TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040389/04038900.011

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 27.3 KB | 515 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page  54

FOUL!


How the national obsession with winning and moneymaking is
turning big-time college sports into an educational scandal
that, for too many players, leads down a one-way path.

By  TED GUP


The ball loved Flick. I saw him rack up thirty-eight of forty In
one home game. His hands were like wild birds. He never learned
a trade, he just sells gas, Checks oil, and changes flats.

    JOHN UPDIKE

    Among the more than 25 million Americans watching the
National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament
on television this week will be Tom Scates, the 6-ft. 10-in.
former Georgetown University center. A 1979 graduate, he was
once a mainstay of a winning team, and his hopes were pinned on
making the pros. Today he is in uniform all right -- as a
doorman at a downtown Washington hotel. A gentle Goliath with
a cavernous bass voice and a ready smile, he wears a pith
helmet and has a whistle dangling around his neck to summon
cabs. "There's more to life than sports," he says. "It's a hard
reality." That is a lesson that Scates, and thousands of other
student athletes across the land, are given a lifetime to mull
over.

    This is the season of "March madness." It is a frenzied
time when basketball rules the tube, millions pour into college
coffers, and lanky young giants seem anointed with superhuman
gifts of grace and courage. But beneath the pageantry of March
madness lies another, more disturbing kind of madness: an
obsession with winning and moneymaking that is perverting the
noblest ideals of both sports and education in America.

    During a three-month investigation, TIME talked to scores
of young men who had hoped to exchange their sweat and talent
on the basketball court for an education and a better life.
Some, like Tom Scates, got their degrees and found jobs. But for
many the promise of an education was a sham. They were betrayed
by the good intentions of others, by institutional
self-interest and by their own blind love of the game. Equally
victimized are the colleges and universities that participate
in an educational travesty -- a farce that devalues every degree
and denigrates the mission of higher education.

    Out of sight of the fans and boosters, college basketball
presents a sometimes sordid, often tragic scene of young men --
some even functionally illiterate or learning disabled --
trying desperately to keep up with their work. Some, unable to
read an exam, must be read the questions aloud and respond with
oral answers. Some were wooed by recruiters who could not make
good on promises of tutors and extra study time. And some have
found themselves befriended by unscrupulous agents and
professional gamblers.

    As the ongoing Chicago trial of sports agents Norby Walters
and Lloyd Bloom shows, it is often the integrity of the
university that sustains the most serious injuries in big-time
sports -- football as well as basketball. Two former University
of Iowa football players testified that they took such puff
courses as billiards, watercolor painting and recreational
leisure.

    Corruption and exploitation are as old as sport itself.
College basketball in particular has been punctuated by
sensational scandals, including revelations of point shaving
that emerged in the '50s, '60s and early '80s. But today the
money is bigger, the temptations are greater and the pressures
to win more crushing.


    Serious disciplinary problems have flared up at colleges
where recruiters focused on athletic prowess to the exclusion
of character. Recently, college players have been implicated in
such crimes as attempted murder, break-ins, public drunkenness,
disturbing the peace, battery and drug abuse. Coaches, too, can
get into trouble when they lose their perspective on the game.
Ex-Memphis State basketball coach Dana Kirk was sentenced to a
year in prison for income-tax evasion. A former University of
Kentucky assistant coach is under investigation for reportedly
sending $1,000 through the mail to the father of a recruited
player.

    Why do otherwise respectable institutions of higher
learning put up with all this? Because big-time sports, whose
popularity is fueled by ever increasing TV coverage, are major
moneymakers. For one thing, a winning team attracts alumni
donations. Far more lucrative, however, are the direct revenues
generated by sporting events. Last year's NCAA basketball
tournament was worth $68.2 million in gross receipts; the four
schools advancing to the final round got $1.2 million each.
Virtually all those funds go to athletic departments rather than
academic budgets. Top coaches share in the wealth, often making
several times as much as university presidents. Some earn more
than $500,000 a year from salary, endorsements, speaking fees,
television programs and summer camps.

    But many student athletes, whose efforts make this bonanza
possible, spend their college years scrimping to make ends
meet. A large number of these players are black and look on
basketball as their one chance to escape from poverty. But the
path to the National Basketball Association, where annual
salaries average $600,000, is exceedingly narrow. The chances
of making it are less than 1 in 500. Nearly 20,000 young men
play college basketball; about 40 will make the N.B.A. each
year. "The odds of becoming a brain surgeon are greater than the
odds of winning a starting spot on the Boston Celtics," says
John Slaughter, president of Occidental College. Of the
thousands who do not make the N.B.A., a few will play pro ball
overseas or for the Continental Basketball Association, where
salaries average $8,000 a year. But most discover that there is
no career for them in basketball, that they must rely on their
educations to build a new career. After playing four years, many
leave school without a degree.

