Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 27, 1990 TAG: 9007270159
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: COLUMBIA, S.C. LENGTH: Medium
However, the NCAA extended by six months the two-year probation for the men's basketball program, which began in 1987 and was to have ended in 1989. The probation now will run until February 1991.
The Gamecocks will be eligible to play in the Metro Conference Tournament at the Roanoke (Va.) Civic Center next March and for an NIT or NCAA Tournament berth.
The NCAA said it wanted to review the 1990 fall-semester results of a 17-point monitoring and compliance program instituted after the probation.
The decision on the football program lifted a cloud that has hung over the school for some two years since an article in Sports Illustrated by an former Gamecocks player who alleged that steroid use was widespread.
"I feel the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders," South Carolina athletic director King Dixon said. "I think it's a great day."
The NCAA said changes in athletic department personnel "frustrated the university's good intentions" to fully implement the department's monitoring and compliance program.
The NCAA said the school failed to adhere to its lifestyles drug testing program for athletes from 1985 to 1987. An in-house task force also reached the same conclusion, which led to the firing of athletic director Bob Marcum in March 1988.
The NCAA said it also found two secondary violations, one involving football, the other men's basketball. The violations, not part of the report, "illustrate the university's commitment to make its monitoring system work," the NCAA said.
In its five-volume, 6-inch-thick report sent to the NCAA on Jan. 1, the university said that it uncovered a half-dozen possible rules violations and found "widespread experimentation" with steroids from 1983 to 1987.
The report found that at least two coaches paid for the muscle-building drugs for players on four occasions. It also revealed for the first time that two former players sold their complimentary tickets.
South Carolina officials met with the Committee on Infractions on June 22 to discuss the report.
The university began its probe after a first-person article by former South Carolina defensive lineman Tommy Chaikin in an October 1988 issue of Sports Illustrated. Chaikin, who played at South Carolina from 1983 to 1987, wrote that as many as half the players on the 1986 team used steroids.
by CNB