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Baylor scandal latest dishonor in college athletics
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FORT WORTH, Texas – The scandal surrounding Baylor’s
basketball program is emerging as one of the most sordid in the
history of college sports.
And that’s saying something.
The details shock even experts and academicians who have spent
their careers studying the missteps and misbehavior of coaches,
players and boosters.
“This is a new low,” said Peter Golenbock, author of numerous
sports books, including one detailing various violations in North
Carolina State’s basketball program that resulted in the school’s
being placed on probation in 1989.
The circumstances at Baylor couldn’t be much worse. A dead
player. Another player accused in his murder. A coach
surreptitiously tape-recorded while plotting to malign the dead
player in an attempt to cover his department’s wrongdoing.
But the allegations at the heart of the Baylor case –
payments made to players, hiding drug-test results – aren’t
unique.
“It is a case that clearly demonstrates what has gone wrong,”
said William Friday, president emeritus of the University of North
Carolina and co-chairman of the Knight Foundation Commission on
Intercollegiate Athletics. “It’s time for the American public to
look in the mirror to say, `Look, we love college sports, but this
isn’t what we’re talking about.’ “
A commission report found that the NCAA had sanctioned, censured
or put on probation more than half of the universities playing at
the NCAA’s top competitive level in the 1980s. Nearly a third of
professional football players responding to a commission survey
taken then said they had accepted illicit payments while in
college.
Controversy has seemingly always dogged collegiate sports. Here
are some of the lowest episodes:
Southern Methodist University and the “death
penalty.”
SMU already had been penalized by the NCAA for paying players
when new revelations emerged. Football players were receiving money
from a booster-generated slush fund – and members of the
school’s Board of Trustees, including then-Gov. Bill Clements, knew
about it. The ensuing investigation resulted in the only instance
of the NCAA’s shutting down a program. After a two-year banishment,
SMU’s football program started back up in 1989 but has never
reclaimed the success it once knew.
Fall of the “Fab Five” at Michigan.
The men’s basketball team was belatedly punished by the NCAA
this year after a booster – who died before sanctions were
announced – said he had paid five top recruits, including
current NBA star Chris Webber, in the early 1990s.
“This is one of the most egregious violations of NCAA laws in
the history of the organization,” an association official said when
sanctions were announced.
Academic fraud at Minnesota.
Under coach Clem Haskins, the school’s basketball program was
found to have had a widespread practice of using tutors to write
papers for athletes. Minnesota was placed on probation in 1999 and
Haskins was forced out.
The death of Len Bias.
Bias, one of the best players in Maryland history, died of a
cocaine overdose in his dormitory, celebrating after being drafted
by the NBA’s Boston Celtics in 1986. His death led to an
investigation that uncovered academic shortcomings in the athletic
department. A few years later, the university was sanctioned for
violations involving special benefits to athletes.
The point-shaving scandals of the 1940s and `50s.
Many of the top teams and players in college basketball were
implicated in a plot to accept bribes from gamblers to fix dozens
of games.
Point shaving has continued: In 1985, four Tulane starters were
accused of shaving points. No players were convicted, but the
program was shut down until 1989.
In 1997, two players at Arizona State pleaded guilty to point
shaving.
Golenbock said college sports’ scandals inevitably have been
driven by one overriding thing – cash.
“What college basketball is all about is money,” he said. “All
those Michigan kids were doing was following the money, and that
goes on all over the place.”
What sets the Baylor scandal apart is not only the murder, but
the allegations that coach Dave Bliss attempted an elaborate
cover-up by pointing a finger at his own player, said Andrew
Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College who wrote
“Unpaid Professionals: Commercialization and Conflict in Big-Time
College Sports.”
“Maybe there is nothing quite as egregious as that,” Zimbalist
said.
Mark Horvit and Jennifer Autrey
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)