NCAA CONVENTION : Time and Money Head the Agenda

A series of proposals designed to reduce the time demands on college athletes as well as cut schools’ athletic budgets will be considered this week at the NCAA’s annual convention, a meeting that should offer another litmus test for reform-minded college presidents.

Among the items to be considered during the convention, which opens Monday and is scheduled to run through Friday, are proposals that would reduce coaching staffs, athletic contests, scholarships and the amount of time athletes can be involved in competition and practice in their sports.

The NCAA Presidents Commission, the 44-member panel that has been setting the NCAA’s agenda since 1985, has sponsored or endorsed the proposals as a means of injecting more normalcy into the lives of college athletes while at the same time curbing the rising cost of college athletics.

NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz, who called for sweeping reforms in a speech opening last year’s convention in Dallas, has said he supports the proposals and has warned NCAA members that Congress or state legislatures will step in if the NCAA does not act on these and other matters on its own.

This year’s convention will, in essence, be asked to continue work begun last year in Dallas, where lobbying by several influential presidents led to the passage of legislation paring both the Division I basketball season and spring training for Division I-A and Division I-AA football.

“(Reform) is a long process,” said Wake Forest President Thomas Hearn Jr., a member of the Presidents Commission who has been deeply involved in the presidents’ reform movement. “This is an important year, but it’s not the last year (for reform). There will be other matters to consider in the future. But two of life’s most important commodities are time and money, and those commodities are on the agenda this year.

“I wouldn’t underestimate the importance of this. The reform movement established some momentum last year. That momentum needs to continue this year if we are to avoid losing control of our destiny.”

Some of the key proposals to be considered by convention delegates include:

--Phasing out the use of athletic dormitories.

--Imposing coaching staff limitations in all Division I sports.

--Limiting an athlete’s participation in team activities--including practice, competition and meetings--to four hours a day and 20 hours a week during the season and to eight hours a week during the off-season for all sports at the Division I and Division II levels.

--Reducing the number of athletic contests in all sports at the Division I and Division II levels except football and basketball.

--Cutting scholarships by 10% in all Division I sports.

These and other proposals were developed by a special committee on cost reduction authorized by a unanimous resolution at the 1989 convention.

“Our job was to find ways and means of saving money, and we have presented them,” said the committee’s chairman, Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Gene Corrigan. “It’s up to the institutions to decide what they want to do.”

The proposals have, if nothing else, stirred up opposition among coaches, particularly those in non-revenue sports, who believe they are being forced to pay for the sins of big-time college football and basketball.

“The thing that bothers me is, (the presidents) say, ‘We want to make student-athletes like normal students,’ ” said UC Irvine water polo Coach Ted Newland, president of the American Water Polo Coaches Assn. “We’ve never had an athletic dorm in water polo. We’re about as normal as you can be. Our kids have a high graduation rate compared to the rest of the student body, and they get no special privileges.”

Of particular concern to Newland and others is a proposal that, with few exceptions, would prohibit a college coach from working with an outside team or program that includes athletes with eligibility remaining at the coach’s school.

“There aren’t enough coaches to coach water polo in the United States,” Newland said, “because there’s so little money in the sport. If no college coach can coach summer and spring programs, there isn’t going to be anybody to coach. If they pass this (legislation), water polo in the United States will be dead in a very short time.”

In addition, coaches in the non-revenue sports predict that the proposed time constraints will force Olympic hopefuls in their sports to drop out of school to maximize their training.

According to Baylor’s Clyde Hart, president of the Division I Track and Field Coaches Assn., athletes in track and field would suffer because, except for a handful of elite athletes, they do not have the option of training with the sort of clubs that exist in swimming and gymnastics.

“There are some vital things in (the proposals) that will affect track and field in this country and the Olympic movement,” he said. “What’s really a tragedy is we’ve got the Olympics in this country in ’96 (in Atlanta). By that time, these cutbacks will have a drastic effect on how we do in the Olympic Games.”

The convention will consider amendments to the time-reduction proposal that will allow coaches in some sports--including gymnastics, swimming, water polo and field events--to supervise their athletes’ training beyond the weekly 20-hour limit as long as the extra training is voluntary.

However, there is no sign of an organized movement to block the proposed changes.

Said Hart: “A united front of all Olympic sports coming together would be good, but the logistics of that are tough.”

And, considering the influence wielded by the Presidents Commission, it will be an upset if the bulk of the proposals aren’t adopted in much the same form as they have been presented.

“Everybody has a reason why their sacred cows can’t be touched,” Hearn said. “But the spiraling of costs (associated with college athletics) cannot continue. It is one of the corrupting factors in this whole environment. What’s more, it is putting many of these very (non-revenue) programs at risk.

“What happens when an institution gets up against it (financially)? It cancels sports. Whole sports. It doesn’t cancel football and basketball. These non-revenue sports would be well served, I would think, to support thoughtful, across-the-board reductions.

“Everybody is trying to find a solution to the problem that fits their own circumstances perfectly, and somebody has got to think about college athletics, which is not Wake Forest, not Pittsburgh, not the University of Illinois. That kind of thinking--everybody looking to see how their own particular situation is going to be affected--is one of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in.”