JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: The Knight Commission -- a private foundation unrelated to the college basketball coach Bobby Knight -- says big money has made schools lose track of their primary mission, education. The commission's co-chair William Friday, president emeritus at the University of North Carolina, told me what needs to be changed in college sports.</s>WILLIAM FRIDAY, KNIGHT COMMISSION: The first rule we must all follow is that these young people come as student athletes now. We're not farm clubs. We're not in the entertainment industry, although I admit it's that way now, and I acknowledge, as do all members of this commission, that we in our own way have been a product of bringing on what we're pointing out here now in some ways in years passed. But it must be dealt with.</s>MESERVE: Are many of these athletes not students? What do the graduation rates look like?</s>FRIDAY: The graduation rates are not, by any means, what they ought to be, and in some instances in the past, we have had institutions that graduated fewer than 40 percent, fewer than 35 percent in football and basketball.</s>MESERVE: I think you told me there was one school that didn't graduate one African-American basketball player.</s>FRIDAY: Some of the teams have not graduated Afro-Americans, and this is not right, because we bring these people to these campuses, and we use their talent, so to speak, but we're not seeing to it that they get education. And the reason this is so important is only one out of every 100 that play college sports make a living at it once the time span is used up.</s>MESERVE: Using college as a trade school for professional athletics is, as Mr. Friday points out, risky business. Tomorrow, five college underclassmen and four high school players are eligible for the NBA draft, nine young men who think that four years of university training and education, apparently, are not necessary. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Co-Chair Discusses Knight Commission Report on College Sports