Money, Prestige Threaten Integrity Of Ncaa Sports

Miami made the cover, but it was two smaller stories that made me sick.

They were smaller, yet similar, stories. And increasingly all too familiar stories.

It was Alex Wolff’s open letter to University of Miami president Tad Foote entitled, “Why the University of Miami ought to drop football,” that made the cover of the most recent issue of Sports Illustrated.

But it was a story just inside the back cover on UCLA softball, and another that was in the papers last week about Syracuse lacrosse, that were even more disturbing.

Miami, as SI reported, has been guilty of virtually every sin imaginable in intercollegiate athletics: “improper benefits; recruiting violations; boosters run amok; academic cheating; use of steroids and recreational drugs; suppressed or ignored positive tests for drugs; player run-ins with other students as well as with campus and off-campus police; the discharge of weapons and the degradation of women in the football dorm; credit-card fraud and telephone credit-card fraud.”

While utterly inexcusable, such excesses unfortunately are not entirely shocking in view of the rewards reaped by institutions of supposedly higher learning - and certainly lower standards - in big-time college football and basketball.

The money, and the perceived prestige, attained by winning teams easily seduce alumni and, disturbingly, far too many financially-pressed administrators who know what’s going on, but don’t seem to care.

It’s as if the favorite philosopher of university presidents has become Al Davis, who has always told his Raiders: “Just win, baby.”

It’s bad enough that the attitude that “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing,” has become pervasive in intercollegiate football and basketball.

But now it’s also happening in sports such as women’s softball and men’s lacrosse.

As intercollegiate sports for women have become more high-powered, they now are making the same egregious mistakes men have been making for years.

Consider the case of Tanya Harding - not Tonya Harding, the figure skater; but Tanya Harding, the softball player - and UCLA.

The Bruins already had played 20 of the 56 games on their schedule when the 23-year-old Harding arrived from Australia, where she is a star pitcher on the national team.

She was enrolled a total of 10 weeks, during which she went 17-1 - including winning all four of UCLA’s NCAA tournament games. She also batted .500 in the tourney, with six RBIs, and won the MVP award.

Two days after leading UCLA to the championship, Harding dropped out of school and returned to Australia.

School administrators haughtily point out that no NCAA rules were broken, and they are correct. But, while they adhered to the letter of the law, they made a mockery of the spirit of it.

Is that what intercollegiate athletics are supposed to be about - bringing in a player to help win a championship, a ringer who made no pretense of being a student-athlete?

Then we have the case of Syracuse, which last week was ordered by the NCAA to forfeit its 1990 lacrosse championship because the coach’s wife co-signed a car loan for star player Paul Gait.

The school - and you’ve got to love this - argued that coach Roy Simmons and his wife had an “independent relationship,” and she should not be viewed as a representative of the school’s athletic interests.

Hey, I don’t know about you, but I’m sure Mrs. Simmons regularly co-signed car loans for any needy Syracuse student who happened to ask.

These are tough times for the Orangemen, whose perennially powerful men’s basketball program was ineligible for NCAA tournament play in 1993 as a result of problems with overzealous boosters.

But it isn’t just big-time hoops where there are big-time problems. It’s not only major-college football where there are major malfeasances.

The cancer of athletic corruption now has spread to such sports as softball and lacrosse.

What makes this particularly disturbing is that it is taking place at our colleges and universities - at places where academics should be paramount and athletics secondary, places where ethical and moral values are presumably discussed and formed.

Instead, university presidents such as Miami’s Tad Foote tacitly condone an athletic department run amok. The lessons learned are those taught by the Hurricanes’ football program, or the UCLA softball program, or the Syracuse lacrosse program.

Miami’s misdeeds made the cover of SI. But the sad truth is that you can fill not merely a magazine, but a book that would make “War and Peace” seem like a quick read with examples of unethical practices in intercollegiate sports.

And that makes me sick.