College Athletes

Re "Reward College Athletes by Paying Them for Play," Campus Correspondence, Feb. 26: The assertion that Jeff Zeleny made concerning the payment of college athletes overlooked the blaring fact that many athletes receive scholarships from the schools at which they play. I do not think that student athletes should be paid in addition to the money that they receive for their education. I believe that the NCAA has made a wise decision in maintaining the amateur status of college athletes.

Re “ Secretive NCAA is pulled into spotlight ,” Dec. 24 An investigation of how the NCAA conducts its business is long overdue. The organization seems to be mostly about making money, not about college athletes. Its processes are “black box” and its enforcers appear to harbor institutional biases. Some NCAA investigations have taken interminable amounts of time: How many years did it spend chasing former USC star Reggie Bush? In other situations, the NCAA has intruded into institutional processes for which it has little competence.

William F. Devine Jr.'s rant about college athletes being shackled and exploited is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. Last time I checked, an education at Stanford or Notre Dame can cost well over $100,000. If the "discrimination" is so rampant, then why hasn't any college athlete sued on this ground? The simple answer is because there isn't any. What Devine conspicuously ignores is that if Stanford elected to pay a football player such as Luke Powell, for example, then it would be in violation of Title IX if it didn't pay its female athletes the same amount.

Some coaches seem to get the whole leadership aspect of being in charge of a major-college athletic program. Some don't. At Wake Forest, Coach Jim Grobe suspended six players for Saturday's Atlantic Coast Conference game against Maryland. Among them were a linebacker who was the team's leading tackler, a starting safety, a starting cornerback, a starting guard and the team's second-leading rusher. The reason: they violated unspecified "team rules. " Meanwhile, Connecticut's star running back, sophomore Lyle McCombs was arrested early Friday morning and charged with second-degree breach of peace after he allegedly yelled at, pushed and spit at his girlfriend during an argument outside a university residential hall.

Two former college athletes are creating an organization to "look after the rights of major college football and basketball players." Johnny Rodgers and Dick DeVenzio announced the formation of Revenue Producing Major College Players Assn. at a news conference Thursday. They said their objective is to force NCAA universities to use money generated by football and basketball players to enhance the education and careers of those players.

As a student athlete playing baseball at Cal State Fullerton, Sergio Brown was too busy with games and practices to hold a part-time job. Desperate for cash, he started working occasional weekends parking cars and setting up special events. Before long, he was joined by teammates also crunched for time and money. Soon Brown had the beginnings of a business, supplying staff for conferences, dog shows, corporate functions, private parties and special events for nonprofit organizations.

The war on drugs marches ever forward. Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega, the former drug-running dictator, is safely held in a Florida lockup. U.S. warships are heading for the coast of Colombia. And now we are aiming our sights at the American college campus, where, apparently, football players are the next target. Now, I'm not naive. I know all about college kids, having been one once myself. Given the chance, they swallow goldfish. They throw up at parties.

Drug use by college athletes is largely social and experimental and may be exaggerated, a nationwide study of more than 2,000 college athletes indicates. The study, financed by a $25,000 grant from the NCAA and covering 11 large and small unidentified schools nationwide, was conducted by William Anderson and Dr. Douglas McKeag of the Michigan State University College of Medicine.

Winning a national football championship brings glory and, with it, the most important force in college athletics--money. Even in sports deemed "amateur," money is the root of all competition. Since the University of Nebraska won the national football championship on Jan. 1, the Cornhusker state has gotten much richer. The ringing of cash registers can be heard everywhere. Sports Illustrated sold 300,000 copies of its national championship collector's edition in Nebraska alone.

The year was 1964, and UCLA would win its first national basketball championship. Not only was there a wizard in the making, but there was also a monster. According to Jack Hirsch, a starting forward on that team, boosters paid players $5 a rebound up to 10 a game and $10 for each rebound beyond that. UCLA, which had the smallest team in what was then the Athletic Assn. of Western Universities, led the league in rebounding.