    The colleges say it is a fair exchange: the student
athletes get a free education. Some do. But for many --
particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who often
arrive in need of extensive remedial work -- the opportunity to
get an education is an illusion. Even the most motivated
students would have trouble keeping up academically while
practicing as much as 30 hours a week. Many student athletes,
moreover, are not primarily interested in getting an education;
they see college as a stepping-stone to a lucrative pro career.
When Eldridge Hudson graduated from high school in 1982, he was
named Player of the Year in Los Angeles and was ardently wooed
by college recruiters with offers of cars and cash. "I didn't
even want to go to college," says Eldridge. "I wanted to go to
the N.B.A.. My life is basketball, period."

    "We've got our priorities mixed up," says Thomas J. Niland,
a member of the NCAA's rules committee. "We used to play
because we thought the kids were entitled and there were some
values to be learned outside the classroom -- hard work, sweat,
the enjoyment of winning and even some disappointment. Then we
got involved in how much money we could make at it, and it
changed the game."

    But the root of the problem is neither renegade coaches nor
avaricious institutions. It is a matter of societal values gone
awry. "Don't blame the coaches for the problem of exploitation
in our country," says Gayle Hopkins, an assistant athletic
director at the University of Arizona. "Blame some of the
communities that only respond to winning at any cost."

    Wayne Embry, general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is
a black former pro who knows the problem well: "Quite often,
coming out of school, these kids don't know anything else but
basketball. Someone's altered their test scores to get them into
school, and once they're in, they're directed to take basket
weaving and plays-and-games, or whatever the hell it is. Tell
me what they're going to do in our society. I know quite often
college coaches think they're doing these kids a favor. The
reality is they're doing them a disservice, and I resent it."

    Sometimes, in the lingo of coaches, student athletes are
"greased" -- passed along by high school teachers, coaches or
administrators who cannot bring themselves to bar a star
athlete's academic progress. Gene Pingatore, head coach of St.
Joseph's High School outside Chicago, has a reputation as a man
devoted to helping his student players, on and off the court.
"I take a very personal interest in the kids," says Pingatore.
"I'm going to do everything I have to do within the realm of
what's legal and right for the kids." Just how far he is willing
to go can best be illustrated by what he did for Carl Hayes,
who graduated from St. Joseph's in 1988.

    At the completion of his junior year, Carl had a D average
and stood 145th in a class of 145. But on the basketball court
he was a formidable talent, nicknamed "Sco" for his scoring
ability. His skill caught the attention of schools nationwide.
"My phone rang 24 hours a day," recalls Carl. "College coaches
were chasing behind me." In November 1987 Carl signed a letter
of intent to attend the University of Nebraska.

    But coach Pingatore worried about Carl's low marks and the
risk that he might lose the scholarship. Pingatore had an idea
for bringing up Carl's grade-point average. He had Carl enroll
in two correspondence courses -- American government and civics
-- at the Loretto Extension Service in Wheaton, Ill. Carl did
assignments in a workbook under the tutelage of Pingatore. He
received an A in both courses. The grades were recorded on his
regular high school transcript. There was no reference on the
transcript to any correspondence courses. The only thing to set
the courses apart was the postgraduation completion date.

    Carl's college-entrance exams also posed a problem. He
scored 11 out of 36 the first two times he took the American
College Testing exam. The third time, he scored a 6. Pingatore
enrolled him in an ACT preparatory course. Two months later,
Carl took the ACT again. His score rocketed up to 21. Testing
officials asked for an explanation. Pingatore and others wrote
about his exam preparation, and the score was allowed to stand.

    "We wanted to give this kid a shot," explains Pingatore.
"The whole thing was an attempt on our part to help out a
disadvantaged kid. That's my job -- I got to help kids. If it
weren't for me, Carl wouldn't be at Nebraska. If it weren't for
me, Carl might be on the streets."

    Shortly after Carl showed up at Nebraska, his final
transcript arrived, listing two courses completed after his
graduation. The NCAA therefore ruled him ineligible. He lost his
scholarship but took out a loan, and expects to regain his grant
next year. Carl's grades have stayed above 2.0 -- but with
considerable outside help. Soon after Carl arrived, Nebraska's
coach Danny Nee had him tested by the school's Educational
Center for Disabled Students. A diagnostician found that Carl
was learning disabled, according to Christy Horn, the center's
coordinator for handicapped services. As a legally handicapped
person, he became eligible to receive special assistance.

