ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701280006
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: IVAN MAISEL NEWSDAY
The voice of the student-athlete has been heard. It dominated the recent NCAA convention. Delegates approved relaxing the restrictions against student-athletes working during the academic year.
That rule was changed because of impassioned lobbying and speechifying by the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, a 28-person group that put to rest the stereotype of the dumb jock. The NCAA, in approving Proposal 62, began to put to rest the image that it is immune to common sense.
Beginning Aug.1, student-athletes will be allowed to earn money up to the ``cost of attendance,'' a formula that includes incidental expenses and money to go home. It typically is $1,500 to $2,500 more than a grant-in-aid. The advisory committee painted the issue as one of economic fairness and of improving student-athletes' job opportunities after graduation.
``Athletic experience can't be equated with real work experience,'' said committee chairwoman Bridget Niland, a second-year law student and former track athlete at the University of Buffalo. ``The majority of student-athletes do not go on to earn a living as athletes. We need the work experience.''
Through the years, the NCAA members have refused to allow such employment because they didn't trust each other. Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, whose members supported a proposal that would have put no cap on employment earnings, said such thinking had to stop. ``We don't do the right thing because people might violate the rule,'' Tranghese said. ``We should do the right thing and punish the people who break the rule.''
The advisory committee also aligned itself with the doctors and trainers who want to curb contact during spring football practice. Coaches may schedule 10 contact practices and five without contact. But in those five, players may wear shoulder pads. The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and the Medical Aspects of Sport recommended the practice ratio be reversed (five with contact, 10 without) and that shoulder pads be banned during non-contact work.
Miami's Antonio Coley and Georgia Tech's Charles Wiley, the two Division I-A football players on the committee, favored the ban. Division I-A voted to refer the proposal to the officials who will run Division I next year, when NCAA restructuring takes effect. There, a compromise likely will be struck that will reduce contact practices from 10 to eight.
A committee also will look at the postseason football structure, thanks to the demands of the Western Athletic Conference. The league, stymied in its efforts to negotiate its way into a guaranteed slot in the Bowl Alliance, will get a study conducted by nine I-A presidents, six of whom will be from alliance schools. In short, the WAC has succeeded in petitioning its oppressors for relief.
``We have to trust that it will get the type of review that we think is necessary,'' said Karl Benson, the WAC commissioner.
The only postseason play the NCAA doesn't control is in I-A football. Three years ago, the Presidents Commission abruptly disbanded a committee formed to study a I-A playoff. Some of the work that committee would have done will now take place.
The WAC gave the alliance a proposal that would guarantee any WAC team ranked 12th or higher an alliance berth. The alliance responded this past week by ignoring the guarantee clause and offering money; the alliance would pay the WAC $75,000 per team ($1.15 million) and a $500,000 bonus if a team is ranked 12th or higher but not selected by an alliance bowl. The WAC immediately turned it down.
``We've said all along that access is more important than the revenue,'' Benson said. ``The $8.5 million [alliance] payday would have been significant, but our coaches are concerned they are hearing from recruits and parents of recruits that WAC football is at a different level.''
The Presidents Commission discussed the possibility that this issue is opening a schism in Division I-A just as the NCAA is restructuring to give the soon-to-be 112 Division I-A football schools a majority voice in I-A affairs.
R. Gerald Turner, the president of WAC member Southern Methodist, said the league's ``main issue is that everything in the NCAA has been based upon playing your way [into the postseason].... We all need TV revenue, but they don't need to set the principles.''
TV revenue, of course, may be the biggest NCAA principle of all.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB