Basketball Gives It Old College Try

Those preseason exhibition games, the feel-good affairs where a former collegiate star such as UCLA’s Ed O’Bannon got to play again against his old college team, weren’t always only feel-good affairs.

Some of those games were turned into off-the-court pressure cookers where club team coaches twisted the arms of college coaches for a nice payday in return for putting in a good word with a particular recruit.

So, for the first time this year, NCAA men’s Division I basketball teams can only play exhibition games against other college teams. No more games against the EA Sports All-Stars or makeshift AAU-league teams or even against that staple of preseason play, Athletes in Action, a traveling team of Christian players who wanted to spread a little gospel along with getting one last chance to catch the eye of a professional scout.

Instead, UCLA imported Simon Fraser, an NAIA team from Canada. USC gave Occidental players the chance to measure themselves. Cal Baptist in Riverside will match up against Pepperdine.

“It has worked out well for us,” Cal Baptist Coach Tim Collins said. “I think it will help our recruiting. At our level, we get a lot of drop-back players, guys who went Division I then transferred back down. These games against Division I teams appeal a lot to those guys, and these are games we wouldn’t have gotten without the new rule.”

The catalyst for the change came last spring in response to a public spat between coaches at the University of Connecticut and Maryland after UConn scheduled a game against the Beltway Ballers, a club team haphazardly collected by the summer league coach of Rudy Gay, a nationally honored high school star who had signed with the Huskies.

Gay, from the Washington, D.C., area, had also been heavily recruited by Maryland. After the Nov. 13 game, Terrapin Coach Gary Williams was quoted as saying, “We could have scheduled an AAU team and given them $25,000 like some schools I know.” His quote was widely read as a pointed shot at UConn.

NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson said it believes that “limiting these exhibition contests to other four-year collegiate institutions is a healthier environment overall and eliminates the potential for problems.”

NCAA Division I women’s teams can still schedule non-collegiate teams. “Some of the same issues in the men’s game,” Christianson said, “aren’t at the same level for the women’s game.”

If NCAA Division II and III and NAIA teams benefit from the new rules, such disparate entities as club teams tied to AAU coaches who broker the talents of high school talent and professional traveling teams such as Athletes in Action who showcase post-college players to NBA and European pro scouts have taken a big hit.

Brothers Dave and Dana Pump of Chatsworth, who run basketball developmental camps in the area, also had sponsored a series of traveling teams affiliated with EA Sports and would play preseason exhibition games against NCAA Division I teams around the country.

“I understand the NCAA was worried about the club coaches manipulating the system,” Dave Pump said, “but I’m saying only a few incidents took place. Unfortunately, our teams came under that umbrella. But I hope the rule might be changed.

“Our teams did some great things. We brought Ed O’Bannon back to UCLA. We brought Adonis Jordan back to Kansas and he got a five-minute standing ovation. Chills came down my arms, how they treated Adonis, how they made a big deal. As in everything, you have a lot of good and have some bad. It’s the bad that gets blown out and that’s what people read.”

Sonny Vaccaro, Reebok’s senior director of grass-roots basketball and a long-time player in the game discovering young basketball talent, was blunter in his opinion: “Basically the AAU people, who were directly connected to recruiting, got paid to play games against teams who were recruiting their players. It was becoming too much doing favors for friends and it was wrong.”

Athletes in Action, the traveling team of Christian athletes that has provided preseason tests for Division I basketball teams since 1966, is struggling to find its place in a new world.

It travels more often by bus and van than airplane and players no longer receive a salary. “But they do get a chance to continue playing basketball,” said Dave Lower, associate director of basketball for Athletes in Action, “even if it’s at a different level.”

Lower said his Athletes in Action teams received guarantees of $10,000 to $12,000 for each game it played. “As anybody involved in college basketball was aware,” Lower said, “some of the teams that played the exhibitions were holding college coaches hostage in terms of recruiting. Demands were made about, ‘Play my exhibition team to get my guy.’ That was the context, the overarching theme. We agree, things were getting out of hand in terms of that pressure. I just wish we could have worked something out.”

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski, while agreeing there was a problem, isn’t sure the NCAA has come up with the total answer. “Is it in the best interests of the game to play an exhibition game against a Division II or III school or NAIA schools? It may be,” he said, “but we should look at it. I don’t think that was looked at. We just wanted to not have AAU or shoe company influence. This is a good step. It shouldn’t be the last step.”

Several coaches at Pac-10 media day last week said that rather than scheduling two exhibition games against lower-division teams, they chose to have closed scrimmages against other Division I teams.

Dick Bennett, coach at Washington State, said his team chose to scrimmage against Eastern Washington instead of scheduling a second exhibition game.

“That works for us,” Bennett said, “but I know that at a place like UCLA, they couldn’t afford to give up the revenue.”

Coach Ben Howland agreed that UCLA would not be willing to give up a paying crowd to bring in a team such as Loyola Marymount or UC Riverside for a scrimmage even if Howland appreciates the benefits of judging progress against Division I talent in a closed forum.

Oregon State Coach Jay John said he is glad to see the new rule.

“Exhibition games against club teams, for me, were not of great benefit,” John said. “I saw the abuses. A game against a Division II school is good for them and good for us. Some of those travel teams, all they had were guys who wanted to shoot threes. What was that worth to us?”