Inconsistent NCAA : Athletes Suffer and Schools Take Advantage of Organization That Can’t or Won’t Follow the Rules

Shareef Abdur-Rahim, a University of California basketball recruit last season, received $400 from a professional basketball player and fellow Muslim to help pay for an unofficial visit to Berkeley. For that, he received scrutiny by an NCAA committee but no penalty.

Israel Ifeanyi, a USC defensive end, has received $3,650 over the past five years from fellow Nigerian tribe members living in Los Angeles. But his case was heard by a different NCAA committee. He was suspended for two games.

Same rule, nearly identical circumstances, different results.

Ifeanyi lost. Then he had to call his parents in Nigeria and ask them to somehow raise the $3,650 so he can pay it back. If not, he won’t be able to play in the Trojans’ bowl game.

“Some staff members were laughing [that] if the tribal customs for the USC kid were such, what’s to keep a priest from Notre Dame giving a kid some money and saying that it is a tradition in the Catholic church,” an NCAA staff member said.

“We all laughed, then stopped and said, ‘That’s a good question. Why is one a religious issue and one is not?’ ”

It is these cases that best exemplify an in-house judicial system mired in inconsistency and in sore need of reform--fueled by the big money in college sports. But the blame has been misdirected.

Football players go to bed hungry cursing the NCAA, which most believe is a bunch of suits who sit in some building somewhere thinking up more rules to make their lives miserable. But the NCAA is UCLA and USC and Washington and Alabama. It is 903 member schools that make the rules and employ a staff in Overland Park, Kan., to enforce them.

It is the schools that panic about a level playing field, that worry about which coach is doing what, that eventually break the rules they have voted for and fight the committees that penalize them.

And who sits on those committees? Other schools. It’s a marriage of sorts, and a bad one at that.

“It’s like the old Pogo cartoon, ‘We just met the enemy and they is us,” said David Swank, a University of Oklahoma law professor.

Swank chairs the most powerful group, the Committee on Infractions, eight school representatives who recently brought down Alabama for a lack of institutional control but inexplicably went light on Cal, which the committee said lacked control but really didn’t intend to.

The least of the NCAA allegations against Cal concerned Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, the Denver Nugget guard who said he helped Abdur-Rahim out financially because they share Muslim beliefs, not because he wanted him to go to Cal. Abdul-Rauf, then known as Chris Jackson, went to Louisiana State.

The two met through a fellow Muslim, a Cal graduate and graduate student who, along with Cal Coach Todd Bozeman, was the focus of the NCAA’s investigation. Abdur-Rahim eventually signed with Cal.

There are strict rules governing from whom athletes can accept money, and by any interpretation, it doesn’t appear to include professional basketball players who share the same faith. The NCAA allows student-athletes to receive financial assistance from immediate family members or those they are legally dependent on. Sometimes close family friends can help out, but there has to be a pre-existing relationship long before an athlete accepts a scholarship and cannot be based on a student’s athletic status. This is to prevent boosters and agents from buying an athlete and creating an unfair advantage for other student-athletes and schools.

The Committee on Infractions ruled that because Abdur-Rahim wasn’t enrolled in college when he took the money, it didn’t matter. “Before the student-athlete comes to school and gets on a full scholarship he can receive funds from a family friend,” Swank said.

Ifeanyi began receiving money from his tribe’s people before he enrolled in school, but, contrary to Swank’s committee, the NCAA Interpretations Committee said the financial aid rule applies to an athlete from cradle to grave. The committee said it did not want to set a precedent for others to take advantage of. The 10-member committee, which hears appeals on rules interpretations of the legislative service staff, also is made up of school representatives.

“‘It does seem like there is a contradiction,” Swank said, “but I can’t speak to the USC situation because I do not know the case.”

The purpose of the NCAA is to establish a fair playing field for schools and student-athletes so that no one has an advantage and to protect the health and safety of the student-athlete.

Schools apparently believe they can accomplish this by making rules.

Lots of rules.

“We have had committees every year research if there are any rules they can just get rid of, and they come up with a list, but most of them don’t get voted out,” said Katherine Reith, the NCAA’s director of information.

The NCAA’s annual convention is so big that there are only a few hotels in the country that can hold it. It is there that schools vote more rules in, few rules out and pass amendments to amendments. And it’s all very organized. Schools receive a listing of the proposed legislation months ahead so they can prepare their votes. Each school gets one vote, and majority rules. Because it is possible to get rules passed, it should be plausible to get rules changed. There are 305 Division I schools, 246 Division II schools and 352 Division III schools.

“Most of the rules come because of coaches’ complaints against other coaches--they perpetuate the system,” Swank said. “Some coach does something and another coach complains to the athletic director and they take it to the NCAA and the convention votes a new ruling.”

As a high school athlete, Abdur-Rahim even joined the NCAA’s Big Brother program to gain a better understanding of rules that govern recruiting practices. Still, he wound up in the middle of a months-long investigation that resulted in a hearing before the infractions committee. Abdur-Rahim was cleared of wrongdoing, and Cal was merely slapped on the wrist for recruiting violations that the committee deemed minor and without intent. NCAA enforcement officers, however, believed the evidence indicated not only intent but a major rules violation.

