NCAA Work Plan Delayed

The sweeping wind of NCAA progress stilled Wednesday as a newly formed board of college presidents put a moratorium on the plan to allow student-athletes to work part time during the academic year.

Proposition 62 had been adopted in a 169-150 vote of Division I schools at the NCAA convention in January at Nashville, and it was supposed to take effect in August. Opposition had been growing steadily with expressed concern over potential institutional abuse and costly administrative problems.

Syracuse President Kenneth Shaw, head of the 15-member board, said in a conference call that 82-84% of the schools favored the delay.

“We are committed to making the spirit of Proposition 62 happen,” said Shaw, who added he expected the program to be in place by next August. “We want it done right. We want to deal with the complexity of the issue.”

But one faculty athletic representative, Noel Ragsdale of USC, said she doubted the legislation would ever take effect.

“Everyone here at USC was very strongly opposed to the moratorium and we lobbied hard in the Pacific 10 to oppose it,” said Ragsdale, a law professor at USC. “I’m very disappointed to hear that the moratorium went through.

“I think it is completely unnecessary. All that was going on in my view--and shared on campus--the people who lost at the convention did an end run around it.

“The intent was to kill the legislation, not to fix or modify it.”

USC voted against Proposition 62 because it was in favor of Proposition 63, which would have allowed student-athletes to make as much money as they could.

Proposition 62 had a ceiling: Student-athletes could earn only the difference between the value of their scholarship and the full cost of attendance, a difference anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 depending on the school.

NCAA Executive Director Cedric W. Dempsey, who championed the issue in January, denied he had a change of heart. “Not at all,” he said. “I feel we are still on target even though we are in delay of providing this opportunity for the student-athletes.”

Pacific 10 Commissioner Tom Hansen said the conference supported the delay. One possible solution, he said, was to increase the grant-in-aid.

“There are economic difficulties [to that],” he said. “But some of the athletic directors said, ‘I would rather go out and raise that additional money.’ ”

UCLA, which supported the delay, already had prepared specific consent forms for the employers of the student-athletes to fill out.

“The concept and the principle is very well-intentioned,” associate athletic director Betsy Stephenson said. “I don’t believe we looked long and hard enough at the potential downside.”

At Cal State Fullerton, men’s and women’s soccer Coach Al Mistri said he thought it might hurt some athletes.

“I know one of our team members will be adversely affected by it,” Mistri said. “This could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in terms of that athlete being able to play. And there could be others.”

He declined to name the athlete.

Mary Ellen Murchison, Titan women’s volleyball coach, said she was disappointed. “Maybe as many as a third of our athletes might be affected,” she said. “They’re the ones not getting additional money from their parents to help in school.”

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Staff writer Lon Eubanks contributed to this story.