Tougher Eligibility Rules Will Help Educate Athletes

Hart Lee Dykes, a wide receiver for Oklahoma State’s football team, recently completed a unique sports grand slam. Four schools--Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas A&M; and Oklahoma State--were penalized for violations committed while attempting to recruit him.

There is nothing new about college violations involving athletes (for years, players from major colleges in the National Football League have joked about the pay cuts they had to take when they turned pro). But recent events have brought the problem to the fore again.

A casual observer might wonder, “Who cares?” Unfortunately, for most of its history, the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. has also been in the “who cares?” ranks. The NCAA’s laissez-faire attitude has harmed coaches, schools, players and fans alike, by creating an atmosphere where all involved believe they can win only if they cheat.

On the surface, college athletics have never been better. Athletes perform much better than they did even a decade ago. Games are faster and more exciting. The business side is also flourishing--revenues generated by college sports are staggering.

Beneath the surface, however, all is not well. Every day seems to bring another story about a college penalized for recruiting violations. The big money now available to schools for TV and postseason appearances has made it much more tempting for schools to ignore rules to land a big recruit. Coaches are under tremendous pressure to win.

Top prospects among high school athletes quickly learn about the free-market economy. They are free agents, literally able to sell their services to the highest bidder, as was Dykes. The recruiting violations in such cases can be outright payments, or “signing bonuses,” to the player, gifts to the player or members of his family, free use of rental cars and phone credit cards, among other inducements. The basic idea is to make the player a deal he can’t refuse. Payments and gifts may continue throughout the player’s career.

Unfortunately, top players are often not as outstanding in the classroom as they are on the football field or basketball court. Many schools take steps to allow star athletes to meet entrance requirements or to stay eligible. Schools have been caught falsifying transcripts and entrance-test scores, falsifying grades, pressuring professors to change grades and supplying other students to take exams for athletes who are poor students.

Outstanding athletes are given special treatment early on. A top player quickly learns there are two standards, one for regular students and one for him. He begins to expect special treatment. He doesn’t have to worry about studying because he knows someone will take care of his grades.

Having been actively involved with the NFL Players Assn. for more than five years, I saw the negative effect this double standard can have on the athlete when he is no longer able to play. Suddenly, he is thrown into a world where he receives no special treatment and for which he is ill-prepared.

Because of this double standard I support the NCAA’s recent passage of Proposition 42--the amendment to the NCAA bylaw known as Proposition 48, which set minimum admission standards for student athletes. Where Proposition 48 allowed freshmen who only partially met the standards to receive scholarships, while losing a year of eligibility, Proposition 42 would ban financial aid for partial qualifiers, starting in 1990.

I believe, however, that Proposition 42 should be phased in over a period of years, to allow current high school athletes time to meet the new standards.

Many coaches, most notably Georgetown’s basketball coach, John Thompson, have been critical of Proposition 42. They argue that the new rule (which prevents schools from giving scholarship money to athletes who score below 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and have less than a 2.0 grade-point average) is discriminatory. Despite these arguments, I believe Proposition 42 will help cure many of the problems that exist in college sports today.

Proposition 42 sends a signal to all athletes: They must perform in the classroom if they want to play college sports. It treats the athlete like any other student applying to college. It helps eliminate the double standard for athletes and will force all athletes to prepare for their post-athletic careers.

The NCAA should also reinstate the freshman ineligibility rule, which would help players by giving them more time to concentrate on academics in their first year and would ease the transition from high school to college.

A high school player who cannot meet the minimal standards of Proposition 42 should probably not be in college. Typically, such a student is frustrated by college and merely puts in time waiting to be drafted. A player who does not meet the standards can attend junior college, improve his skills and later attend college. It is easy to forget that colleges are institutions of higher learning, not training grounds for the professional leagues.

All indications are that the NCAA has finally decided to come to grips with the problem of recruiting violations. Last year the association hired Dick Shultz as its executive director. Shultz had previously been the athletic director at the University of Virginia, where he ran a clean and competitive program. He has beefed up the NCAA’s enforcement division and promised severe penalties for violators.

But resolution will not come easy, so deeply ingrained are these practices among many major schools. Traditionally, the NCAA has only penalized its member institutions, not individual coaches or players. The NCAA’s theory has been that coaches and players come and go, but the institution remains, so it is logical to penalize the institution. I believe for the NCAA’s sanctions to be successful, it must penalize coaches and players.

Some argue it is unfair to penalize the head coach because so many of the violations are out of his control. They point to gifts and payments by overzealous alumni and violations by overeager assistant coaches as examples of violations that are beyond the responsibility of the head coach. I find this argument unpersuasive.

First, there is no excuse for a head coach not being aware of all violations involving his program. He is responsible for the entire program and he is the person to ensure that it is run cleanly and fairly. If a coach realizes that violations may cause him to be suspended for two years, he will take an active role in ensuring that the program is clean.

A scene that has become all too familiar recently is the head coach who commits numerous violations, gets wind of pending NCAA penalties and leaves for a new position just before the penalties are announced. In this situation, the NCAA should suspend the coach and prevent him from coaching at any NCAA school for the period of the suspension.

Individual athletes should also be personally responsible for their role in these violations.

In many situations, the athletes are exploited by their schools--used only for their physical abilities and forgotten when they are injured or can no longer play. In the recruiting process, however, the athlete is usually not a blameless victim. The athlete knows it is against the rules to accept money but freely accepts because he realizes there is little chance he will ever be penalized.

The recent case involving Dykes is good example of how the athlete can have it all, despite the violations--the money and four years of eligibility. Dykes would have thought twice about accepting money, if it put his eligibility at risk.

The Dykes case also points out the NCAA’s need for better investigative techniques. In order to gather information concerning the recruiting violations, the NCAA struck a deal with Dykes, promising him immunity from any penalties if he agreed to talk. He got to play his senior year and four schools were penalized. That the NCAA had to resort to this kind of agreement with a player indicates how difficult it is to get information from the schools. The NCAA must develop its own information-gathering techniques--perhaps even going undercover--if it is going to be successful in detecting recruiting abuses.

Fans must remember that college athletics is only a part of our educational system. The lessons learned through sports--dedication, teamwork, the ability to deal with victory and defeat--are worthy ones. However, we are cheating today’s athletes if we do not insist they get the education to use these characteristics in the real world.