Cash, check, or charge?

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

In a recent convention of athletic directors, the NCAA's Dempsey acknowledged that his organization is discussing the possibility of a plan by which money would be given to athletes and repaid with professional earnings, or from a trust funded by endorsements. An ad-hoc NCAA committee is studying the concepts, which could become full-fledged legislative proposals at an NCAA convention in January 1997. "The athletic grant-in-aid today is not as good as it used to be," Dempsey told the athletic directors. "It's a changing world, and we've got to change our thinking."

Everywhere, people of substance are huffing and puffing, adding dramatically--and effectively--to the velocity of the winds of change. William Gerberding, University of Washington president, last summer told a sports law symposium at Notre Dame that the current system "cannot last in this egalitarian and litigious and capitalist society. It is manifestly unfair ... (and) we are being made to look increasingly foolish and self-serving." Tom McMillen, former Maryland basketball star, Rhodes scholar, NBA player and U.S. Congressman, predicts that "the coexistence of big-time athletics and higher education will not succeed." He thinks the system will crash when either the players "demand to be paid" or when a financial scandal of national scope erupts inside collegiate sports.

Iowa State athletic director Gene Smith says, "We have got to find a way" to change the system.

But the proof of necessity for change is not in the words but in the deeds. Dick DeVenzio asks the perfect question: "If we started over with sports at universities, would we build a system like we've got now?"

Here, gleaned from interviews with dozens of college sports leaders, are 10 solid ideas to link athletes and money. Some of the ideas will work alone. Some will work in concert with others. All will work.

1 Pay the athletes.

This makes so much sense that it's scary. There is virtually not a single, logical reason not to.

Amateurism, whatever that was or is, is dead. Even the tradition-bound Olympics has given up, which is why we have Dream Teams composed of NBA players representing the United States.

The basic reason to pay collegiate athletes is that schools and boosters can't be stopped from doing it anyway. The record at trying is abysmal. The words sting but they are true: Cheating is rampant and can't be controlled. Father Theodore Hesburgh, former Notre Dame president, said in a recent speech that in the 1980s, 109 colleges and universities ran afoul of NCAA rules--and that includes more than half of the 106 biggest athletic institutions. In 1989, a University of New Haven (Conn.) sociology professor, Anen L. Sack, conducted a survey of approximately 3,500 current and former professional athletes and heard from 1,182--an excellent return. The responses reveal nearly one-third admitted receiving its legal payments while they were in college. These are the ones who admit to wrongdoing. Imagine what the figure really is. Between 1985 and '88, seven of the nine Southwest Conference schools were hit with major NCAA violations. Walter Byers laments that "there is not as much support for law and order in the collegiate sports community as I thought."