Sitting, Waiting And Hoping

All Glenn Fletcher has ever wanted out of life is the chance to play football. He has thought of little else since he was 13 years old and scoring touchdowns for a Pop Warner team in Pasadena. The dream has dominated his thinking and twisted his perspective, and it will not go away. "Football is my life," he says. "That's where my heart is set."

In pursuit of his dream, Fletcher has gone to four high schools, two junior colleges and two universities, Purdue and Utah State. Even now, at 23, with his NCAA eligibility used up and without the slightest hope of being chosen in April's NFL draft, he longs for one more year of college football at an NAIA school or a tryout with a pro team in Canada. Football, you see, is all Fletcher knows and all he cares about. It is his anchor and identity, because despite all of his years in academia he still hasn't graduated from high school and he is not even close to graduating from college.

Fletcher does have his memories, though, and nobody can take those away. When he was a junior at Pasadena High he gained 125 yards in one game. He also was a starter in the defensive backfield on two winning junior-college teams, College of the Siskiyous in Weed, Calif. and Pasadena City College. He intercepted three passes for Pasadena, returning one of them 80 yards for a touchdown. "That was beautiful," he says. "I always think about that."

Purdue was even better—while it lasted. After transferring there from Pasadena C.C. in 1979, he went through spring practice and won a starting position in the defensive backfield for the upcoming season. Furthermore, for the first time in his life he performed well in the classroom. But that spring, at the end of the semester, a review of his academic record showed that he lacked enough hours to be eligible under Purdue's rules, and he transferred to Utah State. In Logan he once again became a victim of bad luck and poor judgment. When he and a teammate were considering whether to crash a party, they were arrested for trespassing at the Sigma fraternity house. (Fletcher served his eight-day jail sentence last month.) During the season he played on special teams and as a substitute. Academically, he was a washout.

Fletcher's life as a football nomad reveals a dark side of college athletics unknown to the average fan. Many administrators and coaches would have the public believe that their schools' teams are composed entirely of diligent, industrious "student-athletes." But as recent disclosures of transcript tampering and other academic improprieties at several schools show, some college officials are willing, even anxious, to accept and occasionally exploit "non-student-athletes" as well. Across America young men and women are routinely told that their only hope for a college athletic career depends on academic success in high school and beyond. But Fletcher and others like him are proof that this lofty standard is often ignored.

Glenn Robert Fletcher was born on Dec. 5, 1956 in Thibodaux, La., the fifth of nine children. When he was five, his family moved to Pasadena, where Glenn and his five brothers developed a special interest in athletics. Glenn's preference was football. When he entered John Muir High in 1971 he made the freshman team as a running back. He attended the school for only one semester, however, because he was caught pitching pennies outside the auditorium and was suspended. He finished the year at Foothill High and, the next fall, moved on to Pasadena High.

After the first week of preseason practice at Pasadena, Fletcher was promoted to the varsity. A few days later, however, he suffered a knee injury while trying to catch a pass, and he missed the entire season. In his junior year Glenn played in the offensive and defensive backfields for Pasadena, and his coach there, Tom Hamilton, recalls that Fletcher "did well and showed great potential." Hamilton says Glenn was unable to develop that potential the following year, because by then persistent truancy had made him ineligible. He spent the last year and a half of his high school career attending—or failing to attend—Granada Hills High, Foothill High (again), Pasadena High (again) and the Community Adult Training Center. He didn't receive a diploma, and along the way he made matters worse by getting into a fight in a bar and receiving an 18-month probationary sentence.

In discussing his past, Fletcher is open, saying he hopes others will learn from his mistakes. Recalling his chaotic high school days, he says, "I got on an ego trip. I said if they really want me to play they're going to give me some [academic] units. My brother Ned and my girl friend wanted me to go to class, but I wouldn't listen. I couldn't face reality. I'd blown my big chance, and it wasn't because people had taken it from me but because I'd thrown it away."

Fletcher's desire to play football remained as strong as ever. Although he knew he could not immediately go to a four-year university, he was aware that he could play at a junior college, as Ned and his brother Marcus had. California's community-college system is the largest in the nation, providing educational opportunities for anyone. A side effect of the system's openness is that it has also become a place where an athlete can earn his major-college eligibility without getting much of an education. A student does not even need a high school diploma to enroll in a junior college in California, or, for that matter, most states, and any state resident who enters a California community college is eligible to participate in the sports program as a freshman, provided he takes at least 12 semester hours. Aware of this, Fletcher wrote to coaches at five schools. When College of the Siskiyous responded, that was all the incentive he needed to pack up for Weed, 600 miles away. Unannounced and unknown, he made the squad as a starting defensive back in 1975.

"I didn't care what level of college it was," Fletcher says. "It was still college. I really felt good about being there. It felt good being in uniform again."