In College Sports, Crime and Punishment Are Sometimes Out of Whack

The caller wanted to confirm that Walter Berry would show up to receive his college basketball player of the year trophy. All reasonable expenses--airfare, hotel, meals--would be paid.

“We’re afraid to let him go anywhere,” Katha Quinn, sports information director at St. John’s University, said half-jokingly. “If he were a senior, it would be no problem, but we’ll have to check with the NCAA.”

Such is the confusing state of crime and punishment in college athletics that schools are reluctant to let players do anything without checking first. And for good reason. Indiana All-American Steve Alford was suspended for one game after posing for a charity fund-raising calendar. Colorado State place kicker Steve DeLine nearly lost his last year of eligibility when the NCAA discovered he had taken a horseshoeing course at another school and considered counting that time against him.

Berry is not unique. Underclassmen have won awards before. North Carolina didn’t hesitate to let Michael Jordan fly to Seattle to pick his up in 1984, although the school checked with the NCAA first. But then, none of Jordan’s teammates had been suspended for half a season, starting with the NCAA tournament, for taking what some people considered an innocent trip.

Now, with the NCAA loudly proclaiming its intention to crack down on serious rule violations, that is exactly what happened to St. John’s and 6-foot-11 freshman center Marco Baldi. No wonder Quinn was cautious.

The irony of Baldi’s troubles from St. John’s point of view, is that the NCAA saw no problem with the eligibility of Michigan State’s Scott Skiles, who has had three scrapes with the law in the last two years including drunk driving and marijuana possession charges.

Skiles will be serving time in jail for violation of his probation on the marijuana charge after the tournament. His eligibility for the tournament, however, was not questioned. Baldi’s was.

“The things Skiles was arrested for involve criminal statutes,” said Doug Johnson, director of legislative services for the NCAA. “The NCAA covers athletic participation. It is not against NCAA rules to drive drunk. We have no jurisdiction over him in those matters. We can only hold him responsible for what our legislation covers.”

Baldi’s case, however, was covered. The Italian national who played his high school ball on Long Island had met with NCAA investigators last January. “It seemed a routine inquiry,” athletic director Jack Kaiser said. “At the time, it was my impression that this was part of an ongoing program of interviews. It didn’t seem out of line. We cooperate, always. Marco answered all their questions and that was that.”

Not quite.

“Further inquiries were made in February,” Johnson said. “The answers indicated possible violations.”

The violation involved a trip Baldi made last June to his homeland for a tryout with his national team. Part of the trip was paid for by Simac, Baldi’s Italian club team, and part was paid by the Italian Federation. “He could have accepted a ticket from the federation, but not from Simac,” Johnson said. “The ticket was part of the violation.”

On the day the St. John’s team left for California and the opening round of the tournament, Kaiser was notified that the NCAA staff thought Baldi was ineligible. “I was shocked, to say the least,” he said. “I went through the material and as far as I was concerned, he was eligible.”

At that point, the case was turned over to the NCAA administrative committee, chaired by Jack Davis of Oregon State, president of the NCAA. “Our job is to interpret legislation,” Davis said. “The question was whether or not the student was professionalized. We had to rule on what he could receive from an outside amateur team.”

After considering the material submitted to it, the committee supported the NCAA staff’s position that Baldi had stepped over permissible boundaries. He was declared ineligible.

“All institutions are responsible for certifying the eligibilty of athletes. We advise them and remind them that using ineligible players could cause them to forfeit games and money later on. We tell them to be careful, be sure. What we did was warn St. John’s and others.”

One of the others apparently was Louisiana State, which was asked on the eve of the tournament to document the eligibility status of center Jose Vargas. Some questions had been raised over his play in a developmental league in the Dominican Republic.

When Coach Dale Brown told three of his players that Vargas’ status was being questioned, they threatened a boycott, saying in effect, if Vargas did not play, they would not play. Seven hours before LSU’s tournament opener against Purdue, Vargas was cleared by the school, if not by the NCAA.

“If there is a question of an athlete’s eligibility and an institution chooses to play him, they are playing him at their own risk,” Johnson said. Asked if schools other than St. John’s had heeded the NCAA’s warning on players with questionable eligibility, Johnson said, “No comment.”

“The staff does not declare players ineligible,” he continued. “The institution does. Then they appeal for restoration of eligibility to the eligibility committee.”

“That’s semantics,” Kaiser said.

St. John’s petitioned for a review of Baldi’s case by the eligibility committee, chaired by Olav Kollevol, athletic director of Lafayette College. The committee’s decision was that Baldi’s ticket indiscretion required 16 games on the sidelines. “It floored me,” Kaiser exclaimed.

“We have to make a judgment as to the severity of the violation,” Kollevol said. “We try to reflect on previous cases and see if this case is similiar. There is no set pattern. The staff has a log of previous cases. You try to make a comparison.”

The eligibility committee has wide berth in setting penalties. “We are restoring eligibility, not taking it away,” Kollevoll said. “We could have confirmed the administrative committee’s finding and kept him out permanently. We took one game for every two he had played illegally. We could have taken one for one.”

“The penalty was arrived at with the stroke of logic,” Johnson said.

“I don’t think they were lenient,” Kaiser said. “The kid made an inadvertant mistake. It was a technicality. Obviously there was no intent on the boy’s part or the club’s part or the national team’s part to break the rules.”

St. John’s will appeal, although the urgency of that apopeal was eliminated when the Redmen, reduced to eight players by Baldi’s suspension, lost in the tournament’s second round to Auburn. Kaiser has gathered additional material in Baldi’s defense, material that would have been impossible to assemble on the short notice he had when the NCAA first notified him of the problem.