Analysis : Agents Bloom and Walters Managed to Break All the Rules

For the past month, seemingly unrelated stories have dominated the hard news of sports: the legendary Pete Rose facing possible suspension for gambling; the Canadian inquiry into steroid use by track and field athletes, coupled with the sidebar announcement that the NFL would punish players for using steroids; the Chicago trial of sports agents Norby Walters and Lloyd Bloom.

In each case the principals might claim that their behavior, by and large, was encouraged by sports and society. At the heart of their guilt or innocence is their response to conflicting signals.

The Walters-Bloom trial had the widest repercussions, because it purported to put all of big-time college athletics on trial. What Walters and Bloom did was cynical and weaselly -- targeting poor, black athletes, and tempting them with cash, knowing the arrangement would cost the athletes their eligibility if it came to light. Walters and Bloom selected the most vulnerable college athletes and corrupted them.

It’s not a law you’re breaking, the agents told the athletes, just an NCAA rule; people break these rules all the time. You’ll have to perjure yourself to stay eligible, but who’ll know? Meanwhile, you’ll be getting paid. That’s a lot more than your schools are doing for you -- even though you’re the engine powering the cash cow of big-time athletics. Walters and Bloom convinced athletes of the inequity of their labor-management relationship.

The key to the procedure was Walters’ and Bloom’s accurate perception that eligibility was the deity of college sports. Here’s what Ronnie Harmon took at Iowa as a second semester freshman: billiards, bowling, soccer, the history of football and the teaching of physical education. In summer school he once took water-coloring. (He got a D. How do you get a D in water-coloring? Do you use food coloring instead?) Here are some courses Paul Palmer took at Temple: bowling, racquetball, human sexuality, adjusting to a university, recreation and leisure.

If the system allowed a school to wink its eye at preposterous course loads like these in order to keep a star eligible, why shouldn’t that star assume the same system would wink its eye at under-the-table payments? What business would go out of its way to jeopardize a labor force that’s working for free?

What we saw in this case is the pervasive corruption of college athletics. The agents were corrupt, the schools were corrupt, and the athletes -- reluctantly at first, perhaps -- quickly became just as corrupt; in many instances they signed with multiple agents, taking whatever cash or merchandise was proffered without ever intending to honor their commitment for representation. In “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof,” it was Big Daddy who howled, “Mendacity, mendacity, mendacity.”

With track and field on the ropes because of the revelations about steroids from Toronto, other sports are rushing to cover their flanks on the issue. The NFL, for example, is now in hot pursuit of steroids. New rules mandate that any player caught using will be suspended. Since testing will not begin for months, everyone caught using should be assumed to be an idiot -- because anyone who can’t flush the steroids from his system in time just isn’t trying.

Without debating whether the NFL would have taken its new hard line had Ben Johnson not become public enemy No. 1, how about the conflicting signals here? For years coaches and general managers have been hollering they wanted “bigger, stronger, faster” players. Steroids were the chief way of getting there. For all the shuddering at cocaine use, wasn’t the system winking its eye at steroid consumption? Wasn’t the system trying to breed bigger, stronger, faster players to satisfy the bloodlust for winning?

Players take steroids to gain a competitive advantage over their peers, to earn a place on a pro roster and start raking in the handsome salaries. Though it took years to confront the reality of steroid use, we’re glad that time has finally come. But what about professional sports’ most pressing drug problem -- alcohol abuse? The excuse for not crusading against alcohol is that it’s legal, but the truth is that no pro league would dare take on the beer companies as long as they provide the financial underpinning for the television contracts that keep pro sports so profitable.

Pete Rose cannot be allowed to bet on baseball games -- particularly games he manages -- for obvious reasons of integrity.

But before sports casts the first stone at its gamblers, let it look to its own glass house. Gambling is the bedrock attraction of the successful sports in this country. The underground economy of gambling was as crucial to the NFL’s success as the overground TV revenues.

Recognizing both work hand in hand is evidenced by the popularity of TV-gambling personalities like Jimmy The Greek, Paul Maguire and Pete Axthelm. Even grade-school kids know how to “give the points.” Every place a line is quoted -- TV, radio, newspapers -- feeds the symbiotic relationship of sports and gambling. However they may publicly decry the subject, privately no sport wants that tie severed. You think David Stern and A. Bartlett Giamatti don’t like seeing the line in the paper?

Gambling per se isn’t illegal. You can bet at the race track, at the sports books in Nevada -- even in church, playing bingo. Illegal gambling is illegal. Our society encourages gambling. Every state that sponsors a lottery is imploring its citizens to gamble, luring them with promises of easy money. Rose reads the same billboards as everyone else. If he tumbled over the ethical line, he had a lot of people pushing him.