Oh, there were just so many possibilities at last week`s annual NCAA convention. No, silly, not those possibilities for reform, or cleaning up the mess in college sports or making the experience better for those (ahem!)
students who actually play the games. Sure. They were also there, and they were addressed during the often raucous 72-hour life of the convention.
But we know all about those. We`re talking here of those other possibilities, those possibilities created by the follies and foibles, the fumbling and stumbling and all-too-often bumbling maneuvers of the delegates themselves.
These were university presidents and athletic directors, coaches and faculty advisers, yet their actions . . . well, their actions raised the possibility that they really were just so many Marx brothers and sisters in disguise.
Proposals were printed and published, and then amended when found to have yawning loopholes. Others were referred back to committee for further study, and then reconsidered and brought to a vote.
Votes were taken, and then members arose to declare that they didn`t realize what they had cast their ballots for. Ballots were cast and then declared invalid because they were improperly punched or had an improper number.
All this raised the possibility that, after all, these really weren`t the flowers of college academia and athletics. They had to be Ricky and Lucy Ricardo, Ralph and Alice Kramden, Archie and Edith Bunker-or, at the very least, their wild and wacky offsprings.
CBS, last in entertainment ratings, first in sports spending, should have been here. Think of the possibilities then. The network could have snapped up the rights to future conventions, and run them opposite ”Roseanne.” That would give the network its first hit in years.
I mean, the politicking and posturing, the milling and musing, the speech-making and vote-taking sometimes reached such silly proportions that the delegates were even able to laugh at themselves. ”If parents came and watched us in action,” whispered a university vice president, ”they`d never let their children go to college.”
”(Satirist Jonathan) Swift is the only one who could write about this,” declared a college president as he left the meeting room.
”This is the only motion that hasn`t been reconsidered all afternoon,”
muttered an athletic director as he walked toward the bathroom.
”I think we should all have to take the ACT or SAT before we can vote here,” cracked De Paul Athletic Director Bill Bradshaw. ”The test should be mandatory a week before the convention opens, and we should have to meet a standardized score before we can raise a paddle and vote.”
Now all this doesn`t mean the convention was without accomplishments. It ordered colleges to publish the graduation rates of its athletes and the average test scores of incoming freshmen. It shortened the lengths of the basketball season and spring football practice and voted in institutional aid for incoming freshmen who failed to meet the academic requirements of Proposition 48. It also voted in aid for freshmen who wish to attend summer school before their first college year and even took a crack at drug testing and the specter of steroids.
But so often, it seemed, they managed this in spite of themselves, and in spite of the diversity of their interests and the unwieldiness of their process. ”There`s nobody in this room who really understands what we`re doing,” said Mississippi State Athletic Director Larry Templeton during a particularly heated debate. ”We`re getting ready to save spring football practice when this morning there wasn`t any. Imagine next year when we consider every sport. Come and stay a month.”
Ah, next year. Now there`s a convention that has real possibilities. This one, the one that ended last week, was just a first, small step in the reformation of college sports, and many of its actions bordered on the merely symbolic. But next year in Nashville, that promises to be what football players like to call a game of ”smash mouth.”
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Restructuring will be on the agenda there, as in schools being told they no longer qualify for Division I status. Now that should be fun. Another item on the agenda will be a cutback in all sports` seasons, as in no more fall-winter baseball because it robs players of too much time. More fun there as well.
But the most fun should be precipitated by the proposals of the Special Committee on Cost Reduction, which has some substantive ideas on its collective mind. Cutting back the size of coaching staffs is one of them, as is a 5 to 10 percent reduction in the number of scholarships each sport can give.
”We have to decide if it`s reasonable to think a football team can live with 85 (scholarships) instead of 90, and then go on down the line,” says Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Gene Corrigan, the chairman of the committee. ”But no matter what we do, there`ll be backlash.”
For more backlash, try this: A survey taken by his committee found that in one case a school spent $350,000 on recruiting phone calls alone, and so it is considering a proposal that would restrict those calls to prospects. Say, for example, no calls to football prospects during their season and none to basketball prospects during theirs. ”It`s a cost-saving thing, and also a common-sense thing,” says Corrigan.
”How the hell`s a kid`s family supposed to handle (all the calls)? Or the idea of coaches hanging around (a prospect`s) school all week. What kind of message is that?
”It should be interesting. When I visited with John Mackovic (of Illinois) and Tom Osborne (of Nebraska), both of whom I like, the first thing they said was, `Now don`t go and ruin football.` We don`t want to ruin it. We just want to make it so everyone can afford it.
”Sometimes people don`t want to admit what`s happening. They see a billion for basketball (for TV rights), the money from bowl games, but the rank and file is really, really hurting. Where we are, it`s like everyone`s going to have to tithe 10 percent. We have to find ways to help them save money but not lose out in the warfare area.”
Warfare? Did someone say warfare? Now there, there`s a real possibility. Roseanne, watch out. They`re after ya.