Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 19, 1992 TAG: 9201190087
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Brill
DATELINE: DURHAM, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
COACHES MUST STICK TOGETHER
It scarcely qualifies as news that basketball coaches were unhappy with the news out of the NCAA Convention.In their minds, they lost a coach while football regained one.
The most vocal critic was Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who, as chairman of the National Association of Basketball Coaches legislative committee, had labored long and hard to preserve the third assistant coach.
Other critics included North Carolina's Dean Smith, who fought the good fight for years and finally decided he couldn't win, and Maryland's Gary Williams.
The rationale of the coaches is that basketball provides 80 percent of the NCAA's revenue, and, as Krzyzewski put it, "They should be cutting out the fat, not the meat and potatoes."
Meat and potatoes mean the coaches and players. Scholarship cuts go into effect next year, trimming basketball to 14 and eventually to 13.
From the coaches' perspective, there is fat in athletic departments with excessive administrators, most of whom obviously don't work as hard as coaches do.
Basketball does have a legitimate problem. Part of it will be difficult to resolve.
Football was represented at the convention by prominent figures Joe Paterno, Tom Osborne and Vince Dooley, as well as Chuck Neinas of the College Football Association.
Basketball was not represented at all. Smith spoke of the time a decade ago, when he and Indiana's Bobby Knight tried, and failed, to get the convention changed to June.
The timing certainly doesn't help basketball. Coaches can't leave their teams to attend an NCAA meeting. But nothing would have preserved that extra coach.
One major difference in the two sports is that while there are just 106 football schools in Division I-A (the coaches regained their assistant by a 61-56 vote), there are nearly 300 in basketball.
At least 200, and probably more, of those schools shouldn't be in Division I, or at least I-A. But they are, and they can control the votes.
Since two-thirds, maybe 75 percent, of the schools don't even have that extra assistant coach, there was no reason to suspect they would support the proposal to keep him.
Said one athletic director, "I respect Mike [Krzyzewski]. He runs a great program and he works hard for the benefit of college basketball. But even he goes against the spirit of the rule when he has his No. 1 assistant [Pete Gaudet] as his part-timer."
Krzyzewski wondered what would happen if the top 100 basketball schools formed their own organizations to promote their interests, like the CFA does for football. The CFA represents the major conferences except the Pacific-10 and Big Ten.
That wouldn't be a bad idea. Certainly, the coaches should have had a lobbying force in California. But isolating from the majority - the little guys who hang on to obtain NCAA Tournament money - might create additional problems within the hierarchy.
Better that Krzyzewski works to significantly strengthen the NABC, including getting a strong voice as executive director. Southern Cal's George Raveling is a potential replacement for retiring Joe Vancisin, who has done little other than plan the coaches convention.
The coaches want to be heard. They should be. It needs to start from within their own organization.