Byers Speaks Seldom but Carries a Big Stick

He never got his college degree and, although he was an all-city center in high school, he was too light to make the Rice football team. Yet today, he stands as one of the most powerful forces in intercollegiate athletics.

The name Walter Byers conjures up little national recognition--nothing like that of the National Football League’s Pete Rozelle, nor baseball’s Peter Ueberroth.

Nevertheless, this bespectacled, low-key, 64-year-old Kansan, who for 35 years has directed the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., is the architect and chief operating officer of an organization that dwarfs pro football and major league baseball both in size and scope.

He has become the symbolic conscience of the athletic programs at 991 of the nation’s colleges and universities, many with multi-million-dollar athletic budgets that serve as incubators for future Olympic and professional stars, not to mention business and political leaders.

Byers was 29 years old when he became the NCAA’s first executive director in 1951. He began operations with a three-member staff in a sparse, second-floor office above a saloon on West 11th Street in Kansas City. He and his staff entered through a back door.

Today, the NCAA operates in a modern, two-building complex in suburban Mission, Kan., just outside Kansas City. It has 115 employees and a yearly budget of $57.4 million. Most credit Byers with ushering the NCAA into its current state of affluence and influence.

He has emerged as a mystical figure. He has been sharply criticized in some quarters as antisocial and standoffish. He has been call a tyrannical judge and jury to those who have felt the bite of the NCAA’s stern discipline. Yet, he is hailed as an organizational genius by most of the college members he serves.

“I just can’t imagine an NCAA without Walter Byers,” one NCAA staff member said. “This must be how FBI people felt when they tried to imagine a future without J. Edgar Hoover.”

Imagine it they must, for Byers will retire in 1988.

Wilford Bailey of Auburn, head of an NCAA committee seeking a successor, said the task will be difficult.

“We may find a successor, but replacement is impossible,” Bailey said. “Byers is a living legend. He has made an incalculable impact on college sports. One can’t overstate his value.”

To people who have served under him during the last three decades and more, Byers is a brilliant organizer, a workaholic and a stickler for propriety and detail.

Bill Hunt, head of NCAA legislative services, said that his boss was “not a man of a lot of words.” Often, he said, Byers will sit through meetings of the NCAA Council without saying a thing.

Other lieutenants say that while no one considers Byers a despot, there is never any question who runs the place.

“He was always the first man in the office in the morning and the last to leave,” recalled Big Ten Commissioner Wayne Duke, the first person Byers hired at the NCAA. “I remember the simple rules he laid down for all of us: ‘Do first things first, do your homework and don’t get your name in the papers.’ ”

Although a former newsman, Byers is almost paranoid where the media is concerned. He avoids public appearances, any limelight, for that matter. And he has been criticized for failing to appear at major events such as basketball’s Final Four, the NCAA’s showpiece, and various bowl games.

“The games are for the players and fans,” Byers said. “They don’t need me around.”

Added Duke: “I don’t think it’s as much that he doesn’t enjoy such things as that he would rather spend that time at his desk doing work.

“I remember once, years ago, he had asked me to prepare some promotional material. It was on Saturday, and I had made arrangements to go to a Vanderbilt-Missouri football game that afternoon,” Duke said.

“He wasn’t happy with what I wrote and asked me to redo it. When I told him I wanted to go to a game, he got very upset. ‘Go ahead and enjoy the game. I’ll do it,’ he said.”

Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen, who worked 15 years as Byers’ communications aide, has similar memories.

“Everybody had to work on Saturdays and sometimes on Sunday,” he said. “We had to travel a lot, then come into the office on weekends to make out our reports. When we finally left, we’d notice the light was always still on in the corner office--Walter’s office.”

Both Duke and Hansen agreed that Byers was a tough, exacting boss, but added that the indefatigable NCAA chief led by example.

