Williams’ Court of Last Resort

Mike Williams’ football future once depended on the decisions of federal court judges and Supreme Court justices.

Now the star receiver from USC’s national championship team waits for a handful of administrators at the NCAA’s Indianapolis headquarters to decide whether he can return to college football despite turning professional last February, when it appeared courts would force the National Football League to accept younger players.

Williams’ six-month odyssey from college football stardom to professional riches and the brink of the NFL -- and now perhaps back again -- is a complex tangle that includes debate over such issues as antitrust law, the nature of amateurism, the role of academics and the NCAA’s evolution into a more forgiving institution.

Whether Williams ultimately will be allowed to play for USC this season -- or whether he’ll be left stranded, a football player rejected by the only two leagues he wants to play in -- hinges on two separate NCAA decisions.

The NCAA told USC it will rule on the first issue, the reinstatement of Williams’ amateur status, this week. An answer on his academic eligibility might be delayed, although if his reinstatement bid is denied or he is reinstated but suspended for a number of games, it becomes less urgent to have an answer before USC’s season opener Saturday. Paperwork on Williams’ summer grades was to be submitted to the NCAA Monday or Tuesday, USC Coach Pete Carroll said.

“I think they’re going to make him eligible, but that’s totally a guess,” said Richard Lapchick, a longtime observer of the NCAA who is chair of the DeVos Sport Business Program at the University of Central Florida.

Lapchick cited the unique circumstances of the case and the NCAA’s new era of flexibility under President Myles Brand, as well as USC’s reputation in college sports and high graduation rate in football.

“USC is such an important player for the NCAA. That shouldn’t be a factor, but I think it is,” Lapchick said.

At USC, where one insider considers the chances of Williams’ being reinstated as “50-50 at best,” Carroll has tried to keep the issue from being a distraction.

Williams, after practicing sporadically at the beginning of training camp, went home to Florida to visit the surrogate family he has lived with since he was 16 before returning to USC in time for fall classes, which begin Monday.

Kathy McCurdy, the woman he considers his mother, called this a “difficult” and “very emotional” time for Williams in a phone interview, and said he was declining to talk to reporters until the NCAA issues a decision.

NCAA rules allow Williams to practice while the case is pending, but Carroll decided he should stop -- in part because the team must prepare for the likelihood it will start the season without him Saturday against Virginia Tech.

Until the NCAA decision is final, the Trojans are in limbo.

“We’re not talking about it and everybody’s [not] pensively waiting,” Carroll said. “We’re way into our football and the preparation too much.

“But it’s still a lingering item that’s out there, that you know it’s going to come in here in the next couple days right as we’re preparing for the ballgame. We’ve just got to see if we can do well by it.”

Williams’ saga began last February, during his sophomore year, after a federal judge ordered the NFL to end its ban on players who have not been out of high school for three years.

That ruling, the result of an antitrust suit brought by former Ohio State player Maurice Clarett, was stayed by an appellate court in April, allowing the NFL draft to proceed without Clarett, Williams and others who had applied for early eligibility.

In a last-ditch effort, Clarett appealed to the Supreme Court, but two justices separately refused to overturn the lower court’s stay, and the initial decision was overturned in favor of the NFL in May.

Williams pondered legal action against the NFL, but ultimately began the lengthy process of seeking NCAA reinstatement in June.

Two separate issues must be decided by the NCAA.

One concerns Williams’ violation of his amateur status by signing with an agent, declaring for the draft and accepting money that he has acknowledged exceeds $100,000. In seeking reinstatement, Williams was required to sever ties with agent Mike Azzarelli and repay the benefits, including money from deals with Nike and a football trading card company.

That petition, completed by USC earlier this month, will be considered by a group of about six NCAA staffers headed by Jennifer Strawley, director of student-athlete reinstatement.

Should the NCAA say no, USC could appeal to a five-member Student-Athlete Reinstatement Committee that convenes by conference call and includes a Clemson engineering professor and an athletic administrator from Loyola of Chicago.

The other petition to the NCAA concerns Williams’ academic eligibility. After turning pro, he left school shortly after the start of the spring semester and did not return until the second summer session, meaning he would require a progress-toward-degree waiver to be academically eligible, even if his athletic eligibility was reinstated.

That case will be considered by a group of three or four NCAA staffers who deal with academic issues. Should that group refuse to grant a waiver, USC could appeal to an eight-member NCAA committee that considers progress-toward-degree waivers and includes several professors as well as athletic administrators.

Williams’ case comes at a time when the NCAA has taken what many call a “more student-athlete friendly” approach under Brand.

Without the new policies implemented last year -- and without the extraordinary legal circumstances of Williams’ case -- one veteran of the NCAA enforcement process said any appeal by Williams would have resulted in “automatic rejection.”

Under Brand’s NCAA, Williams’ appeal is receiving careful consideration.

“The approach in the past has been one of looking at precedent and sort of a formulaic penalty,” said Wallace Renfro, special assistant to Brand, addressing only the policy, not Williams’ case. “Now, it’s more on an individual-case basis, looking for mitigation, looking for ways relief can be granted. In the past, the choice was for a level playing field. Now, if there are gray areas, it’s for the student-athlete.”

There clearly are mitigating circumstances in Williams’ case. At the same time, he was cautioned by USC that the decision might be reversed, and that he would give up his college eligibility by signing with an agent and accepting money. He also chose to leave school when it was not necessary.

It remains difficult to handicap the case, but NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson said that of approximately 1,100 requests for reinstatement in the last academic year, only 10 were rejected. (Some were granted with penalties, such as sitting out part of the season.)

“I can tell you for certain that decisions have been made to reinstate that would not have been made in the past,” said Kevin Lennon, vice president of membership services for the NCAA. “In the past, we looked at what happened. Now we’re beginning to ask why.”

In cases where athletes accidentally run afoul of rules because of an error by a school or coach, or could not have realized they were breaking rules, the NCAA is now inclined to be more forgiving.

That hardly means an organization known for the heftiness of its rulebook -- the current major-college manual is 487 pages -- is ready to toss it out.

Violations of amateurism still face a high bar for reinstatement and carry significant penalties, Renfro said.

Last week, Jeremy Bloom, a world champion freestyle skier who has played football at Colorado, lost his bid to remain eligible to play football while accepting money from skiing endorsements.

“On matters of amateurism, the colleges and universities in the NCAA have made it clear: Student-athletes are not permitted to endorse products and retain their eligibility,” Lennon said in a statement on the decision, pointing out that Bloom repeatedly and “willfully” violated NCAA rules. Bloom is appealing.

Another case that could have bearing is that of Arizona offensive lineman Brandon Phillips, who must sit out three games and repay $100 because he signed with an agent last spring. However, Phillips signed after being told by the coaching staff he was out of eligibility after being injured during his fifth year in college, and later was granted a rare sixth year because of his injuries after the new coaching staff discovered the error.

Williams’ case remains unique -- and difficult.

“I think the NCAA is always concerned, like any other organization, about precedent-setting things,” Lapchick said. “I think they are much more flexible under Myles Brand than they have been before. On the other hand, they rejected Jeremy Bloom.”

Ultimately, he suggested, the debate is about an issue that might seem almost old-fashioned in an era when even the Olympics are professionalized.

“To apply the term ‘amateurism’ to college football, I think, is stretching it,” Lapchick said.

Times staff writer Gary Klein contributed to this report.