COLLEGE FOOTBALL : In SEC Country, Maybe Ethics Are in Code

News Item: Southeastern Conference Commissioner Roy Kramer publicly reprimands new Vanderbilt Coach Gary DiNardo for violating the SEC code of ethics.

Question: What code of ethics?

At last look, Conference Kinder Care was setting lows for bickering, back-stabbing and corruption, which, if you know the history of the SEC, is no small feat. And poor Kramer. His run of miserable luck began as early as last August when Florida State chose to join the Atlantic Coast Conference and Miami selected the Big East instead of the SEC. Since then, it has only gotten worse in the nation’s most cutthroat league.

A roll call of controversies, beginning with. . . .

Vanderbilt--While recently addressing the Chattanooga Commodore Club, DiNardo was quoted as saying: “Most schools in the Southeastern Conference are academically corrupt and athletically sound.” And, “The admissions people ask only that we not recruit anybody that we genuinely do not believe has a chance to graduate. We may be the only school in the SEC that is doing that.”

Reaction was swift. Paul Hoolahan, Vanderbilt’s athletic director, demanded that a story featuring DiNardo’s alleged comments not be used in an SEC-sponsored preseason publication. The story promptly was killed, but the quotes lived on, appearing first in the Chattanooga News-Free Press and then making the rounds in the Southeast.

DiNardo, who came to Vanderbilt from Colorado, said he couldn’t recall making the statements. Fat chance, said Kramer, the former athletic director at Vanderbilt, who wasted little time issuing the reprimand.

More recently, DiNardo dismissed Joel Weingart, a reserve senior linebacker, for breaking team rules. The crime, according to Weingart? He was several seconds late for a team meal. Weingart later charged DiNardo with intimidation tactics.

DiNardo has one other problem. Vanderbilt has had one winning season in the past 15 years.

Mississippi and Mississippi State--As part of its aggressive attempt to improve its football program, Mississippi State hired Jackie Sherrill, whose .697 winning percentage is nearly matched by the number of major violations discovered by NCAA investigators after his tenure at Texas A&M.; Ole Miss Coach Billy Brewer certainly was pleased to see Sherrill join the conference.

“A habitual liar,” Brewer told reporters and didn’t stop there. He called Sherrill a cheater in the grand tradition of “all those (Bear) Bryant boys like Charley Pell and Danny Ford.”

Sherrill seemed almost pleased by the remarks. If nothing else, he said, Brewer’s words quickly unified Mississippi State fans.

Of course, the SEC’s Kramer wasn’t so amused. He reprimanded Brewer, but was helpless when the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger recently decided to run a “Tale of the Tape” chart featuring a proposed boxing match between Sherrill and Brewer.

Ole Miss and Mississippi State will meet Nov. 23 at Starkville.

Tennessee--Where to start?

The NCAA has accused the school of running a summer football camp strictly for legitimate Division I prospects--an NCAA no-no.

If that doesn’t get the Volunteers sent to the big house, there are several other alleged violations that could do the trick. The most notable involves false testimony provided by a Tennessee assistant coach, since dismissed, to NCAA investigators. The NCAA hates when you fib.

Tennessee Athletic Director Doug Dickey, already under fire for the aforementioned mess, apologized last week for a conflict of interest made public by an internal audit. According to the audit, Dickey and his wife supplied more than $19,000 of a nutritional milkshake mix to a distributor--a former Tennessee football player--who later sold the mix to the university. The Dickeys made about $3,000 on the deal.

In an effort to make amends, Dickey announced that he has since contributed those profits to the university’s athletic scholarship fund. Of course, that hasn’t silenced the growing number of Tennessee followers calling for his resignation.

Florida--The Gators still are answering questions about their latest stay on NCAA probation, a two-year sentence that ends with the 1991 season. The good news is that NCAA sanctions against postseason play are complete.

Georgia--A South Carolina newspaper reported last week that the Bulldogs might have violated NCAA rules when a Georgia assistant coach met and regularly tested players during the summer. Lucky for Georgia, the Anderson Independent Mail reporter who wrote the story later said he had misunderstood a player during an interview, thus rendering the account invalid.