“He never asked any of us to do more than he would do,” Hansen said. “He was a perfectionist, and his newspaper background came to the surface. He wanted every paper to be just right--every word and comma in the right place. Soon, most of us got to the point we could do it, and Walter would relieve the pressure.

“Walter would quickly determine who had the ability and the dedication to do the job. If they showed a slough-off attitude, they were soon gone.”

Twice married and twice divorced with three grown children, Byers seldom takes vacations. For relaxation, he occasionally heads for his 3,000-acre cattle and horse farm in the Flint Hills section of northern Kansas, dons cowboy boots and dungarees and bales hay.

Though they were his longtime friends and associates, Duke and Hansen said they have never been invited to the farm. So it’s not unusual for someone who fiercely protects his privacy to also disdain public attention.

“Except in very special cases, he likes to let one of the other staff members make public announcements,” Hansen said. “But it’s not that he’s afraid to face the heat. He is one of the most courageous men I’ve seen. He will stand up for what he thinks is right. If one of his staff pulls a boner, he’ll back him all the way.”

Born in Kansas City, Byers was a pretty good football player in high school--chunky and tough--but when he tried out for football at Rice, Coach Jimmy Kitts told him he was too light to play. Byers was hurt.

He spent a year at Rice in 1940 before transferring to Iowa, where he majored in English and journalism. Needing only nine hours to graduate, he quit school in 1943 to join the Army. Discharged later because of eye impairment--he has worn glasses almost since birth--he went to work for the United Press wire service.

Homesick for the Midwest, Byers got a job in the Chicago office of Kenneth L. (Tug) Wilson, who was Big Ten Commissioner. He stayed on until Oct. 1, 1951, when the colleges decided to set up an operational office to govern sports programs. Byers was named director at a salary of $10,000 a year.

At the time, abuses were rampant. Schools were beating the bushes for talent, offering inducements and admitting students who were barely literate and who frequently finished their eligibility without degrees. It was common to see a college football star cruising around campus in a big limousine.

The first major move of the NCAA, under Byers, was to adopt the so-called “sanity code,” which limited athletic scholarships to tuition, books and board. The provision passed by only a handful of votes in a heated convention in New York.

“It was right after the war,” Byers said. “Some returning GIs were getting paid both under their scholarships and the GI Bill. The big problem--then as now--was with boosters, not alumni necessarily--but team followers who kept slipping money to players under the table.

“The biggest violation was that of giving game tickets to players to sell at exaggerated prices. One of the biggest offenders was Oklahoma under Bud Wilkinson.” The Sooners won a record 47 straight football games.

Byers personally investigated the basketball “fix” scandals of the 1950s and 1960s, which involved 27 colleges and 47 players approached by gamblers to throw games.

The NCAA waged a long battle with the Amateur Athletic Union in the 1960s, a fight for accreditation that included the U.S. Olympic team and brought in Gen. Douglas MacArthur as arbitrator. Byers played “hard ball” and ultimately the collegians won.

Meanwhile, Byers began buttressing the NCAA by building up the colleges’ TV exposure in both basketball and football. He signed the first football contract with NBC in 1952 for $1.2 million and had deals with two networks and cable outlets for $72 million when the Supreme Court--acting on a suit by Oklahoma and Georgia--voided NCAA exclusive control over contracts and allowed schools to do their own bidding.

His biggest coup was jazzing up the national basketball tournament by establishing the automatic conference qualifier. The Final Four, meanwhile, has developed into one of the country’s premier sports spectacles and is the NCAA’s biggest moneymaker. The 1987 tournament was sold to TV for $43 million, and the NCAA recently signed a new three-year deal with CBS worth more than $150 million.

“It all came out of Walter’s head,” Duke said. “I’ve always said that the NCAA was built on three pillars--the football and basketball TV contracts and the enforcement division.”

Byers assessed his own role modestly.

“We have a membership of 991,” he said. “The colleges make the rules, special committees interpret and enforce them. The NCAA simply provides the machinery to see that the apparatus functions properly. You might say I am the chief engineer.”