HUSKY FOOTBALL: A PATTERN OF VIOLATIONS? : Job and Lodging Were Provided : Washington: A former player, Darden, says his employment was arranged by Simon, then Huskies’ running backs coach.

It was late in the spring of 1987 when Michael Darden learned there were definite advantages to being a football player at the University of Washington.

Darden, a running back, had transferred to Washington earlier that year after spending two seasons at College of the Desert in Palm Desert. He had gone through spring drills with the Huskies and was preparing to return to his hometown of Oakland for the summer.

But two days before he was due to leave, he said, he got an offer he couldn’t refuse--a construction job in Seattle that paid $10 an hour and included rent-free lodging in a house that had been left unoccupied for the summer.

Darden said the job was arranged by Matt Simon, then the Huskies’ running backs coach.

Such an arrangement of free housing, if not available to all employees on the job, is an apparent violation of the NCAA’s “extra benefit” rule. The rule prohibits coaches and school representatives from providing athletes with benefits not available to the student body as a whole.

Simon, who left Washington after the 1991 season to become offensive coordinator at the University of New Mexico, said he does not remember details of his dealings with Darden.

He said he might have told Darden whom to see about a summer job, but does not recall where Darden worked or lived that summer.

“I can imagine passing a name on to Mike for a summer job,” he said, “but I wouldn’t know more than that.”

In Darden’s view, however, the Washington coaches had a definite plan for him that summer. Now living in Fresno, where he is trying to break into the sports agent business, he looks back at his job and living arrangement and sees them as his reward for showing potential during the previous spring.

“(Husky coaches) were making certain that I’d be (in Seattle) to work out with most of the first-team guys,” he said.

At Simon’s direction, Darden said, he met in the Husky football office with two Seattle businessmen whose names, he said, he does not recall.

“I just remember they would come in and out of the athletic department a lot,” he said.

It was during that meeting, Darden said, that the summer job and the free housing that came with it were explained to him.

“We spoke briefly and the next day, I was all set,” he said.

As a result of those arrangements, Darden said, he was able to live rent-free in the vacant home while he worked with other Washington players at a Seattle construction site, an elementary school that was being renovated.

Darden said he had the house, which included a well-stocked kitchen, to himself for the summer.

The owner of the house was traveling, he said.

Darden declined to identify the owner because, he said: “I don’t think he had anything to do with (Husky football).”

As for the job, Darden said, he and other Washington players were assigned duties as part of the renovation project, but often did not work full days.

In his own case, Darden said, he was assigned to paint the trim on the elementary school. He said he finished the painting by the middle of the summer, but was not given another assignment.

Asked how he occupied his time on the job the rest of the summer, Darden said: “I was out there, on site. But we found ways to relax, like (playing) basketball.”

Other Husky players at the job site went water skiing during working hours, he said.

Darden said he was not paid on a weekly basis, but rather in one lump sum of several thousand dollars at the end of the summer.

By living rent-free and getting the large payment at the end of the summer, he said, he was able to go into the 1987 season with a nice financial cushion.

As it would turn out for Darden, the promise of his first spring at Washington never surfaced again, at least not in the view of the coaches. In two seasons with the Huskies, he was never more than a backup.

He suffered a knee injury during his first season, 1987, the injury requiring that he play with a brace on the knee.

The next spring, he was switched from tailback to fullback, a position he played at 193 pounds.

“Simon said they moved me (to fullback) to toughen me up,” he said.

But perhaps the most telling sign of how far his stock had fallen came during the summer of 1988. That summer, he said, he had to return to Oakland to find work on his own.