Days (and Nights) of Wine and Roses May be Over
Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2004 9:28 amWednesday, February 25, 2004
By Ivan Maisel
ESPN
It is officially the NCAA task force on recruiting, but it should be known as the NCAA Committee on Lap Dances and Lobsters.
Schools have used those goodies as an enticement to 18-year-olds to enroll for the simple reason that no one said they couldn't. That has been the law of the college athletic land since Knute Rockne recruited George Gipp out of a South Bend poolroom.
The basic rule of football is find the opponent's weakness and attack it. The same goes for the NCAA Manual. Find the loophole and surge through it. That's why the manual makes the Chicago phone book look like a pamphlet. It takes a lot of paper to close so many loopholes.
On their own, the recent revelations that recruits have been plied with strippers, sex and alcohol at Colorado and sumptuous meals at Florida State may not have spurred the NCAA into action. But the wildfire that has consumed Colorado didn't have one source. The issue of football players committing sexual assault sent coach Gary Barnett on a humiliating paid vacation and cloaked the entire sport in a coat of repulsiveness.
The mere mention of Colorado conjures the ills of modern college athletics. Colorado has become a buzzword, and NCAA president Myles Brand wants to remove the buzzing sound from the public ear.
Current NCAA panel members
Reggie Minton, associate executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches
Grant Teaff, executive director or the American Football Coaches Association
Jeremy Foley, Florida athletic director
Gene Smith, Arizona State athletic director
Debbie Yow, Maryland athletic director
Chris Plonsky, Texas women's athletic director
Sonia Price, Alabama State interim women's athletic director
Virginia Shepherd, Vanderbilt professor
Stan Wilcox, Big East associate commissioner
Brand announced Monday that he wants the nine-member panel (which may increase to 16, including two student-athletes) to report before the April 19 meeting of the NCAA Management Council. In the bureaucratic world of the NCAA, two months is a two-minute drill.
"There are going to be changes enacted pretty quickly," said Jeremy Foley of Florida, one of five Division I athletic directors on the committee. The group will look at the rules governing "paid official visits", the name of these 48-hour recruiting bacchanalia. Brand said in a statement that he wants the task force to focus on "behavioral issues," which is admirable and most likely impossible.
"You can't be with an athlete 24/7," Foley said. "I know people don't want to hear that. I'm not sure that you can set behavioral standards, just like you can't legislate integrity. You can set guidelines to change the culture of what we have created here."
The rules regarding an official visit limit how far off campus they may travel and they limit the amount of money that a student host may spend to entertain his guest. Foley refused to engage in public speculation about what the two-day-old committee might do.
But here are some issues the committee will review:
The number of visits that a prospect may take. It currently is five, and using all five is a time-honored motivation for schools to outdo one another, as well as to encourage a sense of entitlement among prospects.
The use of private aircraft. Coaches often have a university jet at their disposal to dispatch to pick up top prospects. Sorry Citation, but eliminating your jets from recruiting will deflate 18-year-old egos and athletic department expense accounts.
Pay for parents to accompany their sons and daughters on official visits. Universities could use some of those private jet savings and, by bringing a parent, put a damper on late-night reveling: "Mom, don't latch the hotel room door and don't wait up: I'm going for a lap dance."
Eliminating off-campus meals. Before Miami signee Willie Williams gained fame for violating his probation, he wrote a recruiting diary for The Miami Herald. One entry provided excruciating gustatory detail of a multi-course meal that Williams ordered on an open ticket during a visit to Florida State. How many entrees can one man eat? During recruiting season, high school seniors across the country try to answer that question every weekend.
Looming over the committee is the specter of the mess at Colorado, where the players, limited funds or not, still found enough money to hire a stripper for their recruits. There's a reason that three female athletic directors are on the special committee.
"I don't think the committee is a knee-jerk reaction," said Texas senior women's administrator Chris Plonsky. "This is what a president would do if it happened on his or her campus."
She added that there is no guarantee that the committee will make any changes. "Just because we examine it doesn't mean we're going to change it," Plonsky said. "We will examine what we have. What might need to happen is what has already occurred."
Her point is that the public spotlight has created the heightened awareness necessary to curb excess. This is a noble thought, and given how coaches exploit loopholes, it is also complete fantasy. If it's not spelled out, it's legal.
The political ramifications of the NCAA not making a change would turn Howard Dean's I Have a Scream speech into a whisper. Plonsky acknowledged as much but said that the committee's charge is to perform on a macro scale the due diligence that universities should be performing.
"Every day," she said, "we like to say they (the student-athletes) have to decide between the easy wrongs and the hard rights. Maybe defining what a hard right is needs to be looked at."
No one ever believed that bringing in an 18-year-old on a private jet is a hard right. The era of multiple lobster dinners may have come to an end. No one, save next year's high school seniors, will miss it.
