Amateurism and hypocrisy

Sporting News, The, Oct 1, 2001 by MIKE DeCOURCY

Even if the team Hawaii shooting guard Predrag Savovic played with in Yugoslavia were professional, it bore no resemblance to the Milwaukee Bucks or the Houston Rockets. One of his teammates worked in a factory. One was a pig farmer. Occasionally, that guy showed up for games with swine blood on his hands.

Even if the league in Lithuania where South Carolina center Marius Petravicius played were professional, it was nothing like what we would see in the NBA. There were no seats in the gymnasium, and no tickets were sold. It cost him to play because his club had no money for expenses, and he had to commute two hours from his home.

Intending eventually to compete in college basketball, Savovic and Petravicius resisted opportunities for compensation. But the NCAA staff is examining Savovic, Petravicius and at least 60 other players, primarily Europeans, who played on club teams in their native countries, for possible violations of the organization's amateurism rules.

The central issue is an NCAA bylaw dictating that athletes who play on teams considered professional--or those playing with or against professionals--jeopardize their amateur standing.

Many schools received letters from the NCAA in July asking them to check the backgrounds of foreign-born players. Many still are in the process. The penalty facing those players: one game on the sideline for each game played with or against pros.

As the process continues, the matter becomes more contentious. Many athletes started classes with no idea what their playing status would be. The Big East Conference is working to place a discussion of this issue on the agenda for the fall meetings of the NCAA's management council and board of directors. The National Association of Basketball Coaches held a conference call last week to provide information and advice to affected coaches.

Coaches were told to be aware that some foreign leagues call themselves professional for public relations value, even if they aren't, and that coaches should learn whether players knew or had reason to know they had played with pros.

No one knows what the final result will be. If the NCAA hands a player a game-for-game penalty, an appeals committee may reduce it. In 1999-2000, the NCAA suspended Oklahoma State forward Andre Williams for the season for receiving outside prep school tuition assistance; an appeal cut that to five games. The NABC believes the appeals committee will be flexible with foreign players.

The sudden zeal to enforce this rule is viewed by the coaching community as a backlash to coaches' intransigence regarding a campaign to reform amateurism policies.

"The facts show there is no connect," says Bill Saum, who directs the NCAA's office on agents, amateurism and gambling. He says emphasis of this rule began in 1997, but the trip he and a colleague made last spring to Munich, Germany, and Paris "educated us to the point we could do a review."

Saum says he receives reports on international players from schools supporting this approach. But there is little doubt the NCAA is stuck enforcing a horrible rule its members never should have adopted. There's an overwhelming intellectual dishonesty in deeming a European a professional for playing on a club team with pro teammates, but U.S.-born collegians competing with NBA players in D.C.'s Kenner League or Memphis' Bluff City Classic do not imperil their amateur status.

The NCAA's distinction is that NBA players are not directly compensated for summer-league play. But those athletes often have lucrative apparel deals that are in effect when they play in public. If Tracy McGrady plays summer ball wearing adidas sneakers, he's very much a professional.

Many international players now being questioned have played in college for years. Savovic began his career in 1997, at UAB. He averaged 17.6 points for the Hawaii team that made last year's NCAA Tournament. Petravicius averaged 8.5 points and 4.7 rebounds for the Gamecocks, who defeated Georgia twice and nearly cost the Bulldogs a tournament bid.

If players such as these now are punished harshly for amateurism violations, the NCAA will have declared its past few seasons something of a lie.

TSN's Jeff D'Alessio goes One-on-One this week with Providence's Tim Welsh and Gonzaga's Mark Few. Go to www.sportingnews.com/cbasketball.> RELATED ARTICLE: INSIDE DISH

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