Nebraska hall of fame gives academic achievement its due

The University of Nebraska, Lincoln, is well-known for the athletics feats of its student-athletes, but the school recently took steps to tout the academic success of its graduates.

Last month, Nebraska unveiled the Hall of Distinction, which honors every Husker letter-winner who earned a degree as well as those who have earned national academic honors.

The display recognizes 4,625 letter-winners who have graduated since 1890, when men's sports began at the school. Nebraska began establishing women's sports programs nearly 30 years ago. In addition, the Hall of Distinction honors the 14 NCAA Today's Top VIII Award winners from the school and the 217 Huskers who have earned first-, second-, and third-team all-America honors since that award's inception in 1960.

The display was the brainchild of Dennis Leblanc, associate athletics director for academic programs and student services at the school.

"I am so proud of the 4,625 student-athletes listed as graduates in the Hall of Distinction. I am grateful to the faculty who taught them, to the university and athletics counselors who supported them, and to the coaches who made certain that academic success is our No. 1 priority," said Steve Pederson, director of athletics at Nebraska.

The Hall of Distinction is open to the public on football game days beginning four hours before kickoff.

ECAC officiating program seeks to increase diversity

The Eastern College Athletic Conference recently announced plans to launch a campaign to recruit, educate and train officials for all sports with a focus on increasing the number of women and minorities in its officiating ranks.

The initiative, which is partially funded through an NCAA grant, will include outreach efforts to schools with physical education programs, officiating classes and intramural programs using recruiting brochures and posters, as well as ads placed in campus newspapers and on campus radio stations.

"All of our data indicate we will be in a severe shortage of officials within several years. It's a shortage of all officiating as far as numbers and it certainly is a shortage from a diversity standpoint," said Phil Buttafuoco, commissioner of the league. "The ECAC was founded on officiating 64 years ago and we thought it was time for an aggressive attack on recruitment efforts."

Other strategies the conference plans to employ throughout the year include offering officiating clinics and visiting officiating classes.

"The whole recruitment of officials is an effort we hope will be embraced by coaches, administrators and student-athletes to assist us in showing people why they should become officials in future years," Buttafuoco said.

Volleyball exchange nets international experience

Women's volleyball student-athletes at Rochester Institute of Technology recently served up a good time to a delegation of volleyball student-athletes from Tianjin University of Technology in China as part of a unique exchange program between the two schools.

The Tigers played three exhibition matches and toured China as guests of Tianjin's women's volleyball squad in early September.

"The trip was a resounding success with lasting friendships made, great competition and a general feeling that the team grew as a whole," said head coach Roger Worsley.

As part of a 10-day stay in the United States in October, Tianjin student-athletes played exhibition matches against their host, Rochester, as well as against Syracuse University and Nazareth College. They also toured upstate New York and visited Niagara Falls.

According to Stephen K. Jaynes, sports information director at Rochester, the exchange program began after a telephone call between the universities' presidents and after Tianjin sent a group of martial artists to visit and perform at Rochester last year.

-- Compiled by Leilana McKindra

Number crunching

Looking back

20 years ago

Here's what was making NCAA news in October 1984:

NCAA Presidents Commission Chair John Ryan announces that Commission members have called a conference of presidents and chancellors to deal with a "triple crisis" in intercollegiate athletics: ethics, economics and academics. The Commission votes to initiate two major studies of college and university CEOs, one dealing with ways and means of "attacking the integrity crisis" in college sports and the other addressing the revenues and costs of athletics programs. The Commission will develop proposals in both areas once the studies are done and will call a special meeting of CEOs in 1985 to consider and take action on the proposals.

NCAA Executive Director Walter Byers acknowledges the "crisis" environment in a question-and-answer session with reporters. Byers notes that the enforcement staff has asked to double its investigative team and adopt new investigative techniques "in an effort to stay abreast of the escalating tendencies among college staff members and boosters to circumvent NCAA rules." Byers said that extensive inquiries have disclosed that "there is a lessening of resolve among college representatives to observe the rules, principally because of the increased pressure to achieve athletics success and the erosion in the ranks of those who instinctively desire to operate within the rules."

"A voluntary enforcement program in a voluntary association will not work if a significant number of members do not care or do not want it to work," Byers goes on to say. "The chronic violators in college athletics, I believe, are approaching that level, and they are dragging along with them a great many good people who do not want to violate the rules but who 'turn their heads' in the face of rising competitive pressures. ...

"The structure of higher education was not conceived or designed to contain today's intercollegiate pressure-cooker that prompts these reactions. The voluntary governance structure of universities and colleges, the accrediting-agency device, conference affiliations and the NCAA itself can be successful only if the colleges and universities themselves want to make the system work."