Cash, check, or charge?

Sporting News, The, July 1, 1996 by Douglas S. Looney

The winds of change in college athletics aren't simply blowing. They're howling.

The discussion focuses on whether collegiate athletic scholarship recipients--primarily football and male basketball players, but including scholarship athletes of both genders--should be able to make or receive as much money as they can in return for their talents.

That ship has sailed. That train has left the station. That lovable--yet absurd and long-violated--notion that sports in our universities are a recreational adjunct to scholarly pursuits is a dog that won't hunt. Hellfire, it's a dog that no longer will even get off the porch.

Make no mistake, change is coming because of cheating, exploitation and hypocrisy. Rules have always been put in place to address cheating. If the system is changed to legalize what has been defined as unlawful, then opportunities for cheating will plummet.

The conclusion reached by a growing number of experts: College athletes should, must and will be entitled to as much money as they can latch onto. Just like real students. Under current and archaic rules, athletes who get full scholarships receive room, board, books, tuition and fees. All universities estimate that the actual cost of attendance runs between $1,500 and $2,500 a year beyond these basics--but the athletic scholarship doesn't cover extras. Anybody who wants can give money to regular students, buy them meals, purchase plane tickets for them, give them cars. Anything goes. But for athletes to receive the same treatment is a slam-dunk NCAA violation. It's called special benefits and is a no-no.

Students can make money however they can, whenever they can. Athletes can work only during major school vacations--mainly summer. But even that is impractical in these days of 12-month sports. If, for example, an athlete doesn't shoot hoops all summer, he or she won't be shooting hoops in sold-out arenas during the winter.

If a student wants to open a taco joint, fine; if a scholarship athlete wants to, certainly not. Dick DeVenzio was a standout basketball player at Duke from 1968-69 through 1970-71 and an academic All-American. These days, he runs his Point Guard Basketball College for young players, scheduled for 13 locations nationwide this year. He sits in his home in Charlotte, stretches his legs, and says, "We should treat athletes in every way like every other American student."

In sum, the current system is totally unfair to the athletes and corrupt to the core. The NCAA:S 500-pages-plus rulebook is testimony to folly.

DeVenzio is the nation's leading proponent of allowing players to make money however they want--just like real students--and that includes off athletic talents. "We are protecting a tradition that doesn't exist," he says.

Indeed, the days of fresh-faced college youngsters playing on weekends, wearing letter sweaters, swallowing goldfish and going as a team across campus to ring the Victory Bell were wonderful. But those times are over. Big money has ruined the ideal.

Anybody who thinks otherwise is holding on to a dream already gone. In many ways, it was a dream that never was.

An exasperated DeVenzio throws up his hands as he talks of those who steadfastly oppose players making money: "It's like we're still living in the '40s and America just won the war. If s so out of kilter."

The discussion is no longer whether, but how. Even Cedric Dempsey, executive director of the NCAA, acknowledges as much. In a lengthy interview with The Sporting News, Dempsey conceded: "A lot depends on what it's called. If we say we're gonna pay athletes, you're going to find huge resistance. If you talk about making sure the student athlete has enough money to attend school, you get great support for it. And in some ways, you are talking about the same thing."

Most significant is that Dempsey openly talks of the development of a "more realistic attitude toward a lot of our rules." That's codespeak for big changes are certain.

At NCAA headquarters in suburban Kansas City, Steve Morgan, chief of staff for Division I, says the phrase "discretionary money" seems to go down pretty smoothly with most people.

Joe Crowley, president of the University of Nevada and, until recently, president of the NCAA, also acknowledges the obvious: We have a situation that I believe is out of whack." When Crowley is asked if it's time to reinvent the wheel rather than straighten the spokes, he says, "I think it could be. The itch is there."

Judith Albino, who recently completed her two-year term as chair of the Presidents' Commission, says the way things are is causing "a lot of discontent" with university CEOs. The former University of Colorado president and other commission members have been focusing mightily on campus athletics.

Support for drastic change is pouring in from all corners. Most surprising is the abrupt sea change by Walter Byers. For 36 years, he was the curmudgeonly boss of the NCAA who vigorously defended what once was and supported its myriad rules with a fervor normally reserved for the Christian Right. These days, Byers is recanting and doing an enormous amount of backing and filling. He now calls the current system--of which he was a prime architect and under which huge sums of money are shared by everyone except the athletes--"economic tyranny visited on the players." He flatly concludes the long-established NCAA system has failed. He is absolutely correct.