Deep In Hot Water In Stillwater

The disclosure of a secret Oklahoma State University booster club—which collected several hundred thousand dollars over the last 18 months for the illegal purpose of paying OSU football players—has once again raised questions about the frenzied atmosphere in which football exists in that state. Ironically, the man who blew the whistle on the payoffs is a Tulsa businessman named Jim Treat, who is an OSU alumnus and who, even after his sensational revelations, remains an ardent supporter of the Cowboys' football program.

At first, Treat's accusations brought quick denials from the school officials, but, as verifying evidence piled up, University President Lawrence L. Boger, Athletic Director Floyd Gass, who was forced to resign last month, and Football Coach Jim Stanley all have refused to make any further statements.

That OSU, which is situated in Stillwater, should be at the center of yet another football scandal is no great surprise. The school, whose football team has fanatical adherents even though it has had only 15 winning seasons since 1940, for years has had a bad reputation in the Big Eight regarding the recruiting and favored treatment of football players. In 1975, the conference gave credence to those suspicions by putting OSU on two-year probation for recruiting violations. Earlier this year, the NCAA, after an 18-month probe, one of its longest investigations ever, slapped on another two years of probation for the same type of violations. Among the penalties were the permanent barring of 13 boosters, including Treat, from all recruiting activities. With this latest disclosure, both the Big Eight and the NCAA are investigating anew and their patience is wearing thin. "I don't believe we're going to get out of jail in my lifetime," said one gloomy Cowboy booster last week.

Oklahomans, who have become inured to the University of Oklahoma periodically getting itself in a mess (it has been on NCAA probation three times in the past 22 years), seem not so much shocked that the OSU players were being paid as that the payoffs were so botched up. Treat, 41, and president of a new chain of convenience stores called Circle-7 Food Stores, certainly agrees. In fact, he said upon meeting a reporter for the first time, "You are looking at Outlaw No. 1 in college football."

There is evidence to support Treat's claim, because he himself had routinely broken and flouted NCAA regulations. His justification is that he doesn't think the rules are proper. Treat is especially at odds with one particular rule that prohibits players on scholarship from earning money in excess of commonly accepted educational expenses during school terms. "The only way some of these athletes can survive is if people like me give 'em money," Treat says, "which I will continue to do. The NCAA has no power over me, only its member institutions, and Jim Treat's going to do what he damn well pleases."

Many observers think Treat squealed on his alma mater in a fit of pique over the then imminent, and now consummated, forced resignation of his friend Gass. Treat denies this, insisting he disclosed the existence of the 150-to-200-member North Central Oklahoma Business Development Association, Inc. (called NCO by its members), for three main reasons:

?He thinks it outrageous that the coaches, as has been alleged, would allow themselves to get involved in payoff schemes, because team dissension is inevitable when one player learns he is not getting as much as another player. Treat feels alumni should handle the payoffs, because then the player can't blame the coach if he feels he's not getting his share.

?Boger gave Treat short shrift in April when he went to Stillwater to complain about the NCO. According to Treat, "I expressed my concern that the club was contributing to the deteriorating situation in the academic phase of the program [by creating dissension] and thus to the astronomical attrition rate on our team." Treat says he told Boger that if school officials did not clean things up within 30 days, Treat was going to report the existence of the NCO to the Big Eight. Treat subsequently sent a charter member of the club to fill Boger in on the details of the problem as Treat saw it. In his only statement after the scandal broke in the newspapers, Boger said that nobody presented him with "specifics." Counters Treat, "That's just an excuse and a poor one at that. Boger was knowledgeable, the regents were knowledgeable and Stanley was totally conversant since, after all, the club had ruined our football program."

?Finally, Treat was dismayed with the quality of play and the low squad count at the OSU spring game. The Cowboys are entitled to have 84 players on scholarship; they only have 66, and one third of them are incoming freshmen.

Oddly, Treat says he wasn't a member of the NCO because he was trying to protect it. "When it was formed 18 months or so ago, my name would have started it off with a black mark." Even without the infamous Treat, the NCO generated a lot of cash. One alumnus says that the group raised approximately $10,000 a month, to be "slushed around."