The NCAA News - Comment
May 6, 1996
Proper modeling leads to more moral results
BY DANIEL A. GERDES
Central Missouri State University
In recent months, the guiding forces of collegiate athletics have taken a renewed interest in issues relating to character in competition. Activities such as finger-pointing, trash-talking and taunting are behaviors that many feel are leading to the deterioration of college sports.
Consequently, the behaviors of sportsmanship are coming under the scrutiny of rule-makers in an attempt to legislate the conduct of coaches and athletes, both in and out of competition. The morality of sports is being called into question.
What's interesting is that most people agree that morality is something that cannot be legislated. Inasmuch as rules do define a "proper" set of guidelines for behavior, they also encourage certain behaviors, some favorable and others not. What's more, many of the rules that govern intercollegiate athletics have come about as a result of someone crossing an ethical barrier or the line of fairness.
Ultimately, whether one chooses to compete fairly and within the framework of the rules rests with each individual's conviction about competing with honor and mettle.
Morality on athletics teams may sound a bit idealistic. Yet, when one considers the principles and virtues that intercollegiate athletics espouses, participants are supposed to walk away from athletics as better people, not just better athletes.
The extent to which they are better people is directly linked to the quality of moral principles they have acquired from people they respect and admire. The power of influence for most college athletes rests with the coaches. Indeed, coaches embody the standards of conduct for their programs and often teach those standards through their living example.
Coaches like Phog Allen, Knute Rockne, Hank Iba and Bear Bryant recognized the importance of such standards. However, they made the choice to set high standards.
Choosing to live above the level of mediocrity begins with a personal decision. If coaches and administrators don't really believe and live as if the fundamental, moral principles of athletics are important, why should their athletes?
It's true that the coaching profession has changed, but the principles that lead to lasting excellence have not. Some might argue that it was easier to be a successful coach in earlier times. However, this implies that there was a time void of adversity, void of expectation, where all athletes were like blank canvas waiting for the coach to create a masterpiece without question or doubt. While some of the challenges are indeed different, they only reinforce the notion that the principles of success that sustained John Wooden in the 1960s and Rockne in the 1930s are the ones that sustain us in the 1990s.
Clearly, now is the time for coaches and leaders in intercollegiate athletics to reassert our claim to the fundamental principles of excellence that have made college athletics so special. We must begin to model for athletes the very terms we believe will lead to success in athletics and in life: "commitment," "integrity," "unselfishness," "competitiveness" and "courage," to name a few. If we believe that there is truly something special about an intercollegiate athletics experience, something that goes beyond games won or lost, then we must be willing to commit ourselves to the task of "walking the walk." In the spirit of competition and the pursuit of excellence, we must choose to collectively and individually embrace the sustaining principles that always have served as our foundation.
While morality cannot be legislated, it most certainly can be modeled. When one understands the meaning of terms like honesty, humility, decency and integrity, it becomes only a matter of applying them to one's daily activities. Athletes can begin to recognize the importance of character in those terms when the coach is willing to model it and testify to its importance during "teachable moments" in practice, in recruiting, in team meetings, in the locker room, in the media.
It would be naive to think that merely changing the rules will have a dramatic effect in the way that intercollegiate athletics evolves. The responsibility of real change rests with each individual who is willing to make a positive difference. At the moment of challenge, when personal standards of moral responsibility are called into question, each of us has an opportunity to rise above the level of mediocrity by doing the right thing. It has often been said that people of character do not finish first. What many fail to realize is that they are running a different race.
Choices do have consequences. We must ask if we are willing to risk more adversity as a result of our principle-based decisions in the short term, when in the long term we could realize even greater satisfaction for having made the tough (but right) choice. We must continue to challenge athletes to strive to be best, not just first, and never to be satisfied with less.
Most coaches know there is a difference between winning and success. The successes come in ways the fans never see or realize: players graduating, players realizing career opportunities after sports, players learning to become self-responsible.
Make no mistake, winning is crucial in the scheme of athletics and must not be understated. What we must remember, however, is that those things that are most important must never be at the mercy of those things that are most urgent.
