By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

For years, University of Cincinnati basketball coach Bob Huggins has argued that it's not fair to count student-athletes who transfer against a school's graduation rate.

Last week, the NCAA decided he was right.

New legislation that NCAA president Myles Brand called "the beginning of a sea of change in college sports" is designed to hold schools more accountable for the graduation of their student-athletes by penalizing college sports programs that fail to retain and graduate their players.

Under the new rules, penalties could range from scholarship reductions to ineligibility for postseason competition.

But those athletes who choose to transfer to another school will no longer be counted against a school's graduation rate as long as they leave their original school in good academic standing.

It's that aspect of the new rules that Huggins was the most pleased about.

"That's what skewed everything," Huggins said. "It was a farce. I think the Anthony Buford deal was a classic example."

Buford, who played on UC's 1992 Final Four team and is now the color commentator for local telecasts of UC games, transferred to UC from Akron for his senior year and received a degree from UC.

"He was a great student," Huggins said. "Now he owns his own company. But he was held against the graduation rate at Akron and didn't count in our graduation rate.

"If you look back at all the grief we've taken over the years, all of our guys would be fine under this deal. I can't remember a guy we've had leave in bad academic standing."

Dawn Rogers, associate athletic director at Xavier, agreed with Huggins about the new rules for transfers.

"The biggest problem we had with graduation rates was that, before this, if a student left in good academic standing and went on to another four-year institution and graduated, that counted against you," Rogers said.

"This makes your graduation rates a little more legitimate."

Under the new legislation, penalties are broken into two categories - contemporaneous and historical.

Contemporaneous penalties, such as the loss of a scholarship for one year if an athlete leaves in poor academic standing, are expected to begin in 2005-06.

Historical penalties are for academic failure over time and will begin to be levied in three years. The "cut rate" that will establish acceptable graduation standards will be determined after the collection of data this year.

Miami athletic director Brad Bates said the new rules "will give us a baseline threshold that hopefully is a step in the right direction of recruiting people that are serious students."

Bates said "some sort of academic reform was long overdue," but he stopped short of saying this was the ideal reform until he sees what the cut rates are. If they're merely token standards, he said, they won't be effective.

He said he likes the idea of schools - and coaches - being penalized for academic shortcomings by reducing their competitive advantages.

"We're all inherently competitive," he said.

Xavier's Rogers said the new legislation sends a message that the NCAA is serious about academic reform in college athletics.

"What it really makes you do as an institution," Rogers said, "is look at a student-athlete and and say, 'Do they have a legitimate chance of graduating from our institution?' Because if you don't feel that even with the support system you have that that person will be successful, that could be a problem for you."

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E-mail bkoch@enquirer.com