New Lessons, New Rules for NCAA : Byers’ Retirement, Presidents’ Convention Foretell Change

Two separate events next spring likely will chart the course college athletics follow into the 21st Century.

In April, a successor will be chosen for the retiring Walter Byers, the NCAA’s first and only executive director the past 35 years. When he leaves in 1988, a new era will begin.

In June, the powerful 44-member NCAA Presidents’ Commission is expected to call a special convention. Officially, it is to consider cutting costs in sports; unofficially, some say, it will deal with de-emphasizing major college sports.

“Rip Van Winkle wouldn’t have to sleep long to wake up in a whole new world in this business. A few months might do it,” said Chuck Neinas, executive director of the College Football Assn.

Many college presidents consider radical, urgent reform the only escape from the spreading morass of recruiting, drug and academic scandals.

“The time has come,” noted one, “to put the animal back in its cage.”

So far, the presidents are undefeated in their reform efforts. They first organized in 1982 to push through Proposition 48, the tough, new academic requirements for freshmen. Because of that rule, nearly 400 freshmen were ineligible to play football; more than 150 were forced to sit out basketball.

In June 1985, the presidents won nearly unanimous approval for a “death penalty,” whereby repeat violators can have their programs shut down for two years. It is still untested; continuing problems at Southern Methodist could change that.

Though this June’s meeting agenda is a secret, the presidents are known to be considering several proposals: Reducing coaching staffs, limiting scholarships and the length of playing seasons, and capping the money a school can make from its athletic program.

“Actually, we are thinking about some things that are more radical than that,” said one commission member, the Rev. Ed Glynn of St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, N.J.

Not everyone goes along with those ideas.

“I think what they’re talking about doing is dangerous,” said Tom McCurdy, chairman of the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents. “They might have some regents at that convention.”

What happens if opposite viewpoints emerge from the meeting no longer able, or willing, to operate within the same organization?

“It might just signal the end of the NCAA,” said McCurdy, who helped lead the Oklahoma-Georgia lawsuit that forced deregulation of football television rights.

If anything, Glynn says the future means more books and less ball.

“When the presidents first started getting involved in athletics about five years ago, people said they would lose interest,” he said. “But I feel it will never be the same again. One of the most important things we are going to see is that increasing numbers of presidents will realize the purpose of intercollegiate athletics is not to generate revenue. Intercollegiate sports will not continue to be driven by considerations of the entertainment industry and the advertising marketplace.”

The call for reform has heightened since the cocaine-related death last June of Maryland basketball star Len Bias. In addition to replacing Coach Lefty Driesell, Maryland chancellor John Slaughter sliced the school’s basketball schedule by a month after disclosures of academic abuse in the program.

Many commission members already favor an across-the-board cut in playing schedules. But Slaughter, who is commission chairman, says his group is not out to water down sports’ place on campus.

“What we are working on is cost-containment. It does not necessarily mean that we will de-emphasize anything,” he said.

McCurdy, for one, isn’t so sure.

“What they’re talking about is an overreaction, something akin to a witch hunt,” McCurdy said. “The presidents control those institutions only to a point. Ultimately, the people control them. I guarantee you, there will be some schools who oppose them.”

“Of course, there will be opposition,” Glynn said, “but I have a theory about institutional and social change. You locate the pain threshold and then you consciously cross it. That is what we intend to do.”

Another president, who asked not to be identified, scoffed at the notion of a serious threat to the commission’s plans.

“There will always be opposition to a program to constrain costs when there is a segment that is successful and does not want any boundaries or straps put around them,” he said. “But that same group was opposed to the new penalty structure, and you saw what happened there. I’ll be surprised if anything put up by the Presidents’ Commission even comes close to being defeated. Anyone who says otherwise just is not in touch with college athletics today.”

The new executive director, whoever it is, probably will have little impact at the June convention. The plan is for that person to work with Byers for about one year before taking charge.

One thing is for sure: Whoever it is probably will never become the larger-than-life character Byers became since taking the job in 1951.

Byers’ successor likely will emerge from academia, possibly from the Presidents’ Commission itself.

It is also widely believed the new NCAA head will be a much more public person than the reclusive Byers and, at least in the beginning, will probably not wield as much clout.

“He won’t have the influence that Walter has because he won’t have built up the bureaucratic system Walter has developed over the years,” said Neinas, the NCAA’s most persistent critic. “Every committee has to go through the executive committee or the NCAA council, and Walter sits there on both bodies. He won’t have the influence in operational matters that Walter has, but the new person may have greater influence in developing a general perception and overview of college athletics.”

Another change down the road could be a realignment of conferences.

“I see more and more schools becoming concerned about their conference ties,” said John Schaeffer, former president of the University of Arizona who chaired a presidents’ research committee in 1981 that evolved into the Presidents Commission.

“Schools like Rice University and SMU really shouldn’t be in that Southwest Conference,” Schaeffer said. “When you’ve got schools like SMU, which is a pretty fine institution, trying to compete with Texas and Oklahoma and the like . . . pretty soon you try to cut corners to meet your objectives, and that’s when you get in trouble.”