Problem solving
NCAA committee takes long look at what ails game
Posted: Thursday November 12, 1998 12:09 PM
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Knight would like to see the elimination of summer recruiting camps Jonathan Daniels/Allsport |
By John Donovan, CNN/SI
ATLANTA (CNN/SI) -- There's madness in college basketball, and if you listen to Jim Delany, it has nothing to do with March.
It's the madness of recruiting. And summer camps. Falling graduation rates and rising attrition among college players. It's the madness of gambling, seeping through campuses like an insipid sickness.
As college basketball fans around the country rev up for yet another exciting season, culminating with March Madness and the Final Four at Tropicana Field in Tampa, Florida, Delany is busy pointing out the snakes under the rocks that the game is built on.
And he's screaming for change.
"There came a point where looking at the problem from a narrow perspective wasn't good enough for me," said Delany, the commissioner of the Big Ten and a former chairman of the selection committee for the NCAA tournament. "I felt like there was going to be a continued erosion of the trust and integrity around the game because of the things that are occurring around the game."
So Delany came out with a plan to address the problems he sees in college basketball. It's been a hot topic around coaching circles and in athletic departments ever since.
"Jim was interested in stirring the pot," said Terry Holland, a former coach and now the athletics director at Virginia. "And I think he did just that."
Delany's plan proposed several solutions to the ills of the game and helped prompt the formation of a huge and powerful NCAA committee to look into the matters. A 27-member group called the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues first met on October 13, charged with no less than coming up with some answers to the dirty little problems that surround the immensely popular college game.
One of the members of the committee is the highly respected athletics director at Kentucky, C.M. Newton. A former coach, Newton was instrumental in pulling Kentucky out of the throes of an NCAA probation to the point where the Wildcats have now won two of the last three NCAA titles.
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Under the scope
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One of the hottest issues being considered by the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues is summer recruiting -- whether it should be cut down or cut out completely, and whether the infamous summer camps run by the shoe companies should be allowed to continue and be scouted.
"The first time I went to one of them, it amazed me," said Donnel Harvey, a 6-foot-8 power forward from Randolph Clay High School in Cuthbert, Georgia, one of the most sought-after recruits in the nation. "It kind of scared me at first."
Nearly every Division I coach in the country scouts the shoe company camps, which have come under scrutiny because neither high school coaches or the colleges control them.
"I thought the camps were the best thing for me," said Georgia Tech forward Jason Collier, a junior who transferred from Indiana. "That's how you got noticed. If you're good enough, you're going to get a college education out of it and, hopefully, be set for life."
Collier was heavily recruited coming out of his high school in Ohio. He says he still has around 8,000 letters that more than 150 schools around the nation sent him . His first, in the form of a questionnaire, came in eighth grade.
Harvey, too, gets plenty -- 40 to 50 at a time, every couple of days, which his parents, his coach and his counselor help him sort through. He is undecided where he'll play.
"Sometimes, it gets in the way. Sometimes, I'll be doing my homework or whatever and coaches will be calling me up," Harvey said. "But I have a lot of people helping me out."
Said Collier: "I never saw any problem with it. I think, in a way, it makes the kid feel wanted -- especially if they come from a bad family situation. It makes a kid feel good about himself."
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"There's an awful lot of good about college basketball," said Newton. "But you always want to fine-tune your product. I think the timing is perfect to examine the issues and make what corrections are needed."
The problems with any possible reforms are that there are so many ideas out there about what to do. And some who think the game should simply be left alone.
Take summer recruiting, for instance, including the summer camps for high schoolers sponsored by shoe companies adidas and Nike. The camps are not controlled by high school coaches. They aren't controlled by the colleges. The shoe companies, along with coaches from AAU teams that are subsidized by the shoe companies, run the show.
It makes for a situation rife with the possibility of wrongdoing.
Delany's proposal, backed by Indiana coach Bob Knight, is to do away with the camps and summer recruiting altogether, thus removing the chance that any violations would occur.
"I think the overwhelming consensus would be to not do away with summer recruiting," said James Haney, the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches and another member of the NCAA super-committee. "I think the Top 50 programs in the country approach recruiting from an entirely different viewpoint than the vast majority of programs. It is absolutely essential for them [the majority] to be able to see, at one site, hundreds of players in a short period of time.
"It's not like [Delany's proposal] is farfetched. But, from a practical standpoint, it's not one the vast majority of coaches are going to support."
Delany also calls for making freshmen ineligible to play (though they'll retain four years of eligibility), increasing scholarships and tightening control on transfers. Delany insists this will help stem the low graduation rate -- just 41 percent of college basketball players end up with degrees, down from 45 percent last year, he said -- and help stop transfers and dropouts.
Some call the proposals radical. Others say they're misguided and impractical.
"I think the important things we always need to consider are ... what are incredibly acute problems for some members may not be the same for others," said Charles Harris, the commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and a member of the super-committee. "The idea of rolling back the clock may have some emotional appeal. But, at a practical level, there are a number of issues that need to be examined."
Delany admits that economic issues, socioeconomic issues and political issues all will have to be taken into consideration. But they should not stand in the way of needed changes, he insists.
This season, 310 schools will play Division I men's basketball, and all of them will be aiming for the NCAA tournament. The tournament has become one of the premier showcases of college sport -- indeed, of any level sport -- and provides the NCAA with 85 percent to 90 percent of its income, according to Harris.
So any tinkering with the game, however big or small, will take a lot of grinding and effort.
"Parts of the game are healthy," Delany concedes, "but I would tell you, with a 41 percent dropout rate, how healthy is that? Give me a break. When half the kids you recruit leave you, how healthy is that? When you have game fixing at Northwestern, and Arizona State, and suggesting it occurred at Fresno, and Tulane and Boston College have both gone through that in the past decade, how healthy is that?
"It's so popular ... in certain aspects, that in part sort of obscures some of the fundamental flaws."
No one is putting a time frame on when, or even if, any recommendations that the committee makes will be implemented. If reforms are passed, it could come as early as next year.
But Delany knows that it will not be an easy fight.
"Without being a doomsdayer, if there are no changes made ... I think what will happen is we'll continue to see episodes [that] will continue to nag at the image and conscience of college basketball," he said. "And I would predict that, within a couple of years, if not sooner, that the people in charge will be forced to come back and deal with these issues again."
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