Former, Future Athletes Find Guiding Hand in Center for Sport

It was a steaming day, relieved only by the spray of water from a fountain that shoots a dozen feet in all directions. A group of children danced through the water, their laughter filling a playground dominated by prostitutes and drug pushers only a few years ago.

These children “are the future,” said Richard Lapchick, gazing wistfully as they played with a football and a soccer ball. “If we can reach them now, we let them know they can be anything they strive for; that life’s options are not limited. That they control their own destiny to pursue their dreams.”

And if the dreams and destiny of these children include professional or collegiate athletics, Lapchick and the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University want to make sure they don’t experience the abuse and exploitation of athletes he sees today.

As the center’s director, not only does Lapchick work with young children to prepare them for an athletic future, he also runs Northeastern’s degree-completion-outreach program that encourages professional, Olympic and former college athletes to return to college and complete their degrees.

In return, the athletes, mainly from Boston area professional teams--the Red Sox, Bruins and Patriots--meet with thousands of middle- and high-school youths to counsel them on the need to balance sports dreams with the importance of an education.

This day, the children had come to meet Robert Weathers, recently released by the New England Patriots after an injury-plagued five-year career. The children swarm around him nonetheless, eager to run for a short pass or try a kick.

“The kids want to be here because of the athletes,” Lapchick said, mopping his glistening brow. “The average person could not get their attention on a hot summer day. We’ve created a society where athletes are the heroes of young people. They are stars; they glitter. They are what these young people want to be. It’s just natural for kids.”

Getting athletes to return to college is no easy task, said Lapchick. “Many athletes think they can’t do anything but play sports. All the athletes that have come through here have strong families that have encouraged them, but not academically. Many of the players had people who told them in a subtle way that they were less intelligent and to take it easy in academics; sports is what they were to pursue.”

Lapchick notes that of the first 14 athletes to join the degree-completion program when it began four years ago, 13 had dropped out of college in their senior year once their eligibility had expired.

“They had been stripped of responsibilities other than sports,” he said, “and that’s what the athletes bought. But the message here is to take the opportunity now; to expand their horizons now. Now they’re talking to kids about how they let themselves be used. Their willingness is like a liberation--’Hey, I can do other things.’ ”

That point is not lost on Keith Lee, associate director of the center, who is enrolled in the degree-completion program at Northeastern.

Lee attended Colorado State on a football scholarship--and never got his degree. But as a defensive back he caught the eye of professional teams and for six years he stuck in the National Football League, with Buffalo, the Patriots and Indianapolis, before accepting the fact he had to face life without football.

“It was difficult because most of my life the priority was football,” Lee said. “I personally didn’t develop the skills at a young age to balance academics and football; I just wanted to excel at football. I didn’t see how to do both and do them with excellence.”

He blames colleges in general for promoting the attitude that football, basketball and other sports are more important than an education. “They stress eligibility more than education,” Lee said. “They make you sense a responsibility to the university by not letting you forget you’re on a full-ride scholarship because of your athletic talent.

“Besides, an 18 year old has a tendency not to think about tomorrow because you’re on top of the world today.”

But that bubble always bursts, even for the most successful professionals, Lee said.

“At some point, maybe the second or third year of pro sports, you see it as much more than an athletic endeavor,” he said. “You’re a business entity and your product is your body. You accept that and continue or you mature and see that there is more to it that needs to be developed, and that is your mind.”

Those athletes who don’t make the pros, or last only a short time, are forced to deal with that reality much earlier, Lee said, and the center and allied schools are there to help convince athletes “there is life after football or basketball. You have to educate the public about the unique aspects of athletics and educate athletes about the need to develop other skills. A college degree does not guarantee success, but it does provide opportunities. . . .

“You hook them with confidence, that they can do it. Most athletes, if you give them an ounce of confidence, you get a pound of results.”

Approximately 100 athletes have taken classes in the degree-completion program at Northeastern since its inception. In addition to them, the center has called on such athletes as Lin Dawson and Mosi Tatupu of the Patriots, former Celtics player Bob Bigelow, former Olympian John Thomas, and even former Providence College basketball star Ray Flynn, the mayor of Boston, to make a pitch to children about balancing academics and education.

“Their message carries a lot of weight and kids realize that,” Lee said.

So, on this sweltering day the children listened, rapt, as Weathers and Lee ended the games and got serious about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, the consequences of teen-age pregnancy and the values of an education.

Lapchick smiled, knowing that these children hold the key to ending myriad episodes of drug use, recruiting violations, exploitation and other abuses.