    Because Carl has trouble reading, his texts are
tape-recorded for him. His exams are read to him, and he is
given more time than other students to complete them. He is
sometimes accompanied to class by a notetaker. Explains Horn:
"It's difficult for him to absorb the lecture and take notes at
the same time." Nor is Carl alone. He is one of four current
Nebraska basketball recruits -- 25% of the squad -- who have
been classified as learning disabled and eligible for special
assistance.

    Despite the extra help, Carl and student athletes like him
face an uncertain future. "Even if we determine that a kid like
Carl is learning disabled, he has missed so much, he has been
so poorly educated that he's going to struggle all the time
he's here," says Horn. "We may be able to accommodate him enough
so that he can survive, but that's about it." Horn fears what
will happen to Carl if he becomes eligible to play basketball
next year. "He's going to be in the limelight again, and he's
going to have this idea in the back of his head, `I was greased
all the way through high school; they'll grease me through
here.' "

    Many student athletes think that way.  The fact is that
many colleges and universities systematically bend and often
break the rules to get top players and keep them eligible. "The
crime in the NCAA is not in breaking the rules, it's in getting
caught," says American University's respected coach Ed Tapscott.
He and others speak of a "veil of silence" existing among
coaches. "We have our own MAD -- mutual assured destruction.
There's a threshold of dirty linen we can all build up and know
that all of us agree tacitly not to disclose it, because none
of us could succeed without breaking any rules. But when someone
gets outrageous, then he breaks that compact, and we launch our
missiles." University of Nevada-Las Vegas coach Jerry Tarkanian
puts it more bluntly: "The code I was raised on was `You can do
anything you want, but never squeal on anybody.' "

    As any coach knows, the outcome of a season is often
determined before the opening tip-off of the first game. It
begins with the high school players recruited by the school. A
single talented player can be worth hundreds of thousands of
dollars to a college -- and, indirectly, to a coach. The NCAA
prohibits recruiters from offering money to prospective players.
But many student athletes say recruiters offered them cash, cars
and jewelry. For some young players, and especially for their
families, the promise of educational help can swing their
decision. It is not only the larger schools that have problems.

    Take the case of Reggie Ford. As a 6-ft. 4-in. senior at
Marion High School in rural South Carolina three years ago,
Reggie was an All-State center. More than a dozen universities
salivated over his 22-points-a-game average. They paid little
mind to his scant 2.0 grade-point average. It was Bob Battisti,
coach of Northwestern Oklahoma State University, who persuaded
Reggie to attend his school. What won him over, said Reggie, was
Battisti's promise that a tutor would be available to help him
through the difficult academic times ahead. "I knew I wasn't no
A student," explains Reggie. For the Ford family, it was a
shining moment. They are poor. Reggie's mother is disabled from
a car accident, his father from a stroke. Reggie was the first
member of his family to go to college.

    Initially, the coaches were attentive. Reggie remembers
they joked with him and invited him into their homes. But each
time Reggie asked about a tutor, he was put off. Then he injured
his knee, and everything changed, he said. The coaches ignored
him, and the invitations dried up. His grades dropped; the
scholarship was withdrawn. "After I hurt my knee, it seemed like
they were trying to tell me there wasn't much I could do for
them, so I got up and left," says Reggie. Now 21, he lives with
his family in South Carolina and is collecting unemployment.

    Battisti says that he and members of the team occasionally
helped Reggie with his studies but that the school does not
have a budget for formal tutoring. He says the real problem was
that Reggie failed to apply himself. "Abe Lincoln and them
people were self-taught," he said. But Reggie's teachers say he
did try, he struggled to overcome a third-grade reading level,
fought off the exhaustion of practice and in the end succumbed
to the realization that he could not catch up. "He was hoping
against hope," says Jack Carmichael, who heads the school's
social sciences program. "Goddam, he deserved it. He wanted to
have the initiative to make up the deficiency, but I'm not sure
he could ever have made it up, short of taking three years and
going back to high school."

    Each year, says Carmichael, he has a couple of players who
are unable to read their exams or write intelligible answers.
For them, he must read the exam aloud and accept oral responses.
"There's something wrong with the fact that they arrive here
functionally illiterate," steams Carmichael. "It means they were
probably treated as a piece of meat somewhere else. What are
their chances? Probably 1 in 50. It isn't fair to anybody."