By Ivan Maisel
ESPN
It is officially the NCAA task force on recruiting, but it should be known as the NCAA Committee on Lap Dances and Lobsters.
Schools have used those goodies as an enticement to 18-year-olds to enroll for the simple reason that no one said they couldn't. That has been the law of the college athletic land since Knute Rockne recruited George Gipp out of a South Bend poolroom.
The basic rule of football is find the opponent's weakness and attack it. The same goes for the NCAA Manual. Find the loophole and surge through it. That's why the manual makes the Chicago phone book look like a pamphlet. It takes a lot of paper to close so many loopholes.
On their own, the recent revelations that recruits have been plied with strippers, sex and alcohol at Colorado and sumptuous meals at Florida State may not have spurred the NCAA into action. But the wildfire that has consumed Colorado didn't have one source. The issue of football players committing sexual assault sent coach Gary Barnett on a humiliating paid vacation and cloaked the entire sport in a coat of repulsiveness.
The mere mention of Colorado conjures the ills of modern college athletics. Colorado has become a buzzword, and NCAA president Myles Brand wants to remove the buzzing sound from the public ear.
Current NCAA panel members
Reggie Minton, associate executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches
Grant Teaff, executive director or the American Football Coaches Association
Jeremy Foley, Florida athletic director
Gene Smith, Arizona State athletic director
Debbie Yow, Maryland athletic director
Chris Plonsky, Texas women's athletic director
Sonia Price, Alabama State interim women's athletic director
Virginia Shepherd, Vanderbilt professor
Stan Wilcox, Big East associate commissioner
Brand announced Monday that he wants the nine-member panel (which may increase to 16, including two student-athletes) to report before the April 19 meeting of the NCAA Management Council. In the bureaucratic world of the NCAA, two months is a two-minute drill.
"There are going to be changes enacted pretty quickly," said Jeremy Foley of Florida, one of five Division I athletic directors on the committee. The group will look at the rules governing "paid official visits", the name of these 48-hour recruiting bacchanalia. Brand said in a statement that he wants the task force to focus on "behavioral issues," which is admirable and most likely impossible.
"You can't be with an athlete 24/7," Foley said. "I know people don't want to hear that. I'm not sure that you can set behavioral standards, just like you can't legislate integrity. You can set guidelines to change the culture of what we have created here."
The rules regarding an official visit limit how far off campus they may travel and they limit the amount of money that a student host may spend to entertain his guest. Foley refused to engage in public speculation about what the two-day-old committee might do.
But here are some issues the committee will review:
The number of visits that a prospect may take. It currently is five, and using all five is a time-honored motivation for schools to outdo one another, as well as to encourage a sense of entitlement among prospects.
The use of private aircraft. Coaches often have a university jet at their disposal to dispatch to pick up top prospects. Sorry Citation, but eliminating your jets from recruiting will deflate 18-year-old egos and athletic department expense accounts.
Pay for parents to accompany their sons and daughters on official visits. Universities could use some of those private jet savings and, by bringing a parent, put a damper on late-night reveling: "Mom, don't latch the hotel room door and don't wait up: I'm going for a lap dance."
Eliminating off-campus meals. Before Miami signee Willie Williams gained fame for violating his probation, he wrote a recruiting diary for The Miami Herald. One entry provided excruciating gustatory detail of a multi-course meal that Williams ordered on an open ticket during a visit to Florida State. How many entrees can one man eat? During recruiting season, high school seniors across the country try to answer that question every weekend.
Looming over the committee is the specter of the mess at Colorado, where the players, limited funds or not, still found enough money to hire a stripper for their recruits. There's a reason that three female athletic directors are on the special committee.
"I don't think the committee is a knee-jerk reaction," said Texas senior women's administrator Chris Plonsky. "This is what a president would do if it happened on his or her campus."
She added that there is no guarantee that the committee will make any changes. "Just because we examine it doesn't mean we're going to change it," Plonsky said. "We will examine what we have. What might need to happen is what has already occurred."
Her point is that the public spotlight has created the heightened awareness necessary to curb excess. This is a noble thought, and given how coaches exploit loopholes, it is also complete fantasy. If it's not spelled out, it's legal.
The political ramifications of the NCAA not making a change would turn Howard Dean's I Have a Scream speech into a whisper. Plonsky acknowledged as much but said that the committee's charge is to perform on a macro scale the due diligence that universities should be performing.
"Every day," she said, "we like to say they (the student-athletes) have to decide between the easy wrongs and the hard rights. Maybe defining what a hard right is needs to be looked at."
No one ever believed that bringing in an 18-year-old on a private jet is a hard right. The era of multiple lobster dinners may have come to an end. No one, save next year's high school seniors, will miss it.