LINCOLN — Nebraska will be playing in a new conference in 2011, but that doesn’t mean its athletes will be playing by new academic rules.
If NU’s recruiting strategies change after the move from the Big 12 to the more academically prestigious Big Ten, NU officials believe it won’t be because of high school course completion or standardized test scores.
“I don’t believe (anything changes). I’ve always felt that Nebraska could fit well with any conference,” said Dennis Leblanc, NU’s senior associate athletic director for academics and compliance. “We’ll continue to recruit students who are admissible according to the standards for our university.”
That said, Leblanc is quick to point out the obvious: It’s a little early for Nebraska’s staffers to make any assurances. There’s still months of analytical cramming sessions reserved with the thick Big Ten rulebook.
But the Big Ten has no baseline set of admissions criteria that member institutions must adhere to. The schools create their own policy.
It just so happens that the 11 Big Ten universities have collectively developed a high set of standards for their student-body applicants, selecting the proven scholar more often than the nation’s other BCS colleges. As a result, their athletic teams recruit in a similar fashion.
The Nebraska coaches can already relate.
The NCAA has its own set of Division I eligibility requirements for incoming freshmen — namely 16 core course credits and a passing grade on a sliding scale that compares GPA and SAT/ACT scores.
Most schools, including Nebraska and its soon-to-be conference partners to the east, are a little more picky.
At NU, a more stringent guideline for prospective incoming students is the compilation of four college-prep math credits. That, as well as the rest of Nebraska’s curriculum requirements, is on par with most of the Big Ten, according to Alan Cerveny, NU’s dean of admissions.
Where Nebraska might fall slightly below with most in the Big Ten is its performance-based criteria — applying students should have at least a 20 on the ACT and should be in the upper half of their class.
But those who ultimately enroll at Nebraska continue to possess increasingly attractive credentials, according to Cerveny. He said campus-wide ACT averages have increased in seven of the past eight years.
“If you were to look at the student profiles (at other Big Ten schools), we’re very, very similar,” Cerveny said.
That carries over to athletics, since Cerveny said recruits aren’t given preferential treatment when it comes to enrollment.
At least for now, any alteration to the method that Nebraska uses to admit its new students, and new athletes, shouldn’t have anything to do with its new conference affiliation.
Nebraska’s Jo Potuto, a law professor and faculty representative to the NCAA and Big 12, certainly expects at least a couple tweaks to the NU academic policy by the time next year begins. Nothing startling, and likely nothing that impacts recruiting.
“On an initial quick review, I don’t think it would be anything that would be major, if there is a difference,” Potuto said. “If there are any differences, they’re really on the margin.”
Contact the writer:
402-473-9585, jon.nyatawa@owh.com
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