    If players who can scarcely read are accepted by colleges
and universities, it is no surprise that large numbers of them
never get a degree. The NCAA publishes an annual compilation of
athletes' graduation rates, but withholds the names of
individual institutions. With good reason: many schools would
be embarrassed. Of the 20 black students who played for Memphis
State University's basketball team between 1976 and 1986, for
example, only one left the school with a diploma. Among the top
basketball powers, only a small number -- including Duke,
Georgetown and Providence College -- claim a near 100%
graduation rate.

    No one expects all big-time student athletes to make the
dean's list, but grades should not be the least of their
concerns. An internal study at the University of Houston found
that the cumulative academic average of the basketball team in
the spring of 1986 was a dismal 1.35. (By spring of 1988, that
average was up to 2.5.) Good basketball and good grades can go
together: the University of Arizona sent a team whose cumulative
average was above 3.0 to the Final Four in 1988, and the
University of Mississippi put players who had a 3.0 average or
above n the cover of the school's media guide.

    Grades, however, can be misleading. What courses are the
athletes taking? Several schools have set up special classes
for basketball players, giving them academic credit in
conjunction with overseas trips. Students at Ohio University,
for example, could not have found International Studies 369B in
the school's catalog. The four-credit course was tied to a
14-day trip the basketball team took to Belgium, the
Netherlands, Spain and France during the 1986 summer vacation.
Alan Boyd of the department of sociology and anthropology taught
a portion of the course. "Its purpose was to try to help the
basketball players to more thoroughly enjoy a cross-cultural
experience so it would be more than just shooting basketballs,"
says Boyd. The players were required to keep a diary of their
excursion, during which they played ten basketball games in 14
days. "It was not as tough as other courses intellectually,"
concedes Boyd, "but it was as tough experientially." Even those
players who arrive on campus hoping to get a practical education
as well as play ball can find obstacles in their path. That was
the case with Brian Rahilly, who as a 6-ft. 10-in. senior
electrified Oklahoma's Muskogee High School with his on-court
wizardry in 1983. Brian, who comes from a white, middle-class
background, was sought after by dozens of colleges before
choosing the University of Tulsa. He says he had two goals: to
play in the N.B.A. and to become a sports broadcaster.

    Four years later, Brian left Tulsa without a degree. Today
he thinks he understands what went wrong. From his first day on
campus, every decision was made for him by the coaches. His
summer job was arranged by the athletic department. He says that
a few times during his first two years when he was low on money
for the weekend, he went to one of the coaches and got $20. "It
was something you were taught from the older guys -- `If you
needed money, go ask.' " Even Brian's courses were selected for
him.

    Trouble was, the athletic department had enrolled Brian in
the business college, although he had no interest in the
subject. "I was kind of ignorant," he admits. "I thought this
was the way it was done. I had no idea I could be in charge of
making my own course decisions." Brian hated business. His
average dipped below 2.0. After his sophomore year, he asked to
study communications, but by then his grades were too low for
him to transfer. Instead, one of the coaches walked him over to
the physical-education department, which had agreed to take him.
There Brian remained for the next two years. He says he never
did get to study communications. Brian's former coach, Nolan
Richardson, now at Arkansas, says all incoming Tulsa students
were required to take certain courses and that every attempt was
made to allow students to pursue their fields of interest.

    That is little solace for Brian. "We're talking my career
here," says Brian, now 23. "I trusted these guys and said,
`O.K., I'll put my faith in you.' I was shortchanged. There are
times I feel that I was nothing more than a piece of equipment,
like a football or a practice jersey that the athletic
department owned." Brian was recently making $8,000 a year
playing for the Topeka Sizzlers in the C.B.A. He is wondering
what's next for him.

    On the night of Dec. 19, 1987, Lafester Rhodes did what no
one in Iowa State history had done before. He scored 54 points
in a single game, razor-edging rival University of Iowa 102-100.
No one who saw that game will ever forget Lafester Rhodes. But
these days he doesn't feel like much of a champion.

    Back in 1983, when he graduated from Manassas High School
in Memphis, Lafester was a hot property. Despite a 1.9 grade
average and a meager 17 on his ACTs, he was courted by more than
80 colleges, some tempting him with offers of money, clothing
and jewelry. "Assistant coaches would take me outside my house
and show me some stuff," he remembers. For an 18-year-old, it
was all too much. Lafester was six the last time he saw his
father, and his mother had two failing kidneys. The family lived
on her Social Security and disability checks. Lafester was
excited and confused by the swarming recruiters (he still keeps
their letters in a Nike shoe box under his bed). "I didn't
really know what was happening," he says. "I didn't have a
father to guide me, so I decided."

