial injury should a stay be issued."

Attorneys for the four black athletes who filed the suit said the NCAA should adopt a nondiscriminatory eligibility policy rather than fighting the court's decision.

"What the NCAA is doing is trying to protect them from themselves," said Andre Dennis, lead attorney for the four plaintiffs. "It's time for the NCAA to develop a nondiscriminatory policy."

The four plaintiffs in the case have since graduated or are no longer freshmen in college. They claimed they were denied NCAA scholarships or sports eligibility because they did not meet the minimum test score.

Under Proposition 16, the association required freshmen athletes to have a high-school diploma and a minimum grade-point average in 13 core academic courses with the GPA contingent on an indexed, sliding scale with a student's score on either the Scholastic Assessment Test or American College Test.

However, students scoring less than 820 on the SAT, or 16 on the ACT, could not participate, regardless of their other academic credentials.

Buckwalter's ruling on Proposition 16 only struck down using such tests as minimum requirements, but did not outlaw altogether the use of standardized tests, which many educators have long said are racially and culturally discriminatory. Its forerunner, Proposition 48, resulted from a tumultuous NCAA convention in 1983 when a group of reform-minded school presidents began pushing for toughened academic requirements.

The NCAA has said the earliest it could establish new guidelines is October, since it first has to consult its member schools before instituting new rules.

One of Proposition 16's supporters, Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, has said minimum test score standards should not be eliminated because of the possibility of bogus test scores.

"What worries me is that it is not going to be worth getting (an education) if we keep lowering the standards," Paterno said Tuesday during an appearance in Philadelphia. "I mean, what are they going to get (out of going to college)? Are they going to get a meaningful education?

"I'm concerned that we are going to eliminate all kinds of standards. Then it is not a question of whether you're going to get anything out of college, it is a question of how can you dunk a basketball."

Don DiJulia, director of athletics at St. Joseph's University, called the current situation a "nightmare,"

"It's like a tie game; there's no answer. You've got to keep playing and playing in the dark," DiJulia said. "We had rules nine days ago and now we have none. If I need to make a recruiting call to a senior in high school tonight and he asks 'What standards do I need to meet,' I'm blank on the other end of the phone."

DiJulia said the NCAA board of directors should meet as soon as possible to decide what standards incoming freshmen can be recruited under, whether students recruited under the old rules and not competing can now practice and play, and whether students not recruited because of the rules can be re-recruited.