Affluence, Influence and Concern : Designed to Solve Problems, the Organization Appears to Have Become Part of the Problem

A deep mistrust is growing between the NCAA and schools that have felt its sting, shrouding its war on cheating in suspicion and stirring sentiment for a new order in college athletics.

University presidents and coaches question not only the NCAA’s methods, but the motives behind the crackdown, which has 25 schools on probation, more under investigation and others in fear of being penalized for minor infractions.

Some say that the NCAA ruins reputations for spite, terrorizing universities and athletes selectively with its absolute power. Even the NCAA says that despite good intentions, it may have become part of the problem it was created to solve.

NCAA officials admit to a communications gap and flaws in their investigative methods but say that is no reason to scrap the whole system.

Nevertheless, there are areas of serious concern:

--Secret investigations that create fear and mistrust. “There is a certain degree of paranoia,” said Denny Crum, Louisville basketball coach. “Families and livelihoods are affected.”

--A feeling that due process of law is not the NCAA way, that reputations are ruined without recourse. “We’re suffering terribly from that,” said Thomas Carpenter, president at Memphis State. “Everybody assumes that we’re real outlaws.”

--Use of 25 part-time investigators that the NCAA admits it can’t control fully. “I have some reservations about using them,” said David Berst, enforcement director. “It’s more difficult to make sure you know what the part-timers are doing, or how willing they are to do it.”

--A 411-page manual that is so confusing even the most successful major college coaches don’t know all the rules. “Our Lord gave us Ten Commandments, and look at the trouble we have with those,” said Lou Carnesecca, St. John’s basketball coach.

Changes are coming. Walter Byers, the NCAA’s first and only executive director for 35 years, will retire in 1988, and power is expected to shift toward the Presidents’ Commission, made up of chief executives from 44 universities.

The manual, which is one-fourth rules governing 21 sports at 991 member institutions and organizations, is being simplified. The enforcement division has expanded to include compliance, giving colleges a hotline to help avoid accidental violations. And enforcement officers are trying to work faster.

There may never be wholesale change, though.

“If you look at the NCAA long enough, you’ll find that they pay informants, and that if they want to hurt you, they will,” said Dick Versace, former Bradley basketball coach.

Versace, who left Bradley last summer during an NCAA investigation and became an assistant coach with the Detroit Pistons, said that changing the NCAA is impossible. “You might do better to take on an oil cartel,” he said. “They’re not as powerful.”

With big-time college sports beset by charges of illegal recruiting and payoffs to players, the NCAA adopted the so-called “death penalty” at its convention last January. The rule allows the NCAA to ban a school from playing a sport if it is caught cheating twice.

Universities fear that the NCAA will wield this devastating power more out of concern for its image and $57.4-million budget than for the welfare of college athletics.

“Their major concern is over money, and that I find to be the basis of some hypocrisy on the part of the NCAA,” Memphis State’s Carpenter said.

Steve Morgan, NCAA assistant executive director, said he is “not wed to the association as a be-all and end-all, but I think we stand a close examination for integrity and fairness.

“Do we re-invent the wheel? Do we create another organization like the NCAA? My feeling has always been that you’re better off working from within the NCAA to change it.”

Confusion and frustration are common. Take the cases of Nebraska and Northeast Louisiana.

Berst said that investigators were looking into infractions involving Nebraska football player Doug DuBose when they found evidence that players were selling tickets for profit.

Coach Tom Osborne said NCAA investigators told players that no suspensions were contemplated, that they were studying possibly changing the rule. Soon afterward, the NCAA suspended 60 players, although Nebraska later won an appeal.

“They made us look like a wholesale crooked outfit,” Osborne said.

Berst said: “When too many people get involved, sometimes mixed messages are sent out.”

The NCAA, he added, is reviewing the possibility of putting eligibility under his department.

The confusion occurred because the enforcement division does not handle eligibility, something Berst said is under study now. Instead, legislative services, which has no investigators, received the information and imposed the suspensions.

