COLLEGE BASKETBALL : THE BLACK COACHES ASSN.: STANDING AT A CROSSROADS : He Fights for Academics, Not Athletics : Opposing view: Southern’s Ben Jobe does not support BCA’s arguments for a boycott. ‘This is not the Civil Rights Movement,’ he says.

Not all members of the Black Coaches Assn. have embraced the idea of a boycott, especially if it is based on the refusal of university presidents to restore a 14th scholarship to Division I men’s basketball.

Southern University Coach Ben Jobe, a BCA dues payer, said the 14th scholarship should be the least of the association’s worries.

“Most organizations are fighting for things that aren’t even important,” said Jobe, a 22-year coaching veteran whose team upset Georgia Tech in the first round of last season’s NCAA tournament. “This is not the civil rights movement. This is not the war on poverty. This is not ethnic cleansing. This is not pro-life. Abortion. This is not crime. This is not the killing of black youngsters by black youngsters. So . . . I’m not going to be wasting my energy . . . on fighting for a 14th scholarship for a kid who probably doesn’t want to be going to school in the first place.

“So if you have an important issue, call me. If not, don’t bother me.”

The BCA has insisted that the threatened boycott was not a 14th-scholarship issue. Instead, it says the boycott talk was in response to the idea of lost opportunities for minorities.

Jobe said that isn’t how it was presented to him in the days leading to a possible walkout.

“Two coaches called me and asked for my support,” said Jobe, who declined to name the coaches. “That’s all they talked about, that 14th scholarship. They sent me some literature about 300 youngsters per year being disenfranchised times five years, which comes to 1,500 youngsters. And then the comment was made by one of these coaches that kids will not get a chance to play major college basketball.

“I hit the ceiling, because they were talking about going to major universities and that’s an insult to me.”

Jobe, who has coached at predominantly black universities for most of his career, said the BCA, as well as the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches, has its priorities mixed when it comes to scholarship opportunities.

“Those 300 black youngsters who they say will be disenfranchised . . . that’s ridiculous,” he said. “You’ve got 117 black schools in the United States. You’ve got probably three times that many small white universities--NAIA, junior colleges, whatever. They will be fighting over those 300 kids like a dog over a bone.

“But when it was first mentioned that these youngsters . . . would not get a chance to play at the major universities, now that’s an insult. Who cares about playing at a major university when most of us graduated from small schools in the first place? We have educated black youngsters when no one else would do it and we did a great job. We’re great at it because we’ve been doing it a lot longer than other institutions.”

Jobe, who describes many of the Division I coaches as “industrialists,” and himself as “a country teacher,” wasn’t through with his assessment of the 14th-scholarship issue.

“When you look at those teams that have (14) scholarship players on a team, who has the 12th, 13th, 14th scholarships?” he asked.

White players?

“Exactly,” Jobe said. “A nice little white boy who’s going to be a doctor, a nuclear scientist. We have enough scholarships for those type of kids. We need scholarships for black kids with brain power, who don’t even know what a basketball or football is. That’s where we need our money.

“Now if the NCAA wants to do something glorious, then cut the scholarships to 10. That forces you to give another five to honor students all over the country. Now you’re talking about something. That forces us to go into the student body and get some walk-ons (non-scholarship players).”

Before he was told to do otherwise by school officials, Jobe used to give four scholarships back to the university each season for deserving honor students. One year the dean of the school told one of the honor students about the scholarship arrangement. Much to Jobe’s surprise, the student tried out for the basketball team.

“Took me a week to cut him,” Jobe said.

Jobe said the NCAA would never adopt such a measure and the coaches’ associations would never support it. That explains his reluctance to boycott games based on athletic opportunities.

“I can’t fight for athletics like I used to,” he said. “Now, I’ll fight for academics until I die.”