Out to Lunch at Stanford : 11 Walk-Ons Stuck With Tabs in Training-Table Foul-Up

Don’t look for any smiling faces around the Stanford athletic department this week. Instead, color them Cardinal, as in embarrassed.

The school that brought you the band that couldn’t tackle has come up with an encore.

It seems that 11 members of the football team, all of them walk-ons, last season were allowed free access to the training table and were given meal money on weekends in violation of NCAA rules.

Walk-ons, by definition, are not allowed to receive aid of any sort, and that includes free meals. But, because of what is now being called “an embarrassing accounting error” by Stanford Athletic Director Andy Geiger, the players in question were able to dine without forking over a dime.

Until now.

When the athletic department last week discovered what had happened, it sent letters to each of the 11 players, asking them to reimburse the university--to the tune of more than $300 each.

The letter said that if the money was not returned by March 31, “the university will not allow you to register for the Spring quarter.” It offered the players an opportunity to earn the money through “student employment over the Spring break.”

Not unexpectedly, this has struck a sour note with the players, none of whom were starters.

“If I had known I had to pay the money back, I never would have spent it,” one of the walk-ons, freshman defensive back Todd Locicero, told the Stanford Daily.

Said scholarship player Pat Mitchel, a senior defensive end: “Everyone thinks it’s really unjust to ask all these guys to pay back all that money. It’s not right to say, ‘We made a mistake, now you guys have to pay for it.’ ”

Geiger met with the 11 players for almost an hour Wednesday afternoon in an effort to resolve the problem. The March 31 deadline was scrapped and, according to the Daily, Geiger said the athletic department might offer summer employment or NCAA-approved loans to the students involved.

Geiger said he holds himself responsible for the situation, which, he said, “apparently may have been going on in other years, too.”

“I’m responsible. If you want to write up someone being responsible, it’s me. I’m the guy in charge,” he told the student newspaper.

Reached at home by phone Thursday night, Geiger stressed that there had been no intent to violate any NCAA rules.

“There was no intent on the part of anyone to defraud,” he said. “This is is not a scandal or a scam. It’s a simple administrative oversight.

“A letter went out that shouldn’t have gone out. It’s not a serious violation. There’s no uproar. . . . It’s an internal, inadvertent violation.

“I’m sorry that it’s become public because it’s an internal matter. I’m concerned and unhappy that the error was not caught before the fact rather than after the fact.”

The problem came to light through a bizarre series of circumstances.

Wendell Brown, a walk-on wide receiver on the Cardinal football team for the past two seasons, tried out for the basketball team last and was named to the team as a back-up guard. He was not given a scholarship.

The basketball team told him he would have to pay to eat at the training table, but later, because the athletic department owed him some money, he was allowed to eat free for one week.

During this period, someone who did not know what was happening questioned Brown’s being allowed to eat for free, and the incident mushroomed from there.

According to NCAA rules, walk-on players in any sport are not allowed to receive anything but “expenses directly related to their sport.” If they do receive additional help, they must be counted as scholarship players.

Therefore, if the 11 do not repay the money, they will, in the NCAA’s eyes, be considered scholarship players, thus puting Stanford over the NCAA limit of 95 scholarship players allowed in football.

Geiger sidestepped the question of whether the students will be forced to repay the money, saying merely that if they don’t, the university would be in violation.

“If we feel that we have a problem, then we’ll call the NCAA with it,” he said. “I’ve already informed the Pac-10 conference.”

Earlier, Geiger told the Stanford Daily that he would investigate the entire walk-on policy, adding that the current situation may have been going on since at least 1973, when the NCAA imposed the 95-scholarship limit.