Time May Not Change NCAA’s Mind : Length of Legal Process Won’t Necessarily Protect Tarkanian

While National Collegiate Athletic Assn. attorneys Tuesday were reviewing a Supreme Court decision, a sports law expert said that he would not necessarily expect the NCAA to allow Nevada Las Vegas’ embattled basketball coach, Jerry Tarkanian, to escape punitive action.

John C. Weistart, a sports law professor at Duke University and co-author of “The Law of Sport,” said that he does not agree with UNLV President Robert C. Maxson’s view that the NCAA will waive the 2-year suspension of Tarkanian, ordered in 1977 because the ensuing legal action took about 12 years to resolve.

“I won’t speculate about what the NCAA might do, but I disagree with the thought that they will not prosecute Tark because it’s been so long,” Weistart said. “He’s the one who made it take so long (through legal challenges).

“Having proved their point here, a move to drop this now would diminish the quality of the NCAA’s victory. They at least pursued this case as if there was something important at stake.”

By a 5-4 vote Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA did not violate Tarkanian’s constitutional rights when it ordered UNLV to suspend the controversial coach for 2 years because of recruiting violations.

But whether UNLV can suspend Tarkanian remains unclear, the result of a Nevada state court injunction that requires the university to provide the coach with due process before taking action against him.

David Berst, the NCAA’s assistant executive director, said Tuesday that he would not speculate about action that might eventually be taken against Tarkanian until NCAA attorneys have completed their review of the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Once I understand from them what our position is, we’ll make the decisions you’re asking about,” Berst told the Associated Press. “The first step is to figure out what group or what court will consider it.”

In a brief statement released Monday, Richard D. Schultz, the NCAA’s executive director, said that no decision could be made until the NCAA’s six-member Committee on Infractions conducts its next meeting Feb. 3-5.

Although the Supreme Court’s decision was widely reported as an affirmation of the NCAA’s enforcement powers, Weistart said that he believes the ruling should not be interpreted so narrowly. He predicted that it will have little impact on how the NCAA conducts its business.

“For the NCAA, they could breathe a small sigh of relief,” he said. “But then they had to wake up this morning and ask themselves what they had won. The court didn’t say anything special about the NCAA or its affairs.

“The message from the Supreme Court goes well beyond the NCAA. It falls in line with a fairly long line of recent precedents. The court wants to more narrowly define the circumstances under which someone can bring a lawsuit based on the Constitution.

“But there is nothing in there that says the NCAA should take this case as a vote of confidence in its investigative procedures. The due process problems still exist.”

Weistart did not share Schultz’s optimism that the Supreme Court decision will discourage lawsuits against the NCAA.

“The NCAA has pretty impressive statistics concerning the number of lawsuits brought against them over the years and the almost identical number that they have won,” he said. “Despite that, the number of lawsuits against them hasn’t diminished.”

He said, for instance, that there might still be legal disputes about the NCAA’s drug-testing policy, although they probably would be confined to the state level.