As severe as they may be, the penalties that the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. imposed on Penn State University's football program Monday aren't likely to have as profound an impact on the school as the scandal that caused revered coach Joe Paterno to be ousted in disgrace last year. The larger purpose of the sanctions - including a four-year ban on bowl games, 40 fewer scholarships, 111 wins revoked and a $60-million fine - is to tell universities across the country that there's a considerable price to pay for letting their mission become subservient to their athletics programs.

OLYMPIC URBAN LEGEND : Athletes during the Ancient Greek Olympic Games were amateurs. Until the 1970s, competition in the Olympic Games was reserved for amateur athletes, which in this sense is defined strictly as "athletes who do not get paid to perform their sport. " Slowly but surely various Olympic sports relaxed their rules to allow for professionals to compete in the Olympics and today, there are few Olympic events that only allow amateurs to compete in them (boxing is a notable exception)

If we are going to rant about educational shortcomings in big-time college sports, then we also need to pump up the positives. Which brings us to Ben Howland. UCLA's basketball coach is not in a good spot right now. His team, picked to win its Pacific 12 Conference division this season, has started 0-2. Its first loss was to Loyola Marymount, which hadn't beaten the Bruins since 1941. Next came Tuesday night's 20-point loss to Middle Tennessee, a very good team, likely an NCAA tournament team, but with no history of big-time excellence.

When the recruit staggered out of the Thunderdome pugil-stick arena, he had the early signs of concussion: glassy eyes, confusion, unsteadiness on his feet. His face had been gashed by a smashing blow from his opponent — another would-be Marine desperate to please drill instructors with a display of unrelenting aggression. Not that long ago, the drill instructors might have ordered the woozy recruit back into line for another session. But times have changed at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

Thousands of college football fans had their pick of games Saturday — historic rivals Michigan and Michigan State and Oklahoma State and the University of Texas faced off in anticipated games, while top-ranked LSU took on the Tennessee Volunteers. On Sunday, the National Football League drew fans in similar legions, crowding stadiums in Detroit and Chicago, New England and Green Bay; millions more watched from couches across America. Both days are sports extravaganzas, and lucrative ones.

The ugly cloud of cheating and greed that hovers over NCAA athletics these days does not darken anything for Farren Benjamin. Nothing blocks her sunshine. She says she is a student-athlete. "Some people get that order wrong," she says. "They think they are athlete-students. " She will be an academic senior and an athletic junior at USC this fall. She will take 16 credits, including four toward a graduate degree. She will work in the Trojans' sports information department as an unpaid intern and will spend four hours a day in training for her varsity sport.

What the world needs is not another basketball player. There seem to be few ways a man can feed his family with a skill for bouncing a ball if he can't add, subtract and multiply. That's the greater fact lost in all the sound and fury over the National Collegiate Athletic Association's flawed proposal that says athletes have to be able to read and write a little bit before they can get scholarships. If that means the level of athletes who play above the rim is diminished, that's OK.

Less than 100 yards from the Coliseum field where Reggie Bush starred for USC, a California state senator presided over a hearing Thursday to gain information about college athletes and sports agents. Billed as "Protecting Student Athletes from Unscrupulous Athlete Agents," the hearing took place in the Coliseum commissioners' boardroom at the peristyle end of a stadium where Bush rushed to the Heisman Trophy before becoming embroiled in an agent-related scandal that left USC with some of the most severe sanctions in college sports history.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader is calling for the elimination of college athletic scholarships, saying the move is necessary to "de-professionalize" college athletes. "As we near the exciting conclusion of March Madness ? which would more accurately be described as the 2011 NCAA Professional Basketball Championships ? it's time we step back and finally address the myth of amateurism surrounding big-time college football and basketball in this country," said Nader, whose League of Fans is proposing that the scholarships be replaced with need-based financial aid. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the proposal Thursday, ahead of its official release.