A Grambling State women’s basketball player wants to hold the NCAA accountable for what she feels is discrimination against HBCUs.
Brenda McKinney is suing the NCAA for “discrimination against HBCUs through academic reform programs.” The Academic Performance Program, adopted by the NCAA in 2004, has an adverse effect on HBCUs and their athletes’ ability to maintain academic eligibility, according to Andy Berg of AthleticBusiness.com
“Black student-athletes were not provided full information about the potential consequences of the NCAA’s discrimination against Black student-athletes at HBCUs,” the lawsuit alleges. “As a result, unbeknownst to them, they entered their contracts with substantial disadvantages and effects.”
McKinney’s legal representative, Elizabeth Fegan, says that “We are not trying to prevent the NCAA from monitoring academic performance. We want them to be educated and successful. But the NCAA promised in its bylaws to tie those measures to the student bodies of schools and that is where the NCAA has failed.”
The NCAA’s response is that McKinney does not have any legal standing for punitive and class-action measures because the Tigers’ women’s program has never faced an APP-related post-season ban. The organization also says the APP was instituted to “ensure that all college athletes gain a valuable education on a path toward graduation.”
