North Carolina St. Tries to Regain Solid Footing in Some Shaky Times

Sitting in his narrow, fourth-floor Williams Hall office, stacked high with books with titles such as “Methods of Enzymology,” Professor Raymond Long tried to explain why many North Carolina State University faculty members think basketball coach Jim Valvano should be asked to take his show elsewhere.

“There is a feeling that it’s a bit of contradiction for him to remain as coach when the chancellor (Bruce R. Poulton) has resigned because of problems occurring in his basketball program,” said Long, chairman of the faculty senate and a professor of crop science, specializing in tobacco. “You can see the argument.”

This town and this state have been immersed in a swirl of emotional arguments for nine months. The debate centers on Valvano’s program and his players, whose performance in the NCAA tournament has been found to have been better than its showing in the classroom and at commencement.

And now there are NCAA violations to be answered and penalties loom on the horizon. The university’s top official is already out. Valvano will soon relinquish his athletic director’s post as he was asked to. Who will be next, who will replace them all, and will Valvano be part of N.C. State’s future?

“There’s no question that it’s unsettled,” said senior associate athletic director Frank Weedon. “But steps are being taken to correct the situation ... the search for an interim athletic director and a full-time athletic director will solve the problems. But right now, I wouldn’t call them normal circumstances.”

The controversy began in January, when the Raleigh News and Observer published details contained in a jacket for author Peter Golenbock’s book, which include allegations that players received payments and privileges from boosters and improper grade changes were made. Talk of a lawsuit led to Golenbock’s being forced to find another publisher, but the book, “Personal Fouls,” hit the shelves in July and is now a national best-seller.

Meanwhile, the NCAA and a special commission conducted investigations and the chancellor resigned. Those inquiries found some NCAA violations, though not to the extent discussed in the book. There also was some serious twisting of academic rules to keep players eligible.

Some, including former player Bennie Bolton, say Valvano is interested solely in himself and winning, and will do what is necessary to achieve that. Others argue that N.C. State needed a “charisma bypass,” as one Valvano supporter put it, and that Valvano’s vitality spread through the athletic department to the rest of the university, with mostly positive effects on both.

Some think Valvano will survive the turmoil and remain at N.C. State in order to repair his reputation and the school’s. Some think the school may ask him to leave, and others think he’ll jump at the first good job -- coaching or broadcasting -- that comes along.

“I would like to point out that I’m not a man without options -- that I want very much to be here,” Valvano said at the time of the Poole Commission, which called for him to step down as athletic director. “I would like very much the opportunity to show and to prove that we can, in fact we will, get the job done off the court with the help of a great many people.

“We all must accept the responsibility of both our positions and either of our actions or lack of same. I have no other goal but to run our basketball program in a way that would be absolutely beyond reproach. We have had a problem here which is well-documented. I accept the responsibility for it and the accountability, and the players do also. Yes, changes have to be made. We’re very committed to it.”

Still many think it was only Valvano’s contract, which includes a $500,000 buyout clause if he goes to another school, that kept him from taking the UCLA job in 1988 when there wasn’t a hint of trouble.

As Long said, “The final chapter in this has yet to be written.”

Around Raleigh even some of Valvano’s detractors don’t think much of Golenbock’s book. During a lull in the N.C. State-Maryland football game, Wolfpack partisans started derisively chanting Golenbock’s name and there was a banner denouncing him. There was also a banner referring to Poulton that read, “Goodbye Bruce, Can we have your seats?”

Les Crenshaw, a 1971 graduate, was among the many outside Carter-Finley Stadium and he seemed a bit torn between liking Valvano and wanting a fresh start. Like many Wolfpack fans, he blames the News and Observer for blowing it out of proportion and reads Tar Heel blue between the lines, since several of the newspaper’s staff went to archrival North Carolina. But there is a desire to fix the wrongs.

“If Valvano knew about it and let it happen, then he ought to be punished,” Crenshaw said. “The board of trustees will do that.”

Appropriate punishment?

“I think he’s already been punished,” Crenshaw said. “We love him to death.”

That love stems in large part from the NCAA title Valvano brought home from Albuquerque in 1983. But the trophy -- and the school -- clearly has lost a bit of luster.

“The faculty has felt that the image of the institution has been tarnished,” said Long, who has heard faculty members say their complaints went unanswered. “Faculty concerns go back a number of years. Only more recently have those concerns been confirmed.”

In late August, C.D. Spangler, president of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system, announced the findings of the Poole Commission, which was formed to investigate the program. The commission found academic abuses of the system and deficient academic performance by many basketball players, but Spangler reported no improper grade-changing.

“The system has been misused. The spirit, not the letter, of the law has been broken,” he said.

Spangler gave an example of one player, who received a non-passing grade in a class, but convinced the instructor that he would make up the missed exam and pass the class. So the instructor changed the grade to an incomplete. But the player then postponed the scheduled makeup once and ignored it the next time. The instructor changed the grade to no credit, but because the incomplete grade was on the record at the start of the semester, the player was eligible for the whole season.

“The Poole Commision pointed out in clear terms ... what is probably the critical issue: it is the need of the basketball program to support more decisively the enforcement of academic rules,” Spangler said.

Since 1980 when Valvano arrived, 43 basketball players have been admitted to N.C. State. Nine are returning to the team this year. Of the remaining 34, eight earned degrees from N.C. State and three graduated from other schools.

So there is an overall graduation rate of 32 percent, 24 percent from N.C. State itself. (The graduation rate for the rest of the student body is 22 percent after four years, 52 percent after five years and 58 percent after six years.) Of the remaining 23 players who were on the team, three left in good standing, five were under some type of academic warning and 15 were suspended for academic reasons.

Last week the school released the NCAA’s letter of official inquiry, which is essentially the list of charges. The NCAA said that players sold complimentary tickets for as much as $150 each, sold athletic shoes to local stores, received discounts from a local jewelry store and received food and lodging from athletic boosters.

The school will have at least six weeks to respond and probably will go before the Committee on Infractions in November.

Valvano, who declined to be interviewed for this article, said last week that he did not know players had sold tickets or shoes and indications are that he will remain as athletic director at least until the NCAA makes its judgment.

That will be just a few days after the early signing period for the next batch of recruits. Four of the players he signed last year did not enroll and are headed for junior college.

The number of this year’s high-school seniors willing to sign up -- and what sort of academic credentials they bring with them -- might prove to be a sign of whether Valvano remains at N.C. State.

“I believe that overall we have an excellent athletic program, in which students are doing well scholastically as well as athletically,” Long said, referring to teams like Dick Sheridan’s football squad, which graduated 17 of 19 seniors last spring. “It shows that it’s already possible under the present set of conditions to excel academically and engage in intercollegiate athletics.”