"Paterno Says NCAA Should Write New Rules"

Mike Szostak
The Providence Journal
June 23, 1989

SOUTH KINGSTOWN --- The NCAA ought to scrap its 400-page manual of rules and regulations, return to the drawing board and begin anew.

And university and college administrations ought to regain their grip on an intercollegiate athletics system that often races out of control.

That was the message Penn State football coach Joe Paterno delivered to a gathering of about 200 athletes, coaches and administrators yesterday during the Institute for International Sport's seminar on ethics and sportsmanship.

Paterno was one of seven panelists suggesting solutions to the problem of cheating in college athletics. Seven other panelists elaborated on the problem itself.

"We should change the NCAA rules and regulations. Maybe the NCAA should have a constitutional convention," Paterno told his audience in an auditorium on the University of Rhode Island campus.

"This is my 40th year as a coach in college, and I've spent so many hours attending meetings on this, probably more hours than some of you young people have been alive on this planet," he said, directing his comment to the 100 high-school and college athletes participating in the seminar that runs through Saturday.

Paterno said the world was a lot different in 1950, when he started coaching at Penn State to earn money so he could attend law school at Boston University. He mentioned that professional sports and television did not have the impact they do today. There were no sports agents. An amateur was an amateur. With few exceptions universities did not feel compelled to reach out to disadvantaged students.

"There were different standards then," Paterno said.

Rules now are so numerous and confusing, he said, that only lawyers can understand them.

Paterno related a personal experience. Two years ago he and an assistant coach recruited a highly touted player, Leroy Thompson of Knoxville, Tenn. When Paterno showed up at Thompson's house, a battery of local television cameras awaited.

Made uncomfortable by the media, Thompson suggested they go to his father's house about three miles away. Paterno offered to drive. His assistant interrupted. NCAA rules forbade Paterno from driving Thompson to that meeting, though they allowed Thompson to drive Paterno.

"I didn't know that," Paterno said. "I would have walked out in front of all those cameras and broken an NCAA rule."

Later, during a brief question-and-answer period, Donna Lopiano, director of athletics for women at the University of Texas, and a fellow panelist, told Paterno that coaches need know only 63 of the 400 pages in the NCAA manual. She also said the manual had grown over the years from its original 28 pages because of the many violations of the intent of those initial guidelines.

Paterno leaned over and smiled.

"A lot of the rules there, nobody knows the intent any more," he said. He asked why every edition of the NCAA News seems to contain interpretations of interpretations. And why so many institutions have compliance officers to interpret the rules for coaches and administrators. And why the NCAA maintains a telephone number for people to call with questions about rules and regulations.

"Let's start over again," Paterno said. "Let's form seven or eight committees. Give them a year-and-a-half. Then let's sit down for a week or 10 days.

"Nobody can sit on a panel like this and say they're not breaking the rules. We all break the rules. I'm breaking the rules," he said.

Then one of the most respected figures in collegiate athletics shrugged and said

"I just don't know which rules I'm breaking."

Paterno said university academicians must exert control over athletics, as Penn State does.

"Since we supposedly, supposedly, believe that athletics are part of the academic program, the faculty has to be involved."

He described how athletics administrators handle the business of college sports: stadium size, ticket prices, etc. A faculty senate committee on athletics handles the academic side: admissions, special admissions, normal progress toward a degree, etc.

"We got invited to play BYU in one of those West Coast bowls a few years ago, and the committee turned us down because the game fell right smack in the middle of final exams. I agreed," Paterno said.

The Penn State coach also strongly suggested that it's time for departments of athletics to be accredited by an independent body similar to those that accredit academic departments.

"This business about the NCAA sending out monitors doesn't make sense to me. Penn State is part of the Middle Atlantic Association. The athletic department should be involved," he said.

"We have immense problems," Paterno concluded. "Entertainment, public relations, keeping the alumni happy. That's a lot of nonsense. When I went to college we played athletics because it was a hell of a lot of fun. We have to get a hold of this thing. Let's do things that are good for higher education. That's peer evaluation. Let's do it for athletics."

Not everyone agreed that intercollegiate athletics is beset by serious problems.

"Does anyone know how many young men, and women, participated in Division One programs this year?" asked CBS commentator Billy Packer. "Two-hundred and eighty thousand! What collegiate athletics has done on the positive side far outweighs the problems."

Shooting from the hip in his familiar machine-gun style, Packer charged on.

"Everybody wants to talk about three kids at Oklahoma, or a kid at LSU. We accept the position that athletics have gone to hell. Well, we have to wipe that out."

In a jab at women's athletics and minor sports that derive their existence from football and basketball revenues at many institutions, Packer said: "We should salute what (football and basketball) have done. We've created a great opportunity for participation."

Packer also directed a barb at the graduation rate, a figure touted frequently by colleges that graduate a high percentage of its athletes.

"The object is to educate," he declared.

Then Packer read the description of a recent Princeton graduate that appeared in the May issue of LIFE. She graduated with a 3.8 average, but in her senior year she studied Ceramics, Comedy in Film, Ceramics II and Film for Children.

When he finished he held up the page and identified the Princeton grad as Brooke Shields.

"I have more of a problem with Notre Dame's 100 percent graduation rate than Memphis State's 50 percent," he said. "We don't do anything in this world 100 percent. Notre Dame, show us how you do it. You have to be the smartest educators in the world."

Ellie Lemaire, associate director of athletics at the University of Rhode Island, suggested that administrators are responsible for control over athletics departments. Rudy Davalos, director of athletics at the University of Houston, carried the responsibility one step further.

"The board of regents, the presidents, have to have control. If they do not see the need for discipline and staying within the rules, then the AD does not have a chance," he said.

He has taken credit cards away from coaches, begun meeting with the president and coaches annually to discuss rules and distributed an NCAA guide to all alumni and boosters.

Davalos also criticized the huge amounts of money at stake in big-time athletics.

"One point five million for winning six basketball games, Is that ridiculous or is that ridiculous?" he said, referring to the NCAA tournament.

Lopiano described an 11-point program that is working at Texas and said it could be effective at the national level. Texas coaches, for example, suffer salary freezes and loss of bonus money, country club memberships and dealer cars for not knowing the rules. They are dismissed for knowingly violating rules.

Among the other Texas policies are certification of coaches, allowances for athletes, educating alumni and boosters, and holding coaches accountable for the academic progress of their athletes.

Of the seven panelists who described the problems of cheating in college athletics, Kay Yow, women's basketball coach at North Carolina State and coach of the 1988 women's Olympic basketball team, was the most impassioned.

"Living successfully beats becoming successful. If you don't have a strong commitment to ethical principles, you can't live successfully," she said.

Yow compared a Japanese opinion of American marketing strategy - Ready! Fire! Aim! - with collegiate athletics.

"That says it all. We're way off track. We're not even close to the target. Where do we want to be? Where's the planning? Selfishness. Greed. Fame. Fortune. Power. Position. Money. Recognition. That's what people think is important."

Paraphrasing a passage from a book on business, Yow said: " 'Anyone can get the recruit if he or she is willing to stretch the truth.' If money causes that to happen, we need to make changes. They shouldn't get a million dollars for getting to the Final Four."

And, prefacing Paterno's sentiments, Yow pleaded for help in dealing with the rules.