Kentucky, Auburn and Alabama--Sadly lacking in scandal. Perhaps they are working on it.

His offenses are more boring than a documentary on soil erosion. His team’s uniforms are as plain as white toast. His defensive philosophy hasn’t changed since linebackers were invented. So why then are we such admirers of Penn State Coach Joe Paterno?

Easy--he actually cares about his players.

An example: When organizers of the Kickoff Classic approached him about a matchup involving the Nittany Lions and Georgia Tech, the defending co-national champions, Paterno decided it wasn’t worth the risk. After all, Penn State already had USC, Brigham Young, Miami, West Virginia, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh on its schedule. Instead of opening up with a likely victory against Cincinnati, the Nittany Lions would have had to play a difficult Georgia Tech team . . . and 10 days earlier than the original season opener.

So Paterno and his staff decided to say no. But as a courtesy, Paterno asked his team what it thought about the proposed game. When the players voted to accept the invitation, Paterno reluctantly granted them their wish.

Is it possible? The NCAA is actually developing--dare we say it--a conscience?

It’s true. Last week the NCAA put the final touches on a plan that will provide catastrophic insurance coverage for more than 250,000 college athletes. The $3.5-million annual premium, paid out of the riches reaped from the NCAA’s $1-billion basketball television package with CBS, will provide lifetime medical coverage and a lost-earnings allowance to any Division I-A, I-AA, II and III athlete who is permanently disabled while competing for his or her school.

Smaller universities and colleges, unable to afford any type of catastrophic coverage, certainly will benefit from the plan. Also, schools with limited coverage receive a wonderful safety net, courtesy of the NCAA.

And while we’re issuing back pats, the NCAA also deserves mention for revising at least one of the enforcement department’s antiquated and questionable methods of gathering information during an investigation. Rather than relying solely on written notes, NCAA investigators have been told to use, on a trial basis, tape recorders in conducting interviews.

Granted, there are kinks. The tape-recorded interviews, done with the approval of the person interviewed, are only a supplement to the investigator’s notes. Also, there is no guarantee the arrangement is permanent. At last check, the use of tape recorders was termed an “experiment.”

If only the NCAA could do something about its enforcement manual, which is about as thick as the Shelby Foote Civil War trilogy and about as complicated as VCR instructions.

The distance between the field-goal uprights narrows this season, from 23 feet 4 inches to 18 feet 6 inches. Washington State’s Jason Hanson, perhaps the best kicker in the nation, predicts that fewer coaches will automatically go for a medium-length field goal on fourth down. “I would assume your really short kicks, 20-25 yards, are really going to be tough,” Hanson said. The reason? The dramatic angles created by the college hash marks. . . . In case you missed it, Colorado Coach Bill McCartney considered resigning earlier this summer. The likelihood of athletic budget cuts and continuing difficulties with the school’s admissions office caused McCartney to nearly walk away from one of the most secure contract deals in college athletics. He changed his mind after meeting with school President Judith Albino.

How good is Stanford’s multitalented Glyn Milburn? Good enough that Washington State coaches warned Hanson to keep all punts away from the Stanford running back and return man during last season’s game. The coaches told him to simply kick the ball out of bounds “because he was too dangerous,” Hanson said of Milburn, this year’s equivalent of Rocket Ismail.

Hanson did as he was told until late in the game, when he decided enough was enough and punted the ball directly to Milburn. As stunned special teams coaches watched, Milburn juked his way through the Washington State defenders, only to be caught by Hanson himself. “I grabbed him by his index finger and snagged him,” Hanson said. “After that I walked off the field thinking, ‘Yeah, the coaches were right.’ ”

Our nominee for best football state in the country? Try Florida, which can boast three preseason top 10 programs: Miami, Florida State and Florida. “I’m not so sure you couldn’t compete as an expansion franchise in the NFL with those players,” said Oregon Coach Rich Brooks.