Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 8, 1993 TAG: 9305100271
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But light penalties don't ease Virginians' heaviness of heart at the sight of a UVa with a sullied image akin to that of some football or basketball factories in the country.
The image is not necessarily the reality. The university turned itself in. It spent $366,000 in athletic-department funds to make a thorough internal probe. It took corrective measures on its own, including firing those most directly involved with the granting of interest-free loans to athletes.
Those factors are said to have softened the punishment, which involves the number of football scholarships, the number of graduate coaching assistants and other such carefully calibrated minutiae.
The university's admirable response was a good reason for the NCAA's light hand. One hopes it was also the only reason, and there is no relevance in the fact that Dick Schultz, now executive director of NCAA, was UVa's athletic director from 1981 to 1987. Granting interest-free loans to UVa athletes goes back to his era, but NCAA investigators ruled that the statute of limitations had expired on the earlier infractions.
In any event, it is the actions taken by the university when the violations were discovered - not the ensuing penalties and their relative lightness - that relieve some of the disappointment by removing some of the stain.
This is not the first time that the integrity of a Virginia university has been eroded by athletic-department irregularities, nor were the problems at UVa as serious as some in the past have been.
In the more innocent era of the '50s, the nation was shocked by a widespread classroom-cheating scandal involving athletes at Washington and Lee University. It led W&L to abandon big-time sports altogether, and the university to this day competes only in the NCAA's non-scholarship, for-fun-only Division III.
In the '80s, Virginia Tech got into trouble for a number of NCAA violations. They mostly involved recruiting violations and the like, but they included at least one instance of academic cheating.
UVa's sins apparently were limited to such things as the interest-free loans and overcompensation of graduate coaching assistants. In a way, they seem trivial. But they could have provided UVa an unfair competitive advantage over rivals who stayed within the rules.
Sharpening the disappointment about UVa, and Tech before that, is the reputation that Virginia colleges used to enjoy for running remarkably clean athletic programs. Even the W&L scandal, because of the strength and conclusiveness of the university's response, in the end may have burnished more than tarnished the school's reputation.
What proved wise for a small, private liberal-arts college such as W&L is probably not much of an option for a comprehensive state university such as UVa or Tech. Their task is different, and harder.
The job isn't limited to finding the right (and oft-remarked) balance between the pressure to win and the upholding of academic standards. In maintaining Division I athletic programs, institutions also pledge their word to abide by rules that at times can seem arcane or arbitrary or both.
The key issue in UVa's troubles with the NCAA was never crime and punishment. It was institutional breach of faith - partly mitigated by UVa's make-good efforts, but only partly.
by CNB