The Talk of the Southwest : Negative Recruiting a Persistent Problem

The strained relationship between TCU football coach Jim Wacker and Texas A&M; football coach Jackie Sherrill has sparked one of the first applications of a new Southwest Conference rule against so-called negative recruiting.

Sherrill complained to the SWC office about Wacker’s behavior in recruiting Brian Nielsen, an offensive lineman from Deer Park. After checking into the incident, the SWC sent Wacker a letter of warning.

Although Wacker called the matter Mickey Mouse, it points up one of recruiting’s most persistent problems and the SWC’s attempt to deal with it.

SWC faculty representatives approved the negative recruiting rule as part of the conference’s sportsmanlike conduct policy last May--part of the overall reworking of the SWC constitution and bylaws initiated by Fred Jacoby when he became commissioner in 1982. Jacoby came to the SWC from the Mid-American Conference, one of the few other conferences that has such a rule.

The SWC rule applies to anybody who makes statements that are “unduly derogatory” of another school “or its personnel” to a prospective student-athlete, his parents or high school coach or “other person interested in the prospective student-athlete.” One offense brings a public reprimand. An additional offense means suspension from recruiting for one season.

“There was debate over whether we (the SWC) should have anything on negative recruiting,” Jacoby said, “because it’s so difficult to define in certain cases. One person wondered about saying, ‘Well, we have a fine business school, and school B, they don’t even have a business school.’ And somebody else said, ‘How are you ever gonna get General Motors not to say anything bad about Ford?’ That type of thing.

“So finally, after discussion, I remember one of the faculty representatives who was an attorney said, ‘It’s probably best that we have something in there at least as a general principle or policy that we’d like to have followed, even though we know it’s difficult to define. Let’s just have a policy and then work on that.’ ”

Nielsen was an unlikely candidate for all this. He wasn’t on any of the blue-chip lists, and as a New York City native, he wasn’t familiar with the passion that is college football in Texas. But Deer Park got a new weight room when Ron Lynch, a former head coach at small colleges in Michigan, became coach there last March, and Nielsen added 40 pounds of muscle in six months to emerge as an intriguing 6-5, 280-pound package last fall.

Enter Wacker and Sherrill.

According to Nielsen, TCU coaches spoke negatively about A&M; on two occasions in January, the first time in Lynch’s office immediately after Nielsen’s visit to A&M.; He already had visited TCU.

“There was just a lot of pressure applied on me with Coach Sherrill,” he said. “I just felt pressure. I told Coach Sherrill that I really liked A&M.; He didn’t want me to go on my next visit (Texas). He wanted me to commit right then.

“Coach Wacker found out about it. He and Coach (Jim) Dawson, they came down and got me in a corner. They were saying negative things about A&M.; This and that. They talked about other recruits (who chose A&M;) in years before, how they quit, were unhappy, how they talked to coach Wacker when it was too late.

“Then Coach Dawson and another coach, (Tim) Teykl, they were here two or three days later. They talked negatively to me about A&M.; It surprised me, kind of bothered me. It was just kind of weird, people just fighting over me. They were talking about Shane Dybala. They told me, ‘We’ve got Shane Dybala’s phone number right here if you want to call him.’ ”

Dybala, who was a blue-chip defensive lineman in 1984, picked A&M; over TCU and then left A&M; in the middle of his freshman season. He enrolled at Southwest Texas State in January.

Sherrill said he heard about the conversations from Lynch “and some other people.” Sherrill particularly was upset by what he considered to be a reference to drug use at A&M; by Wacker, according to sources familiar with the matter.

“Drugs were mentioned,” said Lynch, who was in his office for only the final portion of the first conversation, “the fact that TCU does give a drug test, that it’s important in where you go. When I came in, that’s all I heard, and it seemed like good advice. I don’t think Wacker meant that A&M; has a drug problem. He (Wacker) said some kids had come up to him and said it was a mistake to be at A&M.; That, in gist, is what I heard. Dybala’s name was mentioned as one of those who were unhappy.”

Lynch said he had been contacted about the matter by SWC assistant commissioner Dutch Baughman.

Sherrill confirmed he had contacted Jacoby. “I called him and asked him to check into it,” he said. Sherrill would not discuss the specifics.

Wacker confirmed that he had received a letter dealing with the Nielsen situation from the SWC but would not discuss the contents of it.

“There are a lot of things I could say about it that I can’t say, defending myself,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s something that’s going to benefit us or the conference or A&M; to air it publicly.

“The whole recruiting thing is ridiculous at times, real frankly. At times, it seems you can take something of very small consequence and blow it up, and you can take something of very significant consequence and because you don’t have hard facts of proof and so on, nothing ever happens. I guess that’s what my concern is. I know this. We’re running the cleanest program, as clean as there is any place. I’m sure there are others as clean. But I know this. There’s nobody doing it, you know, above board or anything else any more than we are.”

Asked to describe his relationship with Sherrill, Wacker said: “We’re not best of friends. I think that’s obvious.”