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Wednesday, October 30, 1996

ETHICS:

Sports industry must decisively crack down on all convictsTwo weeks ago, there was a decision taken by a university official that was almost unprecedented in the world of college sports.

A university president, not a coach or athletic director, imposed sanctions on the school's football team when team members broke the law.

This is the situation in a nutshell: On Oct. 7, at least six members of the University of Rhode Island football team rushed into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity house, while 25 of their teammates barred every exit from the house. The six players allegedly beat up three fraternity members. