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Vols' mess won't go away NCAA returning to campus to check latest claims
Posted: Sunday May 07, 2000 01:34 PM
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- An NCAA enforcement officer who cleared Tennessee of academic wrongdoing in March plans to review records an English professor says reveal questionable practices to keep athletes eligible, a newspaper reported. Linda Bensel-Meyers said the NCAA has asked to review her records. She says those records show, among other things, that athletes often were steered toward easier majors and even had their grades changed. Ron Barker, a member of the NCAA's enforcement staff, notified university general counsel Ron Leadbetter that he will return to campus May 23 and meet with Bensel-Meyers, The Tennessean said in a story for Sunday's newspapers. Leadbetter conducted the university's internal investigation last, which concluded there were no NCAA violations. Barker did the NCAA's follow-up audit, which found there was no reason to conduct further inquiry "at this time." Bensel-Meyers said she does not want to see NCAA sanctions.
"I just want to see the academic side oversee all academics on campus. It needs to be on an academic site. Fair play, that's all I want," she said. She kept the records and documents during 10 years of overseeing English supervisors. "There were several complaints that were never responded to, as well as letters of protests when some of my people were fired for bogus charges and physically abused," she said. Leadbetter said Saturday that Bensel-Meyers misinterprets the difference between academic concerns and NCAA violations and has failed to provide any specific information that might constitute an NCAA violation. "I think all the NCAA is doing is giving her one more shot," Leadbetter said. "If she's got something, then spit it out. "All her information has to do with the relationship between athletics and academics. It's not my job to determine who's tutoring English students, or if a student can withdraw from a course or get incompletes," he said. Ledbetter said his only interest is in whether any NCAA infractions occurred. Bensel-Meyers contends Tennessee consciously withheld evidence of potential NCAA wrongdoing when Barker was on campus last November. "I think one thing's very obvious, and that's the coverup," said Bensel-Meyers, the director of English composition at UT. "They didn't give all the information to the NCAA the first time." If proven, such a claim could constitute a lack of institutional control, which the NCAA considers among the worst of violations. But Ledbetter said all the information Bensel-Myers provided was given to the NCAA. "Naturally, if she presents something to them that might be a violation, we'll go back and investigate it," he said. The UT Faculty Senate has instructed its athletics committee to conduct an investigation into Bensel-Meyers' allegations of academic misconduct involving the athletic department. The athletics committee last month completed a six-month probe of the athletic department's tutoring operation conducted after allegations that at least four tutors did schoolwork for football players, including members of the 1998 national championship team. The committee found no system of abuses involving the way athletes were tutored, nor any suspicious pattern of grade-changing for athletes. The faculty members said they found no systemic problems, but did recommend more faculty oversight. Bensel-Meyers plans to provide Barker with a list of people who've never been spoken with during any of the inquiries. "Many of those people have first-hand accounts of these abuses," Bensel-Meyers said.
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