Youth League Coaches Serve as Shoe Companies’ Point Men

Dinno Daniels, star basketball player at Walter Cohen High School in New Orleans, was sitting in English class last November when a PA announcement summoned him to the main office for an important phone call.

“I thought something had happened to my mother . . . something serious,” the junior guard recalled.

On the phone, he heard a woman’s voice--but it was a basketball recruiter.

“She started telling me how she loved me as a player and that I should be playing for her.

“I couldn’t believe it. It was crazy.”

Such high-pressure salesmanship is often encountered by the nation’s top high school athletes, except the recruiter in this case does not work for a college.

She works for Nike, running an all-star team in Houston sponsored and equipped by the shoe giant. She wanted Daniels, although he lives more than 350 miles away, not only because of his shooting and rebounding but because he plays for a youth team backed by Nike rival Adidas.

The shoe wars--fought out at every level of organized sports, played out in commercials and freeway billboards--also rage in an arena rarely visited by those outside the basketball community: youth all-star teams.

High school, junior high, even fourth- and fifth-grade players take part in virtually unregulated competition that involves intense recruiting and millions of dollars.

Companies Recruit Coaches

Battling for dominance in the multibillion-dollar athletic shoe industry, companies are hunting for potential marquee players to plug their product in the 21st century--the next Shaquille O’Neal for Reebok, Grant Hill for Fila or Michael Jordan for Nike.

Commercialism at this level of competition once amounted to little more than pizza parlors providing team uniforms.

But now shoe companies recruit coaches, who already run or form all-star teams as part of “grass-roots” programs.

In Southern California, a basketball hotbed, Nike sponsors teams coached by Pat Barrett, who receives an annual consulting fee believed to be about $100,000. He also is a figure in the Pacific 10 Conference’s investigation of UCLA’s basketball program.

Barrett and other shoe team coaches are able to legally recruit the top local players, offering them better competition, more exposure to college recruiters, travel and, of course, free equipment.

“If you need something, you just ask,” said Tony Bland, a junior at Westchester High and a member of one of Nike’s teams. “Shoes, shirts, jerseys, hats, socks, you name it. I’ve got shoes still in boxes.”

Critics warn of the potential pitfalls in providing shoes and other benefits to budding stars.

“They start to believe that things will always be given to them, and people will always fawn over them, because they can make a shot,” said John Callaghan, an associate professor and director of the sports studies program at USC. “They think life is going to be laid out for them. But the reality is that very few of them will ever make it in professional sports. . . . Then many of them fall by the wayside and are finished.”

Nike officials said the programs are a boon to up-and-coming athletes and build up the sport--as well as serve as a marketing tool.

“We’re a hot company because we have these grass-roots programs,” said Nike spokeswoman Vizhier Corpuz. “At the more elite levels, we have the benefit of brand loyalty. Whether that athlete will be the next Michael Jordan or [his] biggest fan, we hope to build a relationship with an athlete [who] loves our product.”

The companies finance existing youth teams, beginning with the 10-and-under age group, or create new ones. The teams play in local leagues and national tournaments, often sponsored by the companies.

The phenomenon, experts say, began to emerge after 1982 legislation by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. allowed prep players to sign letters of intent with colleges in November, the so-called “early signing period.” That meant coaches needed to assess players sooner, making summer evaluation even more crucial.

The shoe companies, with Nike’s Sonny Vaccaro leading the way, stepped into the breach, sponsoring all-star teams and camps.

“And in the last seven years it has really mushroomed,” said longtime player evaluator Bob Gibbons of North Carolina-based All-Star Sports Publications. “You would see more regional things before that. . . . You didn’t see kids literally crisscrossing the country back then.”

Officials said Nike supports 30 year-round teams, paying all expenses, and provides equipment to the teams in 40 summer leagues.

They declined to state how much the company budgets but acknowledged that its grass-roots program has grown dramatically and is expanding into Europe. Two years ago, three employees worked on the program; now there are 15, including former USC Coach George Raveling, who as a consultant helps to oversee Nike’s high school and youth programs.

Adidas sponsors 60 to 75 all-star teams nationally and its overall grass-roots program budget is about $1 million, according to Vaccaro, now at Adidas. Converse, Reebok and Fila have little involvement in grass-roots youth league programs, although they sponsor some tournaments.

Tournaments in Las Vegas

The scope of the trend was highlighted last summer when 4,000 players and 350 teams competed in Nike- and Adidas-sponsored Las Vegas tournaments, although many participants were non-shoe teams.

The importance of the program to Nike--the industry leader--was underscored in October at a meeting of the company’s all-star team coaches in Beaverton, Ore.

“One of the vice presidents came in and said, ‘You guys are in for a big treat,’ ” said Leo Papile, coach of a Nike team in Boston.

In walked Nike Chairman Phil Knight, who Papile said told the group: “Grass-roots coaches are the future leaders of basketball.”

The leading coach in Southern California is Pat Barrett. To understand his operation is to understand how aggressively the shoe wars can be fought.

Barrett, 42, has built his nonprofit Orange County Hoops into a national power. Twelve of his players later went to the NBA. All five Southland players among Street & Smith’s magazine’s top 20 high school seniors for 1996-97 have played for Barrett.

Barrett, who lives with his parents in Garden Grove, is paid an annual consulting fee of about $100,000 to help fund his teams, sources say. He receives $50,000 in equipment, including 450 pairs of shoes and 150 uniforms.

Nike declined to discuss how much its coaches receive but said only Barrett has a contract. Unlike Barrett, many all-star team coaches have full-time jobs outside sports.

Barrett’s own basketball resume is unusual, too. He played two seasons at a junior college, one season at San Jose State, had a couple of failed NBA tryouts and a four-year stint with the team paid to lose to the Harlem Globetrotters.

Once, he was asked whether it had been fun seeing the world with the Globetrotters.

“Fun?” he shot back. “It’s no fun getting your butt kicked every night.”

Today, things are different. Barrett is a hard-driving, highly successful coach known to take his players to Disneyland.

He also does not shrink from controversy and is not afraid to demonstrate his loyalty. He hired a friend who had recently been in prison for having sex with a minor and embezzling athletic funds.

His program consists of fourth- through eighth-grade teams that play year-round, and summer teams for high school players.

His primary motivation for coaching, Barrett said, is “helping the kids out. Helping them grow and seeing them turn out to be good citizens.”

The competition among the shoe teams is vigorous, and it sometimes affects teams on the periphery of the war.

Charles Moore said Barrett attracted six of the 13 players on Moore’s South-Central-based 12-and-under team, Diamond in the Rough, last summer after it made its third consecutive trip to the Amateur Athletic Union national tournament. One was 6-foot-3 Darrius Sanders, the team’s star.

“I’ve never had a problem losing kids before,” said Moore, who has spent more than 20 years coaching youth basketball in the inner city. “. . . I haven’t been sleeping that well.”

When players switched to Barrett’s team, Moore said, their parents sometimes derived a benefit.

Auto wholesaler Christopher “Butch” Goodman, the father of a former Diamond in the Rough player, acknowledged that he sold the mother of one of Moore’s former players a $300 car in May, but forgave the debt because the woman was in bad shape financially. He also said he set up a payment plan for Sanders’ mother to buy a $500 car and arranged for repair of her van at a discount.

Goodman said the favors were not meant to entice players to Barrett’s team, though he supports the squad. “I help pick up the kids [and take them to practice] now and then, and I help pay for dinner when Pat is broke,” Goodman said.

Shavone Sanders said her son’s team change had nothing to do with Goodman’s help. She said she likes Barrett as a coach. “My son started receiving free tennis shoes long before Butch and Pat Barrett came along,” she added.

Guard Olujumi Mann of Santa Ana Valley High School was one of Barrett’s top players, and he had the clothes to prove it.

“I was loving wearing Nike,” said Mann, who in 1993-94 was considered the best guard in the area. “I wore Nike everything. . . . I never wore a pair of shoes more than three times.”

No association governs the teams and coaches sponsored by shoe companies, but the NCAA regulates what prospective college players can accept as part of its amateurism requirements.

As a junior, Mann was being recruited by UCLA. Then-Coach Jim Harrick, who once described Barrett as “like my son,” needed someone who could eventually replace point guard Tyus Edney.

At the time, Barrett’s leading financial backer was Frank Pritt, a millionaire UCLA booster and childhood friend of Harrick.

The Pac-10 Conference is investigating whether in September 1994 some of Pritt’s money was used by Barrett to purchase a 1991 Honda Accord for Mann as an inducement to attend UCLA--a possible recruiting violation.

Pritt’s accountant said Pritt has no idea how Barrett used his donations, which totaled $190,000 in 1993 and 1994.

Mann and Barrett deny any wrongdoing, saying Mann’s father purchased the car from Barrett for $5,000. DMV records show Barrett bought the car for $13,265 a few months earlier.

“If I want to go out and buy a $10,000 car and sell it to you for $5,000, who says I can’t do that?” Barrett said. “I’m not affiliated with any high school or college or not under any NCAA rule. . . . I have no rules.”

Mann did verbally commit to the Bruins in March 1994, but academic problems prevented UCLA from signing him. He went to Cerritos College but dropped out last fall.

“Pat is a good coach,” Mann said, “but [most kids] play for him because they think he’ll get them into Nike camp, because they think they can get Nike gear from him.

