The Long March stopped first in Kansas City, where the Big Eight basketball coaches were gathered, and then pushed onto Atlanta, where their Southeastern Conference brethren were in session. Next came Greensboro, N.C., for meetings with the geniuses of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and, finally, New York City and pearls from the wise men of the Big East.
To learn about this season, which begins Wednesday with the Dodge NIT, was the stated purpose of this march. But the backdoor pick and the double low post, the motion offense and the extended defense were hardly the only subjects on the minds of the 35 coaches encountered. For looming ahead, and already in their sights, is the NCAA`s 84th annual convention.
That is set for early January in Dallas and promises pyrotechnics as engrossing as those shot off in a game between the roadrunners of Oklahoma and Loyola-Marymount. Cutting back the number of games permitted in a season will be one subject debated there. Pushing the opening of practice back from Oct. 15 to Nov. 1 will be another.
Those are two of the proposals of the NCAA Presidents Commission, a body of 44 that itself is a subject of discussion, if not controversy. Then lingering in the background and sure to come up for discussion is Proposition 42, which caused such an uproar (and led to a walkout by Georgetown`s John Thompson) when it was passed last January. It withdraws institutional financial aid from those athletes who fail to meet the standards set by Proposition 48.
It was no wonder, then, that changing rules was a subject broached as frequently as switching defenses, nor that the critiques matched the personality of the particular critic. ”You know what I think we should do?” said Billy Tubbs, Oklahoma`s noted humorist. ”I think we should have a council of coaches who get together and tell the presidents what the requirements should be for the student body as a whole.”
”It sounds political (when they say) we must do something about basketball. I`d be more concerned about missing classes in baseball and golf,” said Dean Smith, the reserved dean at North Carolina. ”We don`t miss class much except for the NCAA tournament, where they say we must come early for press conferences. I remember `85 down in Birmingham, we showed up for a press conference, the kids got asked one question each, and they missed a whole day of class because of that. So these presidents ought to look at the NCAA tournament format.
”Now we do want to have more impressive graduation records, and something should be done. But I think the easier answer is to make all freshmen ineligible in football and basketball. It should be in all sports, but with the others it`s an economic matter. Our problem is most of the NCAA rules are, `What will it cost?` That`s the question they ask.”
”We talk education,” said Thompson, ever direct. ”But we vote money.” ”I think,” said Pitt`s Paul Evans, who is often even more direct than Thompson, ”that some of the reasoning (behind the proposals) is completely ridiculous. They say the players are spending too much time with their coaches, that they`re not getting the feel of campus life. Well, what`s so great about campus life? We graduate 70 percent of our players. The campus graduates 50 and has the biggest drinking problem in the country. So I don`t think much thought went into this.”
The coaches quite obviously have thought of the currents swirling around their shared profession, and at least two of them have thought of that long and hard. This is no surprise to any who know them, for both are men whose interests spread far beyond the out-of-bounds lines. One is Georgetown`s Thompson, who is as controversial as he is big. The other is Duke`s Mike Krzyzewski, who is as understated as a professor of logic.
– – –
Prop 42, one of Thompson`s main targets, was much in the shadows during the recent Long March. Neither he nor any other coach discussed it. Those other issues were newer, and, befitting our trend-of-the-day society, were the ones that were analyzed.
Yet that controversial proposal is certain to be discussed in Dallas, and so it is raised here with that in mind and after stumbling across two letters written by Gregory R. Anrig. He is the president of the Educational Testing Service, the organization that administers the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and the letters were sent to Walter Byers and Dick Schultz, the former and current chiefs of the NCAA.
The first was written in January of 1983, shortly after the NCAA passed the famous (or infamous) Prop 48, which set standards for freshmen athletic eligibility: a 2.0 high school grade-point average in a core curriculum and 700 on the SAT or 15 on the American College Test.
”I very much support the intent to establish clearer and higher standards for athletic participation,” it read. ”I have serious concerns, however, about the particular affects of using the SAT in the manner decided. . . . The particular use of a fixed cutoff score . . . may undermine the overall effectiveness of this worthy effort to raise standards for athletes.” Anrig then offered the services of the EDT if the NCAA wished to modify its rule, an offer that Byers chose to ignore. But he tendered it again in a letter sent last year to Schultz, a letter that raised Anrig`s old concerns and was sent shortly after the passage of Prop 42. It led to some meetings attended by EDT personnel, Schultz and NCAA director of research Ursula Walsh. But his letters, which support a contention of the critics of those propositions, remained little known until Thompson released them last summer at a convention of the Black Coaches Association. ”This is the best-kept secret in America,” he then said of them, but they will certainly be no secret come January and Dallas.
Still, a question remains: Will university presidents, who theoretically control their schools` votes at a convention, be among those aware of Anrig`s feelings?
– – –
How many coaches talk to their presidents?
Krzyzewski poses that question and then lets it hang there in the air.
(Days later, Pitt`s Evans will unwittingly reveal what would surely be the common answer when he jokes, ”I haven`t seen mine in two years.”)
He, in fact, does talk to his, as does Thompson, but few do. That is Krzyzewski`s assumption, and the assumption here as well. Now granted that sports is only fun-and-games and peripheral to any school`s professed role, and granted as well that any university president has more lofty concerns than his athletic department. But while accepting those truths, also consider this: The athletic department, for better or worse, is also the major profit center and the most visible division at most universities.
More Top Picks Best Long Wool Coats For Women
No corporate CEO would ignore a division that fit that profile, yet that is just what too many college presidents did until the scandals became too numerous and too publicized for even them to ignore. Then they reacted and formed commissions and began making proposals-proposals that are, say any number of coaches, misguided and/or not based on fact.
Those contentions are sometimes true, sometimes no more than the bleatings of self-serving and self-righteous men, and Krzyzewski doesn`t even bother with them here. He, instead, burrows to the root. ”What`s wrong right now is the element of trust is lost in college athletics,” he says, and now he is off on the most thoughtful discourse heard on the Long March.
”We have people who are trying to change collegiate athletics in a number of different ways, and they`re coming at it from here and here and here. College presidents. Athletic directors. Coaches. The media. But the ultimate goal for intercollegiate athletics is to create a quality experience for the kids who are participating. They should be the focus of any decision you make, and they`re not.
”Some of the so-called scandals that have clouded college athletics created that atmosphere, created different agencies such as the Presidents Commission. Now that`s certainly made up of great people and trying to come up with things that help, but if you`re trying to do that, wouldn`t you have coaches there when you`re meeting to get input? I would want that. I would want feedback from the people who are acutally working.
”Now why didn`t that take place? There may be a number of reasons. But the message it sends out (to the public) is, `Well, they don`t trust the coaches.` I`m not saying they mean to do that, yet that`s the perception that`s created. But we`re the people who work with the kids, and we all have to get together, put the kid in the forefront and then start making rules.
”If they would just ask the question each time: What impact does that (a decision) have on the kid?` Like, let`s cut the number of games. Well, kids don`t want that. Kids want a lot of games. Now why don`t we want this number
(28) of games? Well, they`re going to miss a lot of class. Well, maybe there`s a way of doing it without missing classes or exams. In other words, I want 28 games, but I also want them to be ready for their final exams. Okay. Let`s not play away from home the two weeks before exams.
”But we never address that kind of question because that trust is missing. We`re supposed to be on the same team, but we don`t have that common goal. That`s missing. We`re all going like this”-and here his hands fly off in different directions-”because we don`t have that common goal, and it`s so damn obvious, and so right, it`s frustrating.
”We just don`t talk. We make decisions, but we don`t talk, and so the decisions we`re making right now are not very good.”