Words from on high

Former ND, UNC presidents' preaching hasn't sunk in

Friday and Hesburgh aren't a lounge act playing the Vegas strip. Not a gassy sports-talk radio duo. Not a couple sports lifers who have the local affiliate on speed dial.

The characters we’re talking about -- William C. Friday and the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh -- just so happen to be the former presidents of North Carolina and Notre Dame, respectively. Academicians and sports guys alike. Two seasoned gentlemen who gracefully co-chaired something officially dubbed the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.

And so, if you don’t believe your friendly messenger when he says the NCAA needs fixing -- like fresh leadership -- then catch the words of Friday and Hesburgh.

These days the two wise men sound like zealots preaching to non-believers, trying to rid college athletics of its sins. Friday and Hesburgh labored on the Knight Commission the past decade, sifting through the muck before putting out a final report last summer that detailed the ills of the college game. And, well, they wonder if any of it sunk in.

Doesn’t sound like it, gentlemen.

Here you had the commission lecturing on the evils of the arms race -- the $4 billion now being spent on athletic building projects -- and colleges still aren’t shying away from expanding stadiums, building arenas and support facilities.

The Knight folks also hit on the pay awarded "star coaches" -- and the number of million-dollar deals has only gone up (see: Gary Barnett and Colorado). Nothing much has changed in the other prime areas of contention, like professionalism in the major sports (see: lucrative TV deals), academics and the influence of gambling.

"We’re on verge of destroying something here that we all love," Friday warns. "We’re in big trouble. Because of the money that has come from commercial television, we now play sports seven nights a week. There’s absolutely no reason for it, except economics. We seemingly are in an avalanche of where the real generating force is not within the institution, but it is outside."

Asked how the big-time college game might come crumbling down, Friday surprisingly suggests a possible repeat of the point-shaving scandals that rocked college basketball in the 1950s. No inside info here, mind you. Just his hunch.

"It’s probably going to end like Madison Square Garden did, if we don’t watch out," cautions Friday, referring to the '50s scandal. "It took years to get over it. In this conference [ACC], we had the same thing happen 30 years ago or so in a thing called the Dixie Classic. This was before television. And the gamblers got in there, bribed these players and we had to abolish the tournament. The thing coaches fear the most, if their testimony to us is correct, is just that so much money is being spent by illegal gambling in this country."

The NCAA is hot on the subject, of course, lobbying Congress in recent years for a bill to ban gambling on college sports in Las Vegas. But talk about hypocrisy. At the same time it's acting sanctimoniously in Washington, NCAA brass has signed deals with CBS ($6 billion) and ESPN, who themselves have ties to Internet gambling sites that offer wagering on college sports.

When it was suggested that the NCAA might be conflicted here, Friday took a not-so-subtle jab at the leadership of NCAA boss Cedric Dempsey, who retires at year’s end.

"You’re putting your finger on a very critical point: Who will lead the NCAA next?" Friday says. "Is it going to be another athletic director or is it going to be another coach? Mr. Dempsey was a member of our commission. He was a very valuable member of it. [Former NCAA president] Dick Schultz was before him. But what you learn is that they can’t control this all by themselves. And this is why in that report you saw some firm and strong recommendations.

"We genuinely believe if these academic requirements [including graduation rates of at least 50 percent] aren’t met, universities should be banned from bowl participation. You’ve had institutions playing in national championship games that didn’t graduate 18 percent of their players. You’re either going to admit that you are professionalizing college sports, which is what you are doing when you have no strong academic requirement, or you’re going to do something about it."

Hesburgh is big on this education-first business, too, seeing that the Irish annually post some of the higher graduation rates. Given his druthers, he wouldn’t be opposed to Notre Dame banding together in an athletic conference with other high achievers like Stanford, Duke, even the service academies.

On a personal note, Hesburgh remains unforgiving about a 41-9 flogging Notre Dame took two years ago at the hands of Dennis Erickson’s juco bunch -- officially known as Oregon State.

"When the thing was over, they [OSU's players] just walked away," Hesburgh sighs. "They played one day and weren’t at the university the next day. They just quit."

What else bugs Hesburgh and Friday? High on the list is coaches pulling down million-dollar contracts -- which, it deserves noting, their old schools haven’t been immune from.

"No coach should be paid more than the president of the institution," Hesburgh argues. "It throws your priorities out of whack. To have a coach getting 10 to 15 times more than the president of the university is really insane. It is crazy."

Along the same lines, Friday says coaches shouldn’t be allowed to pocket large subsidies from shoe companies like Nike.

"That money should go straight into the university budget," the ex-UNC president says. "And if there is to be any subsidy, the head of the institution should make that award on his judgment, not by the company’s ability to get Dean Smith to sign for a $500,000 personal supplement. That’s merchandising the institution to personal advantage, and when I was at North Carolina, that’s something I went back and forth on with Dean Smith, who is a good friend of mine.

"The condition for receiving the money is you require the players to wear the gear. Well, suppose you’re a professor of history who had just published a textbook and the publisher comes to you and says, 'You have 400 students in your classes. If you require all them to use this textbook we’ll give you a $5,000 subsidy.' The whole thing is geared to false premises, and you shouldn’t do it."

Finally, Friday and Hesburgh -- speaking from the Knight Commission report -- advocate that the university president or chancellor must be the one calling the shots on a university’s athletics program. He can’t whimsically delegate it and remove himself from the picture. And he darn sure shouldn’t push it off on an athletic association that functions outside the university.

These independent athletic associations, it bears noting, are probably most prevalent in the South, where folks are tickled to say football is king and where NCAA investigators have made a living in recent years.

"Generally speaking, if you have an entity that is perfectly independent of the head of the overall organization, you are going to be in trouble," Hesburgh contends. "Especially if that group can negotiate for money outside the university, which they do on television, coaching contracts, advertising and that stuff.

"It is simply insane to leave anything as visible, as powerful and as profitable as athletics to a group independent of the university it represents."

The two wise men and their Knight Commission colleagues have been preaching this stuff across the college landscape for a decade or so. It’s hardly complicated. Even so, it’s fair to say big-time college sports are still caught up playing the same games.

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