ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 1997 TAG: 9702190114
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
THE SCHOOL'S ATHLETIC DIRECTOR said more than 80 percent of student arrests involved alcohol and any preventive measures the university may adopt need to start there.
For the first time, Virginia Tech's coaches won't be handling individual sanctions against players who violate rules, athletic director Dave Braine said Tuesday.
A uniform code will be set up, rather than the previous practice of each coach handling his or her own program, Braine said following his meeting with Tech's Faculty Senate.
"We've never had anything in place before," Braine said.
His meeting with the faculty came less than a week before the Feb. 24 unveiling of a report designed to revamp athletic practices to halt such headline-producing problems as the football team's string of arrests last year.
While Braine declined to comment on other specifics of the report, compiled by a 12-person committee that included Faculty Senate president Paul Metz, he did produce a startling statistic that points to a larger, campus-wide problem.
"The No.1 problem is alcohol," he said.
Of almost 400 arrests of Tech students last year, 82 percent were alcohol-related. Eighty percent of athlete arrests were related to alcohol use, he said.
The report will cover recruiting, education and sanctions if student athletes get into problems.
Tech President Paul Torgersen asked Braine to start working on the report in mid-December. It was delivered to the president last week. The Board of Visitors will review it Feb. 24.
"I don't think there's anybody in this room who will be unhappy with what we've done," Braine told the group of about 30 Tuesday night.
But, he added: "It's a shame we had to come to this. Only four or five universities in the country have something like this. We are going to have to hold our student athletes to a higher code."
Stressing that student athletes are at the university to get an education, Braine also responded to faculty questions about their grades.
The football team's grade point average this year is 2.2, he said. Comparatively, the men's soccer team has the best grades - a 3.0 average out of possible 4.0 - while the wrestling team comes in at 2.01.
In all, 580 male and female students participate in 21 sports.
The professors also wanted to know whether anabolic steroids might be a problem for athletes. Steroid use would be "pretty easy to detect," Braine said, elaborating later that athletes are tested weekly. At the same time, he said, "never say never."
Braine made it clear that he got the message when Torgersen told him to clean up the athletes' conduct problem. After Tuesday's meeting, Braine said his job never was threatened, but "Dr. Torgersen said to me this might be the most important thing I've done since I've been here."
The implication was plain, he said.
"He doesn't have to get mad at me or talk ugly to me for me to get the point," he said.
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