ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 19, 1996 TAG: 9612190033
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
THE POLITE way of putting it is that big-time football at Virginia Tech, as at most of the other universities caught in its spell, is fraught with contradictions.
Or you could say, less delicately, that Tech - like the other 60 or 70 American universities, many of them mediocre, that lust after national football recognition - has prostituted itself. It has sold its honor in exchange for the opportunity to get weekly Top 25 mentions in the U.S. sports media, to draw thousands of visitors to campus on a half-dozen Saturday afternoons each fall, to appear on national television a few times a year, and to net several million dollars and intangible benefits annually.
But however you put it, Tech's 1996 football season has been the sorriest in the school's history, and it just keeps getting worse.
The Hokies have gone 10-1, and look forward to a Dec. 31 Orange Bowl date with Nebraska, a football factory of much longer standing. But Tech could beat Nebraska by a zillion points, and it would not erase the stain on a reputation sullied by the string of player trouble off the field.
The latest episode was the arrest Monday, and subsequent release on bond, of now-suspended players Brian Edmonds and James Crawford on charges of rape and attempted sodomy.
If there's a ray of sunshine here, it's that both young men deny having sex, consensual or otherwise, with the alleged victim. This opens the welcome possibility that, perhaps with the help of today's sophisticated forensic testing, a question of criminal guilt or innocence might actually be seolved on the basis of the facts rather than gender, racial, university or football politics.
Additionally, Edmonds and Crawford have filed a $32 million civil lawsuit against their accuser - in the course of which are raised points that ought to trouble the university and the citizens of Virginia whose taxes help support it.
The suit's main point is the assertion that the players' accuser sought to extort money from them in exchange for not pressing false charges. That's a dispute for the legal system to settle.
In its claim for monetary damages, however, the suit suggests broader implications. It argues that to disrupt a topflight football player's collegiate career is to jeopardize the prospects of a multimillion-dollar career in the professional National Football League. The implicit assumption is that powerhouse college football is essentially what its critics say it is - a big-bucks business.
The universities, of course, beg to differ. It remains, they say, the amateur sport and extracurricular activity it is supposed to be.
If it's a business, after all, then the Division 1 (highest) level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association would be little more than a cartel whose myriad regulations governing work-force size and player compensation operate to restrain trade. "Athletic scholarships" for player-employees would be little more than an evasion of minimum-wage laws.
But would a Tech - or, for that matter, a Nebraska, which on Monday also bounced from the team a starter who was arrested - withdraw from an Orange Bowl because it had failed to meet appropriate standards of behavior? Inconceivable. Too many dollars are at stake; too many potential pro careers.
The universities contradict themselves. Once in the world's oldest profession, it's hard to leave.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB