Don't expect athletes to be paid anytime soon

Sporting News, The, April 10, 1995 by Ivan Maisel

The Division I-A football playoff may be dead, but its legacy lives on in the NCAA regarding the issue of stipends.

Executive Director Cedric Dempsey called a news conference last week in Seattle mainly to explain why an organization with a $203-million budget can't funnel student athletes $100 per month.

With all the warmth and entertainment value of a Congressional hearing, Dempsey went through the current budget, line by brain-numbing line. What he should have done is show the scene from "It's A Wonderful Life" where the citizenry of Bedford Falls makes a run on the Bailey Building & Loan. Jimmy Stewart explains that the money isn't there; it's in their homes. And the light bulb goes on.

So it is with the money the NCAA generates, give or take the bloated athletic departments that have one assistant athletic director for every five alumni donors. There is no question athletic departments have gotten fatter in the past 10 years, but it will be as easy to cut that bureaucracy as the one in Washington. Eighty-five percent of the money the NCAA makes goes back to campuses in various forms, ranging from the emergency fund for needy student athletes to plain old grants to athletic departments.

The money pressure on the NCAA membership ratcheted up a notch last week, and not because of the spotlight on the Final Four. A federal judge ruled that Brown University's athletic programs discriminate against women and must be changed to comply with Title IX requirements.

One way to increase revenue, Dempsey said, "is a football championship, which the membership is not ready for, for philosophical reasons. The membership turned down $70 million because it is more concerned with the welfare of the student athlete. If history repeats itself, in five years it will become an issue again."

But Dempsey made another point, one he gleaned from last spring's abortive look at a I-A playoff. Among the members of that panel were offensive tackle Rob Zatechka of Nebraska and linebacker Derrick Brooks of Florida State. "The student athletes raised the question of parents coming to postseason events," Dempsey said. "That's something that needs to be explored."

The concept is fraught with the same sort of questions generated by the thought of paying student athletes. For which sports do you bring parents to an NCAA championship? Do you buy them an airplane ticket and let it go? (Given those prices, it might be cheaper to pay the players.) Give the parents a per diem?

But sending parents to championships is an idea that struck Dempsey and other NCAA officials as a way to provide a meaningful benefit to student athletes without actually writing them a check.

"That stuck with me," said Dempsey, a former athletic director at Houston and at Arizona. "One of the players said, `I go to the bowl game and I see the athletic director there with his children and the coaches are there with their children and my parents can't afford to come.'"

The athletes also objected to lengthening the season. "The one thing that came out (of researching a playoff) is that the student athletes cherish their free time," Dempsey said. "One said, `I have three months that are mine. If we have a championship, it cuts into one of those months. The alternative is let's do away with spring practice.'" That sound you heard is the American Football Coaches Association fainting.

Dempsey, given his involvement in running college athletics, has been one of the more sensitive administrators around. Which leads to the question: Is the NCAA being equally insensitive on the issue of stipends? "That goes beyond the principle of amateurism and that's what separates us from the pros," Dempsey said. "We're not going to move in that direction."

Forget the philosophy. There are problems. For instance, there are 130,000 Division I athletes. One hundred dollars a month times nine months times 130,000 equals $117 million. Do you pick and choose athletes to pay? If you pay only Division I-A football and men's Division I basketball and a like number of women, that's 32,000 athletes who would receive $29 million.

"I've never seen a formula that was feasible," Dempsey said. "It's like saying an offensive guard would get one thing and a quarterback something else." Mat is what the NFL does, and all together now: The colleges aren't the pros.

Who's taking in whom?

The Big 12 named Steve Hatchell as its first commissioner in a race that got increasingly nasty before the vote by the university presidents. There had been fears among the schools that comprise the Big Eight that the Texas schools would band together and shift power south. That's exactly what happened.

Seven of the Big Eight presidents are relatively new in their jobs. The presidents of the four Texas schools, led by the University of Texas Bob Berdahl, effectively shepherded Hatchell, the Southwest Conference commissioner, past Kansas A.D. Bob Frederick. The vote was cosmetically close at 7-5, with Oklahoma, Colorado and Missouri joining Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Baylor.