Humiliation to triumph: A student-athlete's odyssey

I had just climbed into the cab at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. I had covered the Raiders' game a few weeks ago, and the cab driver, a large African-American man, began driving me to the hotel.

He was talkative and I noticed he was especially well-spoken and, after a while, he said he'd played basketball at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., more than 20 years ago. I said that was nice. I stared out the window. I was tired.

"Maybe you heard of me," the driver said.

"I don't think so," I said. "I don't cover Creighton."

"I'm famous," he said.

"How so?"

He said he was the player who spent almost four years at Creighton but when he left he was functionally illiterate.

"It was in all the papers," he said.

I stopped looking out the window.

"I remember you," I said. "What's your name?"

"Kevin Ross," he said. "I've learned to read. It's an interesting story. I went to the White House and met President Reagan. I've been on 'Night Line.' I testified before Congress."

At the hotel, Ross gave me his card: Motivational Speaker. Students - Parents - Community Service.

"Call me," he said.

I called him after I got home. I also read about him. It's an amazing story and it's uplifting and you'll love it. When Ross, 48, went to Creighton in 1978, he got a full scholarship and he was proud to be there, although as far as he can remember he never filled out an application or wrote any essays. He was proud except for one thing. He could barely read. In subsequent interviews over the phone he told me he scored 9 on the ACT out of a possible 36. His SAT score was somewhere between 800 and 900. Low.

"I opened up a book at Creighton," he said, "and I was scared to death."

When he took exams, he said, the tests would be pre-done.

"The exam would be face down on the desk. They told me to take my time and act like I was doing it and be sure to put your name on it."

He said secretaries would write his papers, not that his courses were brain busters. He took squad participation, ceramics, first aid and the theory of baseball. When he went to a restaurant he always ordered what his girlfriend ordered because he could not read the menu. He averaged 4.2 points a game, and in his final semester of his senior year, he noticed his grades plummeted. All of a sudden, he was getting F's and he felt sure Creighton had no more use for him. Ross' story is an example of what happens to some college athletes - more to black than white athletes.

I called Creighton and someone in Sports Information said Creighton graduates 94 percent of its athletes. According to the NCAA Web site, the Creighton Bluejays graduate 100 percent of white male basketball players, 30 percent of black male players. I asked if someone from Creighton could phone me regarding Ross but that never happened. In 1989, Ross sued Creighton and, although the school claimed no responsibility for his learning problems, it paid him a settlement of $30,000.

Creighton once did something very nice for Ross. After he left, they set him up at Westside Preparatory School in Chicago, paid $350 a month for him to attend. Ross is not blown away by their largesse. He figures it's the least they could have done. Understand what happened. Ross, 23, left college and went to a kindergarten-through-8th grade-school. At that time, he was reading at a second-grade level. He would squeeze his 6-foot-9 frame into desks made for kids 2 feet shorter than he was. He could have felt mortified. He didn't. He never had read an entire book and he wanted to read.

Marva Collins ran the school and she was a marvel. She would take kids who were deemed unteachable and she would teach them. They did a made-for-TV movie about her with Cicely Tyson playing the starring role.

Collins took personal charge of Ross, began from scratch, taught him vowels and how to change nouns to adjectives - orchestra to orchestral. Until he met Collins, he never had used a capital "I" in his writing, didn't know one existed. She told him he practiced hard at basketball, and learning to read would require the same dedication.

When he graduated from Westside a year later, his reading level was the same as a sophomore in college. He delivered the commencement address, telling everyone, "Learn, learn, learn. Never cease learning, and let ignorance die unborn." He also said, "Wipe out the hydra-headed illiteracy and become Medusas of power and caring."

The kids and parents gave him a standing ovation. When I asked why he went back to grammar school after being in college, he said, "I didn't want to live life a false person or an illiterate. I didn't want to go through life as a big dummy."

He has three children. One is named Kevin just like him. His son's mother is Shelia McBride, who had little Kevin when she was 17. She and Ross never married and live separate lives. When her son wanted to go to college and play basketball, she investigated the NCAA's Clearing House for college admissions. Just filling out the paperwork was difficult.

In a letter she sent me, McBride wrote, "There was a very challenging process we had to complete or adhere to in order for my son to attend college on a basketball scholarship. Once I started figuring this process out and doing lots of research, to my surprise, I found out that this entire process was put in place in August 1986 because of my son's father, Kevin Ross. My son now faced meeting deadlines put in place because of his father."

McBride was so moved by the convergence of the lives of Ross and his son, she formed a company called GradeCheck to help student/athletes navigate the process of determining NCAA eligibility.

This is one of the good things that came out of Ross' struggles, which still include episodes of depression. Another good thing is Ross' own Web site, www.krossbase.org. BASE stands for The Balancing Act of Sports and Education. In his mission statement, Ross writes: "Students need to know there is nothing wrong with getting help if you have a problem. Go to your parents or a teacher, the principal or counselor. There is nothing wrong with seeing a psychiatrist."

At his speaking engagements, Ross shows students "that I care and treat them like they are something special."

When I downloaded Ross' mission statement, I noticed a few misspellings. So did Ross. He immediately phoned and apologized, saying the person who put together the Web site was not careful about spelling.

"That's crap," he said. "Mrs. Collins would not approve."