The Big Ten's Big Mess

The Big Ten forgot to rape us after they finished pillaging us," an enraged University of Illinois alumnus wrote the other day to the school's athletic director, Neale Stoner. This is typical of the rhetoric following the May 2 announcement that Illinois was being put on three-year probation by the Big Ten. That action was the culmination of a year-long brouhaha between Illinois and its conference colleagues over Illini Quarterback Dave Wilson. The sanctions were unexpectedly harsh, and neither the verbiage nor the tension has diminished since. Among the words that have been bandied about in discussions among the gentlemen of the Big Ten are: liar, cheater, phony transcript, high-handed, sanctimonious, deception and bad faith.

Indeed, there are those who think the conference forgot nothing in slamming the jailhouse door on the entire Illinois sports program—and in particular on Wilson. A transfer student from Fullerton (Calif.) College, a junior college, Wilson blossomed last year into an almost certain first-round NFL draft choice by setting six NCAA, 11 Big Ten and 15 Illinois records. Against Ohio State he passed for 621 yards to become the first quarterback in history ever to better 600 in a game.

Many Illinois fans feel that the school, a charter member of the Big Ten (which dates back to 1895), should drop out of the conference. As a Mattoon, Ill. fan wrote, "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore." Illinois Chancellor John E. Cribbet calls the punishment "excessive and punitive," but he also says "far too many people have said far too much," and concedes, "We're in a bad bind." Two weeks ago the faculty-student Urbana-Champaign Senate rejected the sanctions with a resolution that read in part, "We believe the integrity and principles of the University of Illinois and its faculty, students and alumni are more important than is our relationship to the Big Ten."

The only positive development for Illinois came last Tuesday when University President Stanley O. Ikenberry and Cribbet went to Bloomington, Ind. and persuaded the Big Ten faculty representatives—each school has one and they are the final authority on conference sports questions—to delay implementation of the sanctions from July 1 until Sept. 1. This grace period will give hot tempers time to cool but putting the toothpaste back in the tube is another matter. Robert Auler, Wilson's lawyer, plays down the significance of the Bloomington meeting. "It doesn't mean a damn thing," he says. "Cribbet and Ikenberry went there and people were nice to them and gave them cookies. That's all."

It was those same faculty reps who put Illinois on probation after examining these questions: Did Wilson use up a year of his eligibility by taking part in three plays in one game at Fullerton? Is he a good enough student to be at Illinois in the first place? Is he making normal progress as a student? And above all, did Illinois deceive the conference in its efforts to make Wilson eligible to play football last fall?

The representatives answered these questions Yes, Maybe, No and Yes, and besides ordering the three-year probation, barred the school from participating in any postseason event in any men's sport for two years—a devastating blow to recruiting—and cut off conference revenue that Illinois would have received for the next two years, a sum estimated to be about $2 million. That's a loss of almost 20% of Illinois' $5.8 million annual sports budget.

Slumped in front of his locker after a workout two weeks ago, Dave Wilson shook his head and said, "I expected a little mercy." But in discussing the matter a few days later in his Chicago offices, Byron Gregory, an attorney for the Big Ten, said, "Wilson's problem is that he concentrated on an athletic career at the expense of academics."

Nevertheless, there seems to be little evidence that Illinois did anything wrong, other than some bureaucratic and clerical bungling. And, assuming the school did do everything the Big Ten accuses it of, its crimes appear to be small potatoes in comparison with those revealed in the eligibility scandals that have erupted elsewhere in the past 18 months.

The Big Ten action is all the more galling to Illini faithful because, when it comes to football, few schools have worked as hard as Illinois to field such lousy teams. Only once in the past 15 years has Illinois had a winning season. It appeared that Coach Mike White (3-7-1 in 1980, his first year) might turn things around. Not, mind you, that championships were on the horizon, but at least respectability was.

But, it seems, those concerned with athletics at the rest of the Big Ten schools, and the commissioner's office, for years hadn't liked the way Illinois was operating its athletic program, and certainly don't now. Attorney Auler says, "They [Big Ten officials] don't realize there are different rules for Kick the Can, depending on where you grew up."