By: Doug Lesmerises(Cleveland Plain Dealer) –
Columbus- Ohio State could be prepared to switch from the quarter system medicine without prescription to a semester-based academic calendar in the next few years, and the change could save a few basketball scholarships.

Dr. E. Gordon Gee has been in favor of the change since his first tenure at Ohio State and reiterated the stance when he returned last fall. The athletic department would seem to favor that move, aware that the current quarter setup puts Ohio State in a pinch when players like Greg Oden and Kosta Koufos leave for the NBA.

When the NCAA released its Academic Progress Rates (APR) on Tuesday for all universities and sports, OSU’s 909 score for the basketball team fell below the necessary 925 standard. But the Buckeyes avoided losing a scholarship for this coming season by presenting an academic improvement plan the NCAA accepted. However, the problem of watching players withdraw from OSU, which holds classes into June, in order to prepare for and compete in May NBA tryout camps can’t be solved by hiring more learning specialists.
Ending school in late April or early May, as semester schools do, would solve the problem. When pressed about potential APR disadvantages for quarter schools in a Tuesday teleconference, NCAA President Myles Brand mentioned Ohio State’s consideration of the switch.

“Ohio State is seriously considering a move to the semester system,” Brand said, “and we’ll see if their APR improves as a result.”

Brand questioned whether quarter schools really are disadvantaged by their schedule. Not all NBA prospects leave their schools high and dry – NCAA data shows of the 90 NCAA players who left school early to play professionally in 2006-07, 50 of them left school in good academic standing without putting their schools in danger of losing a scholarship. But professor John Bruno, the faculty representative to the OSU athletic department, said, “There can be no doubt that the quarter system discriminates against athletics, in particular with regard to these APR issues.”

Athletics would not drive the move to semesters, but a switch would seem to help athletes in several ways, including having a final exam schedule that conflicts less with competition. The men’s basketball team usually takes winter finals at the Big Ten basketball tournament. However, the semester schedule would take away, for example, the competitive on-field edge the football team gains by playing two or three football games each season before school starts, when football can be the only focus for the players.

When Ohio State visits Southern Cal on Sept. 13 this season, the Trojans will have been in class for three weeks, while the Buckeyes will play a fourth game against Troy before classes start.

OSU spokesperson Shelly Hoffman said the potential change to semesters will be investigated more in the fall, though the changeover would take at least two years while computer systems are converted, among other things.

However, Bruno emphasized that APR is a good thing and the quarter system isn’t the root of all OSU’s problems. A rash of transfers in the last four years dragged down the team’s APR, since retaining players through graduation is the focus of the APR equation. Bruno does expect the APR to increase under Thad Matta as former coach Jim O’Brien’s tenure and players fall out of the four-year range. But the transfer of current freshman Eric Wallace won’t help what even Bruno admits is an uphill battle to reach 925 by next year, when a lost scholarship may be the reality, as it was for basketball teams at Purdue, Tennessee and USC this year.

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