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CSU finds player's recruitment is OK

Randy Holtz, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 29, 2005 at midnight

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FORT COLLINS - An internal review by the Colorado State athletic department revealed no wrongdoing in the recruitment of a football player who received academic credits from a Miami correspondence school whose legitimacy has been questioned by an investigative report Sunday in The New York Times.

Gartrell Johnson III, a redshirt freshman running back for the Rams, is one of several players at various major colleges who took courses from the school, University High School in Miami. Johnson was cleared to play in summer 2004 by the NCAA's academic clearinghouse, whereupon he signed a national letter of intent with CSU.

Johnson's high school degree is from Miami Springs High School. It's unclear how many courses he took through University High School.

"We're aware of the story. We were contacted by a New York Times reporter about three weeks ago, so we became aware of the issues (with University High School)," CSU athletic director Mark Driscoll said Monday. "We looked into it, and I'm confident that we followed our normal admittance procedures (while recruiting Johnson). There was nothing out of the ordinary in the process."

The lengthy story in The Times said at least 14 football players who have gone on to play at Division I-A schools took classes through University High School. Johnson's name did not appear in the story, but the report identified CSU as being one of the schools with a player who used the correspondence school to improve his academic standing and earn a scholarship.

CSU officials confirmed Johnson, the only player on the roster recruited from the Miami area in the past two years, was the player in question.

Citing academic confidentiality laws, Driscoll declined to comment on the extent of Johnson's involvement with University High School. But he emphasized no NCAA or CSU academic rule was compromised during the player's recruitment.

The Times story painted University High School as the high school equivalent of a college "diploma mill," a place where high school athletes with borderline academic qualifications quickly can improve their grades to become eligible for major-college athletic scholarships.

Several players in The Times story said they received high-school diplomas from University High School, which charges $399 for a diploma regardless of the number of courses taken.

While NCAA president Myles Brand told The Times he would form a group to examine issues involving such correspondence schools, another NCAA official said nothing can be done about players now on scholarship who took the courses.

"We're not the educational accreditation police," Diane Dickman, the NCAA's managing director of membership services, told the newspaper.

Johnson, who redshirted last season, was vying for playing time this season with other running-back prospects until sophomore Kyle Bell emerged as CSU's featured back. Johnson, who has had problems fumbling the ball, has 11 carries for 26 yards this season.

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