“Sometimes a [committee] might come to a different conclusion than we do, in fact about half the time they do,” said David Berst, the NCAA’s assistant executive director of enforcement. “We believe we are providing a proper service and the questions we pose are appropriate and fair, but it’s not our decision what will happen--it’s the jury of the institution’s peers that makes those decisions.”

The NCAA employs a full-time staff of 225, and those involved on the legislative side appear to know the rules. The schools are supposed to self-police their programs, with the help of conferences. But for those who don’t, the NCAA employs a staff of 14 enforcement officers who investigate the alleged wrongdoings of 903 schools. Understaffed would be an understatement.

These officers, in essence, work for the schools, but they are mostly hated by them. Sometimes the schools don’t even cooperate with them. They have no subpoena power, so many cases go unresolved.

In 1986, the Lexington Herald-Leader won a Pulitzer Prize for its expose on the University of Kentucky basketball program, but the NCAA was able to prove nothing. After the stories were printed, everybody clammed up. Kentucky didn’t even cooperate, and it was eventually admonished for that by the NCAA, which was the extent of the penalty in this case. Kentucky was later penalized by the NCAA, but for a different violation.

In 1993, Notre Dame received its first penalty stronger than a public reprimand when All-American candidate Demitrius DuBose was suspended for two games for receiving more than $1,000 in cash and benefits from a Seattle couple with ties to the university.

But it was a $25,000 auto loan that DuBose got from a bank that was interesting. It required a single balloon payment due after DuBose’s college eligibility expired. But Notre Dame officials, who investigated the matter, concluded the loan was not based on DuBose’s potential as a pro football player, which would be against NCAA rules. Since DuBose, then a student, had no apparent means of income, the NCAA was skeptical but could find no evidence of its own and had to accept what bank officials said and Notre Dame concluded.

From cases such as these, some say the NCAA fears going after schools with major programs and penalizes only the fringe players. But an NCAA staffer scoffed at that allegation. USC, UCLA, Alabama, Oklahoma, Florida and Texas A&M; are a few schools that have been put on probation by the NCAA.

“All of us are human--if we have the chance to go after a national university or a small liberal arts college we would probably want to work on the case that involved the big school, but our [litigious] power is limited,” Berst said.

In most cases, the NCAA relies on schools to investigate matters and reach conclusions. This would be similar to Charles Manson’s mother deciding her son’s fate.

If the school’s report concludes there is a violation, minor penalties are usually determined by the NCAA staff, which relies on case precedent. Major violations are decided by one of three committees, depending on the type of infraction.

If the school’s report concludes there is no violation, as in the case with Cal, and the enforcement staff believes there is substantial evidence otherwise, a committee hears the case.

There are about 20 major cases a year and 1,000 secondary infractions. But so much of these seem to be a lot about nothing. Sometimes the media exacerbates the situation by reporting ongoing investigations.

This year, the NCAA investigated USC star Keyshawn Johnson for allegedly receiving $1,200 from a sports agent. Taped telephone conversations between an agent and agent recruiter seemed to prove Johnson had violated NCAA rules. Yet after several interviews with the parties involved, NCAA officials questioned everyone’s credibility and were unable to make a strong case. The matter is still in limbo and probably will remain that way. But had the allegations not reached the media, Johnson’s name would be linked only with the Heisman Trophy.

“The NCAA . . . has continued to work as the tortoise and the hare,” said a former enforcement officer, referring to the NCAA’s constant battle with agents. “They [the NCAA] are the tortoise. They continue to work slowly, methodically, trying to deal with an ever-present issue but not having the means to deal with a problem outside their circle.

“The public is seeing more and more of this over and over again. You could change the names, but the stories are the same. Where does it all end? How does the NCAA take care of this problem?”

With more rules?

“Everyone tries to tiptoe up to the edge of the line to think of the newest and most innovative way to recruit,” the NCAA’s Berst said. “As soon as advantage is detected, another institution tries to stop it by changing the rule or adding to the rule.

“One of the ways to get a handle on it . . . is that we are going to have to let some natural advantages occur without trying to regulate them from the middle of the country. . . . To some degree, a more permissive system would probably have to prevail.”

The NCAA is supported by millions of dollars it receives from television revenue and membership fees from the schools. Last year, the NCAA received $166 million from television contracts, so there doesn’t seem to be a lack of money to properly fund the operation or an unwillingness by NCAA staffers to change. The problem, apparently, is a lack of common sense by the schools.

There is a proposal this year that would allow Division I student-athletes to earn up to $1,500 any time during the academic year or let them work in the off-season for any amount of money. Currently, they can work only during the summer and holidays.

The proposal would give athletes a chance to make money legitimately so they would not go to bed hungry as some say they do. But this proposal is not supported by the Presidents Commission, which is a group of school presidents, or the NCAA council, which is made up mostly of athletic directors. So its chances of passing are minimal.

These are the people football players should be cursing.

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Shareef Abdur-Rahim

* Violation: Received $400 to help pay for unofficial visit to University of California.

* Ruling body: NCAA Committee on Infractions.

* Decision: No penalty.

Israel Ifeanyi

* Violation: Received $3,650 over the past five years.

* Ruling body: NCAA Interpretations Committee.

* Decision: Suspended for two games. Must repay money.