Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 18, 1993 TAG: 9312180180
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUG DOUGHTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Long
UVa earlier had lost All-America offensive guard Mark Dixon, who was suspended before the final regular-season game against Virginia Tech.
"It's a little different situation," said Richard McGuire, Virginia's director of academic advising, "but the operative rules are the same."
McClellan, who declined to comment, apparently was dropped from a course and fell under the nine credit hours that the NCAA requires for a graduate student. McClellan received an undergraduate degree in the spring in rhetoric and communication.
Virginia has lost players to academics in the past, but rarely because they were dropped from a class.
"It's unusual," McGuire said. "You might go 10 years without it happening again, [but] any student can be dropped from a class if the professor determines the student is not attending class or not taking exams or otherwise detracting from the course."
George Welsh, the Cavaliers' head coach, said his staff would have to do a better job of monitoring the players' class attendance, but McGuire said he was not informed that Dixon was skipping classes until he was dropped.
"Our philosophy is that we treat athletes like other students," McGuire said. "We do provide a lot of structure early in their careers, but we do encourage a certain amount of responsibility and autonomy as they get older. Obviously, there's a certain amount of risk in that."
It has been Dixon's contention that he suffered from his high visibility as a football player, and some resentment toward the academic community at UVa has been evident.
"It really galls me that here's a guy [McClellan] who's graduated and they're not going to let him play in the bowl game," one player said.
Said McGuire: "I think that there is [some resentment]. Because of the nature of the confidentiality rules, there is a lot of misunderstanding.
"People do stand out, but I personally would not subscribe to the view that this happened because [Dixon] was a football player."
Like Dixon, McClellan was a three-year starter who had overcome the stigma of receiving the last of the loans made to student-athletes by the Virginia Student Aid Foundation, an offense that landed the Cavaliers on NCAA probation. McClellan repaid the loan before the 1991 season.
In McClellan's absence, sophomore Joe Crocker will start at one of the cornerback spots. Crocker, who started against North Carolina when McClellan was sidelined by a bruised chest, played in every game and averaged nearly 40 plays.
\ O'BRIEN SURPRISES SELF: Offensive coordinator Tom O'Brien wouldn't confirm reports that he had turned down an offer to become Duke's head coach - "I don't want to burn any bridges," he said - but O'Brien admitted he never expected to turn his back on an ACC opening.
"Never in my wildest dreams," said O'Brien, 45, who announced Saturday that he had withdrawn from consideration. "It was a hard decision to make. You wonder how many opportunities you will have to get a [Division I-A] job.
"It has been reported in this state that I was desperate for a head-coaching job. I will say I'm not desperate."
O'Brien has been viewed as a possible successor to Welsh, "but that has had nothing to do with any decision-making," O'Brien said. "It also has been alleged that I have an interest in the Connecticut job, but that had nothing to do with the Duke situation."
\ SCHEDULE OVERHAUL: A revised 1994 schedule, released Friday, shows that the Cavaliers will visit Florida State in the opening game Sept. 3 and close with North Carolina State on Nov. 25, the day after Thanksgiving.
The N.C. State game probably will be televised in the same time slot as the 11 a.m. North Carolina-Duke game that drew surprisingly good ratings this year on ABC. The Cavaliers will entertain the Wolfpack, as opposed to traveling to Raleigh, N.C., for the second consecutive year.
"It's better for us this way than the way it was, with four of the last five [games] on the road," said Welsh, whose team will have open dates on the last weekends of September and October. "That would have been a really tough stretch for us."
\ TICKET SALES SECONDARY: Carquest Bowl executive director Brian Flajole, who was at a news conference Friday at Virginia, said he did not know how many tickets Boston College had sold and seemed only mildly concerned about slow sales at Virginia.
"When we put this matchup together, certainly tickets were important," he said, "but we liked the television potential of the game. [TV syndicator] Raycom looked at the game from the standpoint of television first, tickets second.
"With the national championship game [between Nebraska and Florida State in the Orange Bowl] right down the road, we knew that there might be a problem with airplane connections, hotel reservations and the like, but how many places are there where you can see two bowls in one day?"
by CNB