John Wooden once said: "Never mistake activity for achievement."
What is intercollegiate athletics trying to achieve? Let us concern ourselves with the noble task of instilling in athletes the positive virtues of competition leading to achievement and lasting success rather than merely managing the activities of athletics.
Daniel A. Gerdes is professor of physical education at Central Missouri State University.
Media needs some racial introspection
The following column is reprinted from The New York Amsterdam News.
BY HOWIE EVANS
It's a classic case of the kettle calling the pot black.
As the NCAA tournament began to play out and it appeared the University of Kentucky was on a nonstop journey to the NCAA championship, across the nation, print media, television and radio began to take their readers, viewers and listeners on a history lesson dating back to 1966.
Every report detailed the stark realism of racism that dotted the playing fields and courts of our nation's colleges and universities in the deep Southern regions and Southwestern parts of the country. The comments, articles and editorials centered on the racial policies of the University of Kentucky and legendary basketball coach, Adolph Rupp.
While Rupp was an acknowledged racist, there were plenty of others. Rupp took the heat because of the visibility of his basketball program. But let's examine those people who were responsible for the anti-Black atmosphere that prevailed in 1966 and continues to gather steam in 1996 -- 30 years later.
In 1966, there was not one black sports reporter at a white-owned publication. Not one black sports journalist on television or radio at a white-owned media outlet. There was no balance to the news that came from these outlets in 1966. That condition still exists today.
The University of Kentucky and Rupp have taken a media beating for their policies of 30 years ago. But this same media has conveniently overlooked the role they played in fostering, perpetuating and supporting those racial policies of 30 years ago. Because they themselves, the bastions of journalism, had their own antiracial agenda, we are not amused nor entertained by their media theatrics of 1996.
As Kentucky laid claim to the 1996 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship, press row at the NCAA finals was a sea of white. Black journalists were in a countable minority, while the game they reported on was in a countable black majority.
Racism today is as real as it was 30 years ago. You can count the black sports columnists on two hands. Michael Wilborn (The Washington Post), Bryan Burwell (USA Today), Rob Parker (Newsday), Kevin Blackstone (The Dallas Morning News), Mike Bruton and Milton Kent (TV sports columnists for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Baltimore Sun, respectively) and a few others -- very few!
Sports editors to blame
Newspaper columnists are the triggermen that TV and readers feed off as they express their opinions on a wide variety of subjects. Thus, it's understandable why there are so very few black sports columnists. The coveted columnist positions are doled out by the sports editors, virtually all of whom are white at every news publication in the country.
So for the white-dominated media to look back 30 years ago and exploit the nation's lily-white schools and their racist policies while ignoring their own racial exclusions is, yes, a classic case of bias reporting. How many newspapers in 1966 excluded Blacks from their editorial staffs? How many Blacks brought us a segment of the evening news in 1966? How many black voices could be found on white-owned radio stations in 1966? Very few, if any at all.
At the 1969 Super Bowl in Miami, a black reporter from the New York Amsterdam News was the "only one" in the press box at the Orange Bowl.
In the late '60s and early '70s, the only Blacks covering major sporting events in this country and around the world were from Black-owned publications.
Untold story
While the nation's media went on and on about Rupp and Don Haskins, the Texas Western College coach in 1966 who still holds that position today, no mention was made of the man who made it all possible for Texas Western to accomplish its mission. Not from the Texas Western players. Not from Haskins. Not from anyone.
It was the late Hilton White, who in 1966 was employed by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. White, one of the first Blacks to coach at a predominantly white college (American International College), in the early '60s founded a Bronx neighborhood team that he named the Falcons.
It was this program that Willie Worsley, Neville Shedd and Willie Cager came from. It was Hilton White who talked Haskins into giving these guys scholarships. It was White who guided these guys through high school, teaching them the game and exposing them to the best of competition.
The Kentucky of 1966 could not exist today. The black athlete has changed the face of society, more so than any other single factor. Because of the black athlete, college coaches can earn as much as $1 million or more per year. Black athletes like Mike Tyson, Junior Griffey and the college stars in football and basketball are almost solely responsible for the billion-dollar sports industry.
Kentucky's 76-67 win over Syracuse University for the national championship will bring millions of dollars to the school in merchandise sales of anything that says "Kentucky." Rick Pitino, the coach, is becoming a millionaire on the strength of black athletes who just 30 years ago were denied admission to the university.
Yet Pitino and many of his fellow coaches, excluding coaches like Bobby Cremins at the Georgia Institute of Technology, continue to lambaste players of talent who opt to leave school for a hopeful career in the National Basketball Association.
The hypocrisy extends to people like Dick Vitale, who, often yellingly, is bitterly opposed to players leaving school early for the money. Yet, there is nothing Vitale will not place his signature on -- for the money, of course -- as he reports on these same young men who enable him to earn over a million every year.
And as we glance back 30 years ago to 1966 and that marvelous Texas Western victory over Kentucky, the greatest changes have occurred on the basketball court. Changes in coaching, athletics administration and the media certainly have not kept pace.
Howie Evans is sports editor of the New York Amsterdam News.
Opinions -- Agent law can provide members with added protection
Editorial
The Montgomery Advertiser
"Greed is a force so powerful that no nation, state or municipality has yet been able to eliminate it through legislation, and Alabama doubtless will not be the first to do so. Nevertheless, some laws with teeth reduce flagrant abuses.
"Such is the case with a bill that would give the state's colleges some legal recourse against sleazy sports agents.
"Unscrupulous agents who improperly sign contracts with athletes in violation of NCAA rules get the institutions in trouble, and the agents should be held accountable for their actions.
"Currently, a college has little recourse against a shady agent, even though his actions may have cost the school hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"A bill now before the Alabama House of Representatives would make signing an athlete by an agent without notifying the player's school a felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines.
"Beyond that, it allows the institution to sue the agent for damages in civil court.
"Of course, athletes, while perhaps naive or unsophisticated, are not entirely blameless in these cases, either. A player who fails to notify his school within 72 hours of signing a contract with an agent is guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a $1,000 fine and a sentence to community service.
"But the bill leans heavier on the agents and their operatives, known as 'runners,' and rightly so. These are the manipulators, the cold-eyed dealers who want the chance to benefit from a young person's athletics ability in hopes that this prowess will translate into a lucrative professional sports contract. With their eyes on the dollar signs, they are willing to break the rules, regardless of the implications for the institution or the athlete.
"The motivation is greed, pure and simple. Although only a relative handful of athletes ever make it in the professional ranks, those who do can rake in millions. Those who represent them can do very nicely, too, which is why unscrupulous agents are so eager to get the signatures of promising athletes on their contracts.
"If the player doesn't make it as a big-bucks pro, so what? The shady agent who signed him early has next to nothing invested in the athlete, so he can toss him aside like so much wastepaper and set his sights on another one.
"No legislation drawn by human hand is going to eliminate greed, but this bill at least provides serious consequences for those who let it get the best of them and injure an institution in the process."
NCAA rules
Gene Autry, father of Northwestern University football player Darnell Autry
Arizona Republic
Discussing NCAA eligibility rules that affected his son:
"The NCAA has a responsibility to look out for the big picture.
"I didn't understand this (situation). It didn't make sense to me. Why deny Darnell an opportunity to pursue a life outside football? It caused a lot of confusion.
"If a person goes to medical school, he can work part-time in an emergency room.
"Darnell might blow his knee out in practice today. But at least he will have done something to pursue his career goal. Allow him that. One of the problems in college athletics is the powers-that-be don't prepare them for anything, other than athletics....
"There are times they (the rules) can't be applied universally, in every case. And sometimes, there are just bad rules."
Raising children
John Wooden, former basketball coach
Indianapolis Star
"The best thing a father can do for his children is love their mother."
The NCAA News
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Jack L. Copeland...Managing Editor
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The Comment section of The NCAA News is offered as a page of opinion. The views do not necessarily represent a consensus of the NCAA Membership.
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