Despite years of prodding from officials at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to bolster athletes' performance in the classroom, nearly 10 percent of all athletics teams in the NCAA's top division failed to meet the association's annual benchmark for academic progress, new data show. Of the 6,300 or so teams in Division I, the…

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is no stranger to criticism. This article reports that during a meeting of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, some higher-education officials questioned the NCAA's handling of a CBS fantasy football league, announced over the summer, that would use college athletes' names. Many…

This article reports on the situation unfolding at the University of Iowa which is all too familiar: Two athletes are accused of rape. The university botches its response. Heads roll. Few things make university presidents and their top aides more nervous than an athlete accused of sexual assault. Most colleges welcome the exposure that a big-time…

This article reports that nearly half of the nation's largest athletics programs have doubled or tripled their recruitment spending over the past decade, as their pursuit of elite athletes intensifies and becomes more national in scope. Forty-eight percent of NCAA Division I athletics departments at least doubled their recruiting budgets from 1997…

This article reports that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has penalized fewer teams than it expected this year over athletes' poor academic performance. For years, officials with the NCAA have predicted that strikingly high numbers of college sports teams could be at risk of losing scholarships this year because of their…

Despite all the alarm that recruiting in college sports has spun out of control, for many athletes the process was neither as intrusive, nor as lavish, as its critics have warned, according to a "Chronicle" survey of hundreds of current Division I athletes. But the accelerated pace of recruiting, and the demands it placed on athletes during their…

A software program that searches for offensive content on college athletes' social-networking sites has drawn skeptical reactions from legal experts, who say it could threaten students' constitutional rights. Billed as a "social-network monitoring service" and marketed exclusively to college athletics departments, YouDiligence was on display at…

Mock interviews have become increasingly common in athletics departments around the country. Press attention is unavoidable in today's collegiate sports landscape, no matter the size of the institution or the nature of the sport. Many athletic directors want to make sure their players are ready for it--even if the likelihood is slim that they will…

More than 130 faculty members and athletics administrators from some of the country's largest universities gathered in Washington, D.C. last week to discuss the relationship between faculty members and intercollegiate athletics at what organizers said was the first national forum dedicated to the topic. During a series of panel discussions,…

According to a report by National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), scholarship athletes at Division I institutions continue to graduate at a rate higher than students over all. Among white male students, athletes graduated at a lower rate than their peers in the student body at large. In a handful of the biggest programs, athletes completed…