“I’m not going to say it didn’t get me. It did get me.”

Kevin Stipp, one of Mann’s former high school coaches, said the recruiting and inducements heaped on players like Mann at such an early age can have the unintended effect of retarding an athlete’s development on and off the court.

“He has had so much attention and stuff given to him by the shoe companies. They’ve been throwing things at him since the eighth grade,” Stipp said.

Sending Players to Camp

One of a youth team coach’s chief responsibilities is to make sure the area’s top players attend his shoe company’s summer camp. Only the best prospects are invited, and it is attended by college coaches, who use the events to evaluate talent.

Last summer, Barrett, with funds from his nonprofit organization, paid the air fare of at least 15 Southland players to attend the Nike summer camp in Indianapolis.

Under NCAA rules, players can accept free travel when invited as a team to tournaments, but they cannot accept travel money from a non-parent to attend shoe camps as individuals, according to Steve Mallonee, an NCAA official. He said schools that sign the players who got free trips will have to determine if they violated rules.

But Barrett maintains that he and his players are exempt from NCAA rules because he works for Nike as an “independent contractor” and because funds from Orange County Hoops, not Nike, paid for the trips.

“It would be like a private individual saying, ‘I’ll pay for you guys to go to camp,’ ” Barrett said. “Ain’t nothing wrong with it as long as Nike doesn’t pay for it.”

Raveling said that “as sad as that is, it’s true” that all-star teams like Barrett’s are not under the auspices of any athletic federation.

“If the NCAA wants to come investigate . . . he can say, ‘screw you. I’ve often thought that the most under-regulated area of basketball is summer programs.”

The lack of clear rules can create questions about who coaches hire and who works with children.

Barrett recently hired Richard D. Prospero, 33, as a part-time assistant with his team for 13- and 14-year-olds despite his criminal record. Prospero, one of Mann’s former high school coaches, pleaded guilty in February 1996 to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 16-year-old girl and to embezzling $9,000 from a private account used by parents and students for school sports. He was released after seven months in prison and lives at a halfway house, officials said.

He resigned from his school job in January 1995 for personal reasons. In a phone interview, he blamed his legal woes on cocaine.

“He paid his debt and he deserves a second chance,” Barrett said. “He’s young and he’s a very good coach. . . . I don’t bring anyone around that isn’t good for the kids.”

Barrett said he told parents of team players about Prospero’s past and none objected.

Nike says it does not believe it can exercise control over hiring by its consultants.

Under the state education code, a conviction for sex with a minor disqualifies someone from working for public schools in California, according to John Blatter, a Los Angeles school district employee relations official.

Expanding to New Orleans

Programs such as Barrett’s are well-established in the largest metropolitan areas but have only recently reached cities like New Orleans.

In spring 1995, Nike dispatched Don Crenshaw, the company’s manager of basketball development, to line up a point man in that talent-rich region.

Crenshaw tried to enlist coach Thadius Foulcher, whose Adidas-sponsored teams have included more than 25 Division I players.

The wining and dining was done on St. Charles Avenue. According to Foulcher, Crenshaw “told me Pat Barrett was their guy in L.A. and that Nike was very fortunate because he was what they stood for. He said Pat had great players and ran a tight ship, and Don said he wanted me to be their guy like that in New Orleans.”

Foulcher said Crenshaw offered him $30,000 to switch to Nike, plus team travel expenses and all the Nike shoes and equipment he needed. He declined.

Crenshaw did not return calls.

One of Foulcher’s stars, Dinno Daniels, also received overtures from Nike, through Elaine Jones of the Houston Jaguars youth team.

First, three of her coaches visited the Walter Cohen High gymnasium on Daniels’ first day of practice. “They barged in and they were wearing suits,” Daniels said. “They kept following me around, telling me why I should be playing for Elaine’s team.”

Jones, whose team travels extensively and attracts players from throughout the South, said she thought Daniels was in physical education class when the PA announcement summoned him. “I talked to him that way once but mostly I talked to him at home,” she said.

“We do work hard recruiting. Nothing that we do is illegal. . . . I really love kids. I love working with them. You have to in this business with so many vultures.”

Times staff writers Lisa Dillman, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, Greg Sandoval, Eric Shepard, Steve Springer and researcher Paul Singleton contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A Step Ahead

Nike has stayed a step ahead of its closest competitors--Adidas and Reebok--in the battle for billions of dollars in worldwide athletic shoe and apparel sales.

NET INCOME

In millions

NET SALES

In millions

NOTES: 1996 Adidas figures are estimated; Adidas is a German private company and does not release figures in dollars; numbers shown are converted from German marks using the exchange rate on the last day of the given year.

Source: Bloomberg and Investext reports; Researched by Paul Singleton / Los Angeles Times