“Historically, sports, the broadest common denominator, have been looked at as a panacea for society, rather than a reflection of good and bad in society,” Lapchick said. “You had the recruiting scandal at Southern Methodist and Len Bias’ drug overdose at Maryland, but the problem is not just at SMU or Maryland; the tentacles reach to every college campus in the country.

“We should indict the whole sports system for the message it sends to high-school kids. It perverts them when they see Michael Jordan earn more money in a year for endorsing shoes than 125 families can on minimum wage. And Kareem Abdul-Jabbar earns more money for one game than teachers earn in a year. And there are a whole lot of kids who want to grow up to be just like them.”

Those aspirations aren’t wrong, Lapchick said, but the path to fulfilling the dream is loaded with mines. Only one in 12,000 athletes makes it to the professional level, he said, yet too many are willing to take on those odds when the chances are greater of becoming a doctor or lawyer.

Lapchick learned from an early age of the many aspects of the sports world. He is the son of Joe Lapchick, one of the original Celtics and later a coach of the New York Knicks and at St. John’s University.

The elder Lapchick, at 6 feet 5, was considered the first “big man” in professional basketball; his Celtics were so good the American Basketball League disbanded the team in 1928 and sent the players to other clubs. Later the Celtics reorganized as a barnstorming team and Joe Lapchick played for them until he became the St. John’s coach in 1936. His teams went on to win two national championships.

Joe Lapchick became coach of the Knicks in the early years of the NBA, and in 1950 he signed Nat (Sweetwater) Clifton, the first black on the team. Richard Lapchick recalls his confusion as a 5 year old and his father’s anxiety about phone calls after the hiring of Clifton.

Later, Richard Lapchick’s hatred of racism grew, and the plight of the black athlete would become his personal challenge.

Joe Lapchick returned to St. John’s to coach and his son followed him there as a player. College basketball had become a big-time spectator sport, full of exploitation for those who played, but Joe Lapchick thought he had kept his players distant from that.

“Everybody always called him a man’s man,” Richard Lapchick said. “But I remember I found him crying one day. Not only had he found out his players weren’t going to class, they were being passed through. He was shocked, and shocked at himself, because he hadn’t asked if they were going to class.”

The coach instituted mandatory study hall for his players and checked on their class attendance from then on.

Richard Lapchick realized he wasn’t a good enough player to pursue a professional career after graduation. He became instead a sports activist, in particular a leader of the battle to exclude South Africa from international sports competition; to rid sports of its inequities, particularly racial. His stand has led to several death threats and one violent assault, but Lapchick never backed down.

His lifelong experiences and research have led many to dub Lapchick an “expert” on sports in America, particularly college sports and its multitude of problems.

He has been asked to testify this fall in a libel suit against the Lexington Herald-Leader, whose expose about University of Kentucky basketball led to a Pulitzer Prize. A person named in the expose sued the newspaper.

Lapchick will be testifying about the nature and background of problems inherent in college sports.

“The problems are persistent,” he said. “Some people are convinced they have to cheat because the pressure is greater and the money chances are greater. The temptation is always there.”

He is no longer shocked by the wrongdoing in college sports, he said, recounting a conversation with a former athletic director of a large Texas university who described how the school had bid $25,000 for a particular basketball player’s services. The bid was too low; the recruit’s mother accepted $60,000 from another university, but the player, now playing professionally, opted for another institution, leaving the second university $60,000 poorer but without recourse.

At a National Collegiate Athletic Assn. annual conference, Lapchick once witnessed the exchange of money between boosters and football players, right in front of the university’s athletic director. The school was already under NCAA investigation for rules infractions.

Because of such blatancy, “I don’t think I’ve been surprised for a few years,” Lapchick said.

He does hold hope for change.

The NCAA will have to do more, he said, like continuing to strengthen its enforcement policies with crackdowns such as the “death penalty,” as in the suspension of Southern Methodist’s football program for illegal payment of players.

“Until we had the death penalty, there were schools around that felt it was worth it to cheat, and there are still some,” Lapchick said. “But with the death penalty invoked, there is a much higher risk.”

He also hopes the center will be part of the solution and more former athletes will return to school to complete their educations while they warn a future generation of athletes about the pitfalls.

To date, 33 other colleges and universities, including Georgetown, Penn State and Nevada Las Vegas, have joined Northeastern in a consortium organized by Lapchick to provide a second chance for former college athletes to get an education.

“I’d like to see the center as a source of hope that things can be done in the best interest of an athlete’s future as well as the interests of the programs they are part of,” he said. “We have to strive for a time when an institution is not only proud of a won-lost record but what athletes do later in life, when they can be admired as corporate officers or lawyers or doctors.

“We have to create an environment that produces more of those people by forcing educational institutions to do what they’re supposed to do.”