Rice professor tapped to head NCAA academic eligibility cabinet

Rice
professor tapped to head NCAA academic eligibility cabinet
…………………………………………………………………

BY ELLEN CHANG
Rice News Staff

Rice University professor James Castañeda will lead
the NCAA’s Academics Eligibility Compliance Cabinet
beginning in September, an opportunity that will allow him
to get more involved with the athletic organization’s
committees.

As chair of the
cabinet, Castañeda will help oversee its six subcommittees:
agents and amateurism, continuing eligibility, initial eligibility,
legislative review/interpretations, recruiting and student-athlete
reinstatement.

Castañeda’s
two-year appointment was recommended by the NCAA Management
Council and approved by the board of directors in April.

“This is
an absolutely appropriate recognition of Jim’s years
of service to the NCAA,” said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice
president for membership services. “Nobody’s better
than Jim.”

Castañeda
will replace David Knight, who has headed the cabinet since
its inception in 1997. Knight is an organic chemistry professor
at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

“He’s
done a really magnificent job,” Castañeda said
of Knight. “I am challenged and honored to be asked
to succeed him.”

Preparing himself
for the additional responsibility, Castañeda said
his main goals for the new position are to successfully
conduct the meetings and help with the deliberations of
the subcommittees.

Castañeda’s
love of sports has been a lifelong passion that began when
he was 12 and managed a sandlot team, raising money through
raffles to buy uniforms. He went on to play minor league
baseball for one season while pursuing graduate studies
at Yale University.

For the past
four years, he has served as chairman of the NCAA Initial
Eligibility Issues Committee, which establishes policies
and hears requests from students who are ineligible to play
and are requesting waiver appeals based on academic reasons.
He also serves on the Regional NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship
Committee, on the Western Athletic Conference Executive
Council and as faculty liaison to the WAC Student-Athlete
Advisory Committee.

“I’ve
liked it,” he said. “I feel it’s a challenge
because you want to both uphold standards and be fair to
people who have a justifiable reason for asking for a waiver.”

He also has
served as a faculty athletic representative at Rice for
the Southwest Conference, the Western Athletic Conference
and the NCAA for 28 years, a role he has cherished and enjoyed.
Being involved in an organization that oversees athletes
and coaches on an academic basis is important, he said.

“Athletics
and academics should be mutually compatible and supportive,
but only when you maintain high standards in both,”
he said. “To me, athletic participation always has
represented an important component in the worthwhile aspiration
of developing and maintaining a sound mind in a healthy
body.”

Castañeda
has been a Spanish professor at Rice for 40 years, teaching
Golden Age Spanish literature. He also assisted in coaching
the Rice baseball team for 22 seasons before becoming head
golf coach from 1983 until 1998. He received a bachelor
of arts summa cum laude in 1954 from Drew University and
a master’s in 1955 and a doctorate in 1958 in Romance
languages from Yale University.

“Jim Castañeda
is not only a highly valued teacher, but he also has been
a mainstay in the governance and oversight of Rice athletics
for decades,” said Rice President Malcolm Gillis.