A history of recruiting (cont.)

Adolph Rupp took advantage of Kentucky's reputation by holding open tryouts for prospects, a practice which the NCAA eventually banned.

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Time-Honored Tradition

When the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States -- the ancestor to the modern NCAA -- published its first manual in 1906, the rules governing recruiting were crystal clear -- it wasn't allowed.

The six-page manual included bylaws that forbade "the offering of inducements to players to enter Colleges or Universities because of their athletic abilities" and "the singling out of prominent athletic students of preparatory schools and endeavoring to influence them to enter particular College or University." Naturally, schools completely ignored these rules.

The original NCAA embraced the amateur ideal, mandating that schools draw athletes from the general student body. Athletic scholarships didn't exist at most schools. Leaders considered the act of giving a student financial aid on the basis of athletic ability to be as unethical as paying him a salary. Schools, as competitive then as now, discovered they could get the best football players by finding them jobs or by offering under-the-table payments.

Sick of the athletic black market that sprang up as radio broadcasts made college football one of the nation's most popular sports, leaders of the five-year-old Southeastern Conference voted in December 1935 to allow schools to pay tuition, room and board for athletes. "This amendment brings all the assistance heretofore given athletes above board," Kentucky athletic director Chet Wynne told The Associated Press. "It is a progressive step and places the Southeastern above most conferences of the country."

Other leaders, most notably Big Ten commissioner John Griffiths, disagreed. Opponents of athletic scholarships celebrated two weeks later when the NCAA, at its annual convention at New York's Hotel Pennsylvania, passed resolutions condemning athletic scholarships and recruiting. But since the NCAA of 1935 had no enforcement arm, it couldn't stop the SEC schools from offering scholarships.

The NCAA addressed the issue again in 1948 with the passage of the Sanity Code, which allowed schools to pay the tuition of athletes provided the aid wasn't withdrawn if the athlete chose not to play. Coaches were allowed to recruit off campus, but they weren't allowed to offer any financial aid. The NCAA threatened to expel member schools that offered any additional subsidies to athletes. Not long after, the NCAA sent questionnaires to schools to determine whether they had followed the code, and seven schools -- Virginia, Maryland, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Tech, The Citadel, Boston College and Villanova -- admitted they had broken rules.

Officials from the "Sinful Seven" argued that they weren't the only guilty ones; they were just the only ones that had told the truth. Before the 1950 NCAA convention, The New York Times predicted the SEC, the Southern Conference and the Southwest Conference might secede from the NCAA if the seven were expelled. The expulsion vote fell 25 short of the required two-thirds majority.

The failure of the Sanity Code forced the NCAA to reinvent itself. In 1951, schools voted to allow athletic scholarships and recruiting. Under the leadership of executive director Walter Byers, the NCAA gradually added rules and staff, including an enforcement arm to ensure schools followed the new rules. Some of those rules were a direct response to complaints from member schools.

In the late 1940s, SEC basketball coaches groused about Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp's recruiting style. Rupp didn't like to beat the bushes to find players, so he asked the best players to come to him. According to a 1950 Time magazine story, "each year dozens of slat-shaped aspirants from all over the U.S. trek to Rupp's office in Lexington, many of them at their own expense, to try out for Rupp's team." The NCAA eventually banned tryouts for prospects in Divisions I and III.

A few years later, in the NAIA, College of Idaho coach Sammy Vokes came up with an idea that would inspire coaches at every level of college sports. Vokes, whose team had taken in a grand total of $2.40 in gate receipts for one game in his first year, convinced school officials to admit athletes who fell well short of admissions standards at other schools. Those athletes included Elgin Baylor and R.C. Owens, who led the Coyotes to the 1955 Pacific Northwest Intercollegiate Conference title. Other coaches noticed and followed suit. Eventually, the NCAA curbed the practice by declaring minimum academic standards that today consist of a sliding scale combining high school grade point average and an SAT or ACT score.

The Oklahoma Example

As the years passed and the NCAA rulebook grew thicker, coaches had to get more creative if they wanted to land the best players and stay out of the NCAA's doghouse. In the late 1960s and throughout '70s, no group of coaches walked this fine line better than the football staff at Oklahoma. Though former Texas coach Darrell Royal and others accused Oklahoma's Barry Switzer of a number of dirty tricks on the recruiting trail, in many cases, Switzer and company simply used existing rules to their advantage. In one critical policy decision, they broke an unwritten rule and reaped the benefits.

One example of the Oklahoma coach's genius involved a 1968 Southwest Conference rule that allowed conference staffs to visit a recruit only once. Oklahoma, a member of the Big 8, was bound by no such rule. So Switzer, then a Sooners assistant, essentially lived three days a week at the home of Abilene, Texas, quarterback Jack Mildren. According to his 1990 autobiography, Bootlegger's Boy, Switzer spent many an evening at Mildren's house watching Dolly Parton and Porter Waggoner on television alongside Mildren's parents. One night, as Switzer helped Mildred's mother, Mary Glen, with the dishes, Texas A&M coach Gene Stallings and his staff arrived for their one visit with Mildren. As Switzer walked past the Aggies coaches, he turned and called back to Mildren's mother. "Why don't you just leave these dishes and go visit with them?" Switzer said. "I'll come back and help you finish them later."

Two hours later, Stallings and his assistants walked out to find Switzer waiting. Switzer finished the dishes, and he signed Mildren, who became the first great Wishbone quarterback at Oklahoma. The SWC quickly repealed the rule.

The Oklahoma staff used the SWC rulebook as a shield whenever possible. Larry Lacewell, a longtime Switzer assistant who also served as head coach at Arkansas State and as the Dallas Cowboys' director of player personnel, said the Sooners loved the fact that the SWC had its own Letter of Intent. When a player signed with an SWC school, he was off limits to coaches from the other SWC schools, but not to coaches from schools in other conferences.

"We'd get them to sign with Baylor or TCU," Lacewell recalled with a laugh. That way, Texas and Texas A&M couldn't recruit them, but Oklahoma could.