Off base

The 5/8 rule is a good thing -- unless you're a coach

Few coaches can compete with Kansas' Roy Williams when it comes to evincing righteous indignation. In a letter dated Sept. 6, Williams blasted Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg for having voiced a less-than-indignant objection to the so-called 5/8 rule, which limits schools to awarding five scholarships in any given year and eight in a two-year period. Those parameters might seem reasonable considering a team can only have 13 scholarship players at a time, but for Williams and his colleagues, any limits are too limiting.

"I hope this will not be very lengthy, but I cannot promise that," Williams begins his letter, fairly frothing over his word processor. Pointing out that the Big 12 coaches had said at the league's spring meeting that they were vehemently opposed to the rule, he writes that "it is the purpose of this letter to request that all basketball coaches be excused from the meetings of the conference next year. ... I will go through my own channels here to make sure that I myself have the permission of my chancellor and athletic director to not be in attendance. Our opinions do not appear to be of any value." The missive concludes, "I think you will also note that I have waited nine days to write this letter so I can get over some of the feelings I had nine days ago." For good measure, Williams then sent copies to every president, athletic director and men's basketball coach in the league.

There are two ironies here: First, the NCAA's Board of Directors essentially reapproved the 5/8 rule in November, increasing the 8 to 9 for two years before it reverts back. Among the members of the board: Kansas chancellor Robert Hemenway.

Second, one of the coaches' biggest reasons for opposing the rule is that it supposedly punishes programs which lose an inordinate amount of underclassmen to the NBA draft. Last spring, their Exhibit A was Arizona. Now that the Wildcats are off to a great start -- thanks largely to their five-man freshman class -- that argument has been exposed as specious. Even if the limits had kept Arizona from being dominant this year, the program would certainly have had ample ability to restock by next season.

Personally, I like the 5/8 rule. It's one of the few pieces of legislation passed in recent years that actually protects the rights of the players. Sure, players are too quick to transfer these days, but if they want to play elsewhere they know they'll have to sit out a year. If a coach decides a player isn't good enough, he can, shall we say, encourage that player to transfer elsewhere and replace him right away. Of course, NCAA rules state that a scholarship cannot be revoked purely for athletic reasons, but apparently that's a mere technicality.

Running players off is an especially prevalent tactic following a coaching change. Steve Fisher (San Diego State), Mark Gottfried (Alabama), Pat Kennedy (DePaul) and Jim O'Brien (Ohio State) all started their jobs by pushing out several students who had been recruited by their predecessors so they could be replaced by superior players. Within a month of taking over at Texas Tech, Bob Knight kicked three players off his squad for "violating team rules." Then he appealed to the NCAA for an exception to the 5/8 rule that had been implemented to curtail this very practice, an appeal that was denied. (If Williams is the king of righteous indignation, Knight is the prince of chutzpah.)

I must say it's been amusing to watch the coaches resort to histrionics over this issue, especially since it's so obvious they're way out on a limb. Weiberg points out that at a meeting of the Conference Commissioners Association in June, only two leagues -- the Big 12 and the ACC -- expressed a desire to completely rescind the 5/8 rule. That's what prompted him to take the legislative tack of pushing for modification instead, the decision that so irked Williams. (Weiberg, who wrote Williams back expressing his own disappointment over Williams' letter, says the two of them exchanged pleasantries at the league's media day this fall but have not discussed the matter further.)

There is at least one voice of reason amongst the coaching ranks. Not surprisingly, it comes from St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli. "I keep asking people to give me a concrete example of a coach who would be hurt by this rule, and no one has done it yet," Martelli says. For the last three years, Martelli has been the Atlantic 10 representative to the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and in that span Martelli says he's "never seen a hotter issue, not even summer recruiting. I don't get it. Why would a new coach need to get seven players in one year? Why not figure out what you have first then go get the right four or five players?"

The answer is: control. Coaches want it, need it, must have all of it -- and can't stand anyone, let alone the bumbling, stumbling NCAA, taking it away from them. What they forget sometimes is that the NCAA is there for the players' benefit, too. It would be nice if, once in a while, Williams and his colleagues could see beyond their own agendas and fulminate on behalf of what's good for the overall state of the game.

Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers college basketball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.

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