COMMENTARY : Jim Valvano Wanted Camelot but Failed and Fell by Wayside

It was only 10 years ago that Jim Valvano appeared to be among the best and the brightest. He was a young basketball coach going out to prove that he could make his way work in the big time and make it work right.

“Right” was his word. The emphasis was his too.

He was going to North Carolina State University, which was to be Camelot on Hillsborough Street.

The Wolfpack Club was holding its first-ever meeting in New York, and Jim Valvano was in the city Thursday. Valvano’s image was tarnished, and he was defending himself and his program in the face of suspension and probation by the NCAA.

“Defending yourself,” he said in a word, “is a bitch.”

As the ball bounces, he has not been a perfect master for the game that grips his campus. Neither is there evidence he is the charlatan of charlatans and scoundrel of scoundrels in the mess of college sports.

For 11 months the NCAA, at the request of the school, examined published and unpublished charges that Valvano had supervised a program of severe and deliberate violations.

What the investigation prompted by the book “Personal Fouls” revealed was secondary violations that could have been turned up in countless schools, and imposed what it called “the minimum schedule of penalties.”

What Valvano is most guilty of is disappointing expectations. Perhaps expectations were too high, too naive.

He is a wonderful coach; his 1983 championship with an implausible team is evidence of that. He is a charmer--a wit, a storyteller--and he expresses more than a passing regard for the English language and related academic subjects.

“I want the best of all possible worlds,” Valvano said when he had yet to make his footprints on Tobacco Road. “I want kids to be students. I want them to talk about things besides the back door. On the planes I want them to talk about the world problems, of oil. I want them to watch the presidential debates on TV and talk about that. I want the packed arena, the band playing, cheerleaders, and doing it with kids who are being educated and care about society.

“I want that. And a national championship.”

He charmed more than just the media. “He is a man of vision and dynamics,” said Robert Bryan, professor of philosophy and chairman of the search committee that chose Valvano.

“It hasn’t all worked out exactly as I would have liked,” Valvano conceded Thursday. Of course, as head coach he is responsible for the violations.

He didn’t prevent improper distribution of the four tickets that each player may request for each home game. He didn’t make sure that each player turned in one pair of $75 sneakers before he was issued a second pair that he could sell or trade for other goods.

According to the infractions report, 650 tickets of the 7,200 issued in the four-year period studied were sold, with a total cash value “in excess of $1,000.”

The NCAA investigating committee said “it did not find that any clear and direct competitive advantage accrued” to the N.C. State program.

It did not find substance in the allegations of deceptive drug-testing, of checkbook recruiting or altering of grades to keep players eligible.

N.C. State cannot play this season in the big tournament, which paid the school $707,000 last season. It did not bar N.C. State from television; it did not demand a firing.

For what the investigation found, Bryan concluded, Valvano should be spanked rather than pilloried.

“I thought he was a dynamic, open, honest man,” he said by phone from his home in Raleigh. “He’s still dynamic, open and, I’d still like to believe, honest. He could have done better than he did; he’s not a scoundrel.”

Valvano works under two shadows that don’t pass. One is that he recruited Chris Washburn with his 470 SAT score and a questionable deportment record. He turned out to be a fine basketball player but a thief and, ultimately, a drug violator as a professional after leaving school.

It was a time before the 700 SAT rule was instituted.

And Valvano is so glib, so clever, so amusing that everybody knows he can’t be on the level. His players had too much fun--he had too much fun--and they had too much freedom during their championship tournament. But sometimes a used-car salesman tells the truth. “I don’t think Valvano is a charlatan,” Bryan said.

In the course of the furor over the book, the chancellor of the university resigned. The new chancellor took away Valvano’s position as athletic director, putting a watchdog over the coach, which pleased the NCAA. The new chancellor also set policy that all freshman athletes must live with the greater student body, not in special athletic housing. “A commendable approach,” the NCAA said. All schools ought to ban freshman eligibility.

Since the 700 rule was enacted, N.C. State has--by policy--not accepted an SAT casualty in any sport, which neither Notre Dame nor Michigan can claim. “I feel strongly that grade-fixing didn’t happen,” Bryan said. “Some charges I thought were grotesque, and that’s what they turned out to be.

“It is my not-unbiased belief that we aren’t nearly as bad as lots and lots of places. Jim Valvano is not guilty of cheating; he could have done better than he did. He has so many virtues that it’s terribly distressing that his vices caught up to him. I think it is true of virtually everybody that their greatest virtues are their greatest vices. He was devil-may-care, but the devil needs to care.”

Valvano’s failure is that he didn’t make Camelot and cared to accept less.

“The things I said then about athletes being aware and concerned students,” he said, “are a tough ideal to live up to. Forget about the ballplayers; we have a lot of kids who come in and just want to be accountants.”

He cited the darkness in education reported in “The Closing of the American Mind.” He read it. It’s a problem of education; it’s a symptom of student-athletes who don’t care to be students and of coaches who don’t care either.

The crime isn’t that Valvano is the worst of them; it’s that 10 years ago he looked like the best of them.