Athletes: Will Work for Pay

Last April, Arkansas basketball star Corliss Williamson returned home from the money-making Final Four in Seattle to find his electricity had been turned off because he could not afford to pay the utility bill.

He is not alone among major college athletes.

“We’re lucky to get a scholarship, but once we get here, what do we do?” Donnie Edwards, a UCLA linebacker, said in October. “The money we get is not enough to even live on, especially in Westwood.”

Aaron Graham, a center from Denton, Texas, who last week helped Nebraska defend its national football championship, asked Sunday:

“Who brought $13 million to Lincoln, Neb.? Was it the cheerleaders, was it the band, was it our fans? It wasn’t. It was the football team and the coaches.

“Without those people you don’t have a championship season. You don’t have record sales for Nebraska apparel. Yet the athletes stay the same. We didn’t get a pay increase or bonus for winning.”

There is no remuneration beyond scholarship money for the entertainers of major college athletics. And as un-American as it sounds, they cannot work while school is in session without violating NCAA rules.

As the 2,600 representatives attending the NCAA convention in Dallas decide how to reorganize their bureaucracy today, two of the 133 proposals before them will address the issue of allowing athletes to work out of season.

One of the bills puts a $1,500 limit on how much can be made. The other does not. Both stipulate that athletic department staff or its representatives cannot help arrange the jobs.

Neither has a realistic chance of passing because the influential Presidents Commission does not support them.

The august body is concerned that relaxing the work rule would invite unscrupulous behavior. Their reasoning is sound. Some of the biggest abuses in recent years involved boosters arranging well-paying jobs for little or no work at Washington and Texas A&M.;

So, it is expected to be one more setback for athletes who wonder why they cannot share in the eight-year, $1.725-billion deal with CBS to televise the men’s basketball tournament, and millions more from broadcasting football games as well as royalties from T-shirts, caps, banners and other items with school colors and emblems.

“We’re not asking to get this huge paycheck, we’re saying give us enough money so we can live comfortably as students,” Graham said.

Graham said he and many teammates attended summer school because they received about $550 in aid for a five-week session.

“Guys would do that and live poor through the summer so they could make it through the rest of the year with some money,” he said.

Although officials say they are sympathetic to the athletes’ plight, they seem unwilling as a body to allow them to earn more money or give them a stipend beyond their scholarship funds.

“If we did start giving them money, do we reduce the number of scholarships, reduce the number of opportunities?” asked Eugene Corrigan, NCAA president and Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner. “We don’t have any more money. There are only a few schools that make money.”

Said Cedric Dempsey, NCAA executive director: “They might want to [give the athletes more], but the money is not there.”

It seems the schism between the athletes who make the money and the administrators who control it is as deep as the Grand Canyon.

The divide has exacerbated those, particularly African-American leaders, who say the system is skewed against the very people who make its athletic teams successful.

“College campuses are white, middle- and upper-middle class educational and social havens,” said Andre Hayes, founder and chairman of the African-American Athletes Alumni Assn. and a union representative for L.A. Unified School District.

If so, a host of social problems can occur when 50% of the minority athletes come from families at or below poverty level, according to the Center for the Study of Sport at Northeastern University.

Hayes, who played football for Washington from 1981-85, said these athletes often make sacrifices to fit in, such as foregoing dinner so they can buy some trendy clothing. In doing research for his unpublished book, “The Sport of Learning,” co-authored with former teammate Vince Fudzie, Hayes said he determined that some criminal activity is a result of these economic scenarios.

Rudy Washington, Drake basketball coach and Black Coaches Assn. executive director, echoed Hayes’ sentiment.

“The people making the decisions don’t know what is going on,” he said. “They see us as entertainers. They see us come out like Sammie Davis tap-dancing and then leave. The presidents are removed from all the problems, yet they are deciding our destiny.”

Washington said the agent problem has exploded because of lack of money.

“We’re not taking care of our own kids, so someone else will,” he said.

Judith Albino, chairwoman of the Presidents Commission, sees the economic differences at the University of Colorado, where she is president. The Boulder campus attracts an affluent student body, including skiers.

Many of football Coach Rick Neuheisel’s poor recruits never even dreamed of snow skiing while growing up, but are thrust into an environment where the sport is part of campus life. A day of skiing in the Rocky Mountains can cost about $100 after renting equipment. So athletes might have to decide whether they will ski with classmates for a day or pay rent for a month.

Although she does not offer solutions, Albino said colleges and universities must provide poor students with more than basic needs.

“Providing an adequate lifestyle is important,” she said. “It is something that for too long we pretended didn’t exist and we have to face up to it.”

No one advocates turning athletes into employees because colleges will hold on to the ideals of amateurism kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.

But attitudes about what athletes should be given are slowly changing. Some officials think they can tackle the need problem within the current structure. A little-known emergency fund already is available.

The NCAA executive committee recently increased the fund from $3 million to $10 million, and Corrigan said it could go higher if more athletes need to use it. The NCAA will use $70 million of the CBS basketball money for the fund, although that pales in comparison with what is spent on operating the massive bureaucracy of three divisions as well as NCAA-sanctioned championships in all sports.

Patricia Viverito, Gateway Football Conference commissioner, said the executive committee plans to give more of the fund’s money to the conferences for better distribution to the schools.

Still, few players know the fund exists or that they might be eligible to use it.

The athletes want an easier method. They want a stipend or trust fund, some type of system that allows them to have enough money to eat regularly and do laundry too.

As head of a Division I-AA league, Viverito does not face the kind of criticisms that are expressed at the big schools.

“Most are pretty grateful to have a full ride,” she said.

But then, these players are not like Chris Webber of the Washington Bullets. While a Michigan star, Webber was walking down a street in Ann Arbor when he peered into a sporting goods store and saw a Wolverine jersey with his number selling for $75.

He knew then it was time to leave school early and declare himself eligible for the NBA draft.

Hayes, of the African-American association, said it is time to accept major college sports as a commercial venture.

“When you compare pro and college sports, what’s so different that the [college] athletes aren’t being paid?” he said.

But many officials are resistant to take it that far. When Donnie Edwards said it is difficult because all he sees around him are BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes near the UCLA campus, not everyone was sympathetic.

“I don’t understand the BMW problem,” Viverito said. “Being a student still is a life of hard knocks. It’s living on macaroni and cheese.”