The Northeast Louisiana women’s basketball team was put on probation last January for recruiting violations involving player Chana Perry. The violations included giving Perry a ride in a car and a night’s lodging, lending her a wristwatch and letting her shoot baskets in a dark gym.

Northeast Louisiana President Dwight Vines said that the NCAA made Northeast an example as its first penalty against a women’s program.

“Everybody is telling me to shut up,” Vines said. “The more you say, the more trouble you’re in.”

Nevertheless, he talks.

“We were disappointed because we were misinformed about what was going on . . . not once but repeatedly,” he said. “We were told it was minor, then told this was serious. If I could use one word in characterizing our dealings with the NCAA, I would say they were unprofessional.”

Berst said Vines miscalculated.

One reason the penalty was so harsh, he said, was that a graduate assistant tried to mislead investigators. Perry’s status as one of the country’s top high school prospects also contributed.

“I think (Vines) took the view from the start that it was not serious, and whatever we said to the contrary was wrong,” Berst said.

The NCAA’s credibility isn’t helped by its use of 25 part-timers, former FBI agents who investigate arson for the National Fire Assn. in Kansas City, to supplement its staff of 12 full-timers.

Last year, evidence gathered by one of the part-timers against Southern Methodist had to be discarded because he paid an informant $20, Berst said.

NCAA investigators have no subpoena power, so investigations are done in varying degrees of secrecy, leading to other criticisms.

“It’s incumbent on us to make sure people are not condemned in secrecy or on hearsay,” President Robert Maxson of Nevada Las Vegas said. “I’m a strong supporter of the NCAA, and I voted for every one of the stiffer penalties for violators, including the death penalty.

“But if I handled problems on my campus in the same clandestine way as they do, I couldn’t survive as president.”

UNLV’s basketball program was put on probation and Coach Jerry Tarkanian was suspended for two years in 1977, before Maxson became president. Tarkanian sued the NCAA to reverse his suspension and won. The NCAA is appealing.

Schools normally get a letter telling them that an investigation has begun, but sometimes the letter does not even mention the sport, let alone other details. The school may not get further information until the investigation is over.

The NCAA realizes that secrecy creates suspicion, but Berst said that investigations sometimes become impossible if universities are given too much information.

“I’m sure you agree that (the Washington Post’s Bob) Woodward and (Carl) Bernstein wouldn’t have wanted to conduct their Watergate interviews each day, then go to Nixon and tell him what they had,” Berst said. “If they had, they surely wouldn’t have had a case.”

At the end of an investigation, a school is given full details, Berst said. Then the school is asked to conduct its own investigation.

LSU has spent more than $100,000 responding to a four-year NCAA inquiry that resulted in football probation and the resignation of athletic director Bob Brodhead, who bugged his own office during an ongoing basketball investigation.

Despite the delay and expense, LSU Chancellor James Wharton’s only concern is secrecy. “I think investigators should come right down the barrel of the university rather than conducting outside interviews,” he said.

Morgan, who is Berst’s boss, said that the NCAA needs to regain the trust not only of its members but also of the public at large.

“We need to communicate better with our membership and the public,” he said. “In the past, we have let institutions that felt they were wronged take the media attention without responding. We have a duty to respond, either to explain or to be found coming up short.”

It has been repeated so often, it’s axiomatic: “If the NCAA wants to look long enough and hard enough, they’ll find something,” Vines said.

Berst agreed that it’s possible to find some type of violation anywhere, although it may be minor. It is this admission that makes the question of who gets investigated particularly troublesome.

Tarkanian contends that he and UNLV were put on probation because of a personal vendetta by Warren Brown, former NCAA enforcement chief.

Berst doesn’t take such allegations seriously. “Tarkanian goes with the tide,” Berst said. “Sometimes it’s me that’s out to get him, sometimes Warren Brown, sometimes Walter Byers.”

Sometimes schools report themselves, but unless the NCAA shows leniency, that wellspring may dry up.

