UCLA, McCoy and Johnson Need To. . . : Do The Right Thing

Jelani McCoy and Kris Johnson of the UCLA basketball program should step forward voluntarily and disclose why they were suspended from the team.

Otherwise, this thing is going to follow the two players for the rest of this NCAA season and throughout their careers. Persons important to their futures--from UCLA fund-raisers to NBA scouts to shoe-company representatives--will want to know: “What kind of person is this? Why should we take a chance on him? What are they covering up?”

McCoy and Johnson have been accepted back. Now they should do the right thing, say “I’m sorry, I messed up,” and explain what happened.

These scholarship athletes owe a debt to everyone who supports them. The people loyal to the Bruins deserve an explanation.

If I were a UCLA student, alumnus or booster, I would be indignant over being told that it is “nobody’s business” why two players were dishonorably discharged from my school’s team and then reinstated, without explanation. I would feel that I had a vested interest in knowing what a UCLA student did to be banished “indefinitely,” just as I deserved to know why the UCLA coach who recruited them had to be fired.

Did they lie, cheat, steal? Were they late for practice once too often, or was it something 10 times more serious?

The school won’t say. The players ought to, so the world won’t think the worst.

McCoy and Johnson can do a service not only for themselves, but for their university.

Right about now, there are people from coast to coast mocking UCLA, saying that in Westwood, discipline is to suspend a key player until the team’s first game is lost by 41 points. The timing of the defeat to North Carolina and the reinstatement of McCoy is supposedly coincidental, but it certainly doesn’t look that way. It looks as if the policy-makers caved.

A list of 23 “Bruin Attitude” standards put forth by Coach Steve Lavin is emphatic with regard to maintaining a proper discipline. Among the points it stresses are an “attitude of gratitude,” “no hanging head,” “look people in the eye,” “be a role model off the floor,” and “be gracious in defeat.”

His idol John Wooden couldn’t have said it better. But now we will see if UCLA’s players take this stuff seriously, or simply mouth the words.

McCoy and Johnson have a chance to justify the UCLA basketball ideals, just in time for this weekend’s Wooden Classic tournament. They can practice what Lavin and Wooden preach. Be responsible. Be men who stand tall, not boys who hide behind adults. Or else all this talk about “standards” is simply that--talk--because how can we admire UCLA’s standards when we have no idea what they mean?

A privacy issue is OK in theory, but this is no private company. A quarter of UCLA’s annual income comes from state appropriations. The remaining three-quarters stems from federal and private contracts and grants, student fees and private gifts. Alumni and benefactors help endow 273 grants-in-aid at UCLA.

Spectators buy UCLA basketball tickets. Media outlets pay substantial sums to broadcast UCLA sports. Corporations pay huge amounts for UCLA’s teams to wear their gear.

If I were they, I would want to know to whom my money was going. To be told, “It’s a private matter,” is not only infuriating, it furthers the belief that what McCoy and Johnson did wrong must have been so terrible, it can’t even be stated in public. Yet how bad could it be, if both are wearing UCLA’s uniforms again?

The players could clear this up, once and for all.

If they do not, whispers will continue behind their backs. Unsubstantiated stories will take on a life of their own. A report that McCoy and Johnson “tested positive for marijuana” already has been articulated on radio and television and inserted into publications, true or false. Questions will be asked at every step to the NCAA tournament. Is this what Jelani and Kris want the rest of their UCLA careers to be like?

It will be, if they don’t speak up.