    Lafester's choice: Iowa State. Coach Johnny Orr had flown
to Memphis, where, says Lafester's mother Elsie, "he made two
promises -- that he would graduate and that he would play pro
ball." Lafester did neither. Today Elsie is bitter. She feels
Iowa State did not keep its word. "My momma talks about it every
day," says Lafester, who after five years left Iowa State a few
credits short of a degree in family and consumer science. He
took twelve hours of classes, but often put in 20 hours of
practice a week. Ironically, it was his freshman year, when he
was ineligible to play, that gave him the most satisfaction. "It
was great for me. I got to be like a regular student."

    Lafester's chances of making the N.B.A. are slim. Last year
he dropped out of the C.B.A. after fracturing his foot two days
before the season began. For the moment he is back in the
league, but considering playing overseas. As with many student
athletes, there are questions about just how much of an
education Lafester Rhodes got in five years at Iowa State. His
former C.B.A. coach Art Ross said Lafester struggled to fill out
the team's simple application forms. Ross was later told by Iowa
State's coach Orr that Lafester "couldn't read past a
sixth-grade level."

    Orr denies promising Lafester that he would make the N.B.A.
and says that with the help of tutors Lafester made progress
while at Iowa State. "I knew he was struggling," says Orr, "but
he worked at it. He's like a majority of them. The books are not
the main thing with some of them." Orr draws a $90,000 salary,
has a hefty endorsement contract with Reebok shoes, makes
$40,000 a year in speaking fees, has a radio program, a TV
program and runs a summer camp. The school makes more than $1
million a year from basketball. Orr says he does not feel guilty
that the players do not share in that wealth. "We're giving the
kids something," he says. "We're giving them an education."

    Few university presidents defend the system, but many of
them feel it is not beyond repair. "All we have to do is find
the wit and will to get it done," says University of Miami
President Edward Foote. In recent months, coaches and school
administrators have debated the NCAA's Proposition 42, a plan
that would raise the eligibility standards for athletic
scholarships. Both sides of the argument claimed to speak for
the disadvantaged. Some who opposed higher standardized-test
scores tried to limit debate by labeling as racist or elitist
those who favored such a change. But the focus of that debate
was misplaced: too much attention was given to who gets in and
too little to what happens to students once they are accepted.

    Some proponents of reform go so far as to suggest that
student athletes be paid, thereby ending what they see as the
pretense of amateurism. Others insist that all athletic
scholarships be scrapped. Senator Bill Bradley, a former college
and pro-basketball star, has proposed federal legislation
requiring that schools disclose their student athletes'
graduation rates. It's a solid idea -- one the NCAA should have
taken the lead in long ago.

    But the NCAA has thus far shown more sensitivity to its own
tarnished image than to the plight of student athletes. Says
Tulane University President Eamon Kelly: "The NCAA has been part
of the problem, not part of the solution." If that body is to
retain any credibility, it must take practical steps to ensure
student athletes the same educational chances and
responsibilities as other students.

    Such reforms could help end the exploitation and hypocrisy
that now sully the game of college basketball, as well as other
sports. That would be good for the schools and good for sport.
If colleges and universities assumed their responsibility as
institutions of higher learning and if sports programs were kept
in perspective, more student athletes might turn out like Fred
Brown. Fred grew up on the gritty streets of the South Bronx.
His father was taken off to prison when the boy was in third
grade. His mother worked in a grocery and tended bar. On the
$4,000 she made, she raised a family of six. But Fred had a way
with the basketball and a vision of his own. "By traveling with
basketball," he says, "I saw there was a better life, and I
aspired for that better life."

    Today Fred has made it to a better life. He graduated from
Georgetown with a sociology degree in 1984. While working for
Xerox as a marketing representative, he became active in real
estate investment, calling upon several of his sports contacts.
He is now taking courses at Georgetown law school. "On paper,
I guess I'm a millionaire," he says.

    It was not easy for Fred at Georgetown, but he was
determined to make it. "If you come into a school, you may not
be on an academic par with the general population of the school,
but if you as an individual can sit there and learn something
and better yourself, that's an education," he says. Stroking the
lapel of a well-cut gray suit, Fred reflects on his rise from
the ghetto to the good life. "I always ask my mother, `If I
hadn't played basketball, what would have happened?' " he says.
"Ninety percent of the people I grew up with are dead or in
jail, and I would have been the same way. Without basketball,
I wouldn't have had an outlet." The challenge is to help more
student athletes channel their talents into usable skills rather
than into the dead end of broken dreams.