After its own investigation last spring, Texas Christian reported serious football violations to the NCAA. Although the NCAA said it would have had no case on its own, the program was put on probation for a year with massive loss of scholarships and $343,203 in television money.

“Schools ask each other for advice on how to handle NCAA investigations,” TCU Coach Jim Wacker said. “The story going around now is that when anyone calls, you tell them to answer all of the NCAA’s questions by saying, ‘Not to my knowledge.’ ”

Memphis State’s Carpenter, whose school is on football and basketball probation, said he felt sorry for TCU, which “suspended players, fired coaches, disclosed everything. It makes you wonder why a school should disclose anything.”

The NCAA also is accused of having sacred cows, such as Kentucky in basketball.

More than a year ago, the Lexington Herald-Leader published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in which 26 former Kentucky players said they accepted cash, gifts or meals in violation of NCAA rules. The NCAA has done nothing, and Morgan says his office may never interview all the players.

“Many times when our investigations hit the papers, our sources run dry immediately,” Morgan said. He added that although current students can be pretty much forced to testify, the NCAA has little influence over former players.

Not everyone agrees with the sacred cow theory. In fact, Nebraska’s Osborne sees a reverse prejudice in the NCAA. “I don’t know that they’re being vindictive toward sacred cows, but I do think there’s a feeling that, ‘By golly, we’ve got to show people that nobody is above getting hit,’ ” he said.

Suspicion also springs from a sense that once judged, there is no recourse--that guilt is assumed, and the burden of proof rests with the university. It’s a major concern among schools that have run afoul of the NCAA.

“For those of us accustomed to working through the court system and meeting a particular burden of proof, I admit it is difficult to switch gears and operate under the NCAA’s rules,” said Reid Crawford, assistant to the president at Iowa State.

After a university has prepared its response to an investigation, a hearing is set before the six-member Infractions Committee, made up of university representatives. Any appeals go before the 46-member NCAA Council, which elects the Infractions Committee. Appeals of eligibility go before a legislative services committee.

There are no outside arbitrators, such as those used to settle disputes in professional football or baseball.

There is a feeling among schools that the Infractions Committee, in its zeal, will accept any case Berst’s office presents. Even stronger, however, is the feeling that an appeal is useless.

No university has ever had a penalty overturned in appeal to the council, although some schools have had them reduced. In the last three years, Berst said, only four appeals--by USC, Southern Methodist, Florida and San Diego State--have been heard, and all were denied.

One attorney, who asked not to be identified, said he had seen cases in which the NCAA staff remained with the council while appeals were decided. Berst said he and his staff leave during deliberations, but that “Byers could be present, and he is staff.”

Morgan, who came to enforcement from legislative services, said he could remember no instances of Byers remaining with the council.

“I would have a real problem if he sat in with the council, and I know I always had our people in legislative services leave while the subcommittee made its decision,” Morgan said.

Another due-process concern is the way eligibility cases work.

Iowa State declared linebacker Jeff Braswell ineligible for this season after the NCAA questioned his recruiting. The NCAA said if Braswell played and his eligibility later was turned down in appeals, the school could lose TV money and be prohibited from bowl appearances.

“The thing I have the most difficulty with is the NCAA concept that you are guilty until proven innocent,” said Braswell’s attorney, Vincent Klyn. Klyn said that inequity was built into a system that forced an athlete to be suspended until he could prove his innocence by appeal.

Although individuals frequently take the NCAA to court, it can be difficult for schools to sue the association because of its voluntary status.

Even if a court will hear a suit by a school, it can be prohibitively expensive. In his 10-year court battle, for example, Tarkanian ran up about $200,000 in attorneys’ fees.

The real damage, however, often has been done already.

“What they did to me, I’ll never recover,” Tarkanian said. “I’m just fortunate the whole state of Nevada stood behind me. Usually, when they come after you . . . you turn around, and there’s nobody there. All your friends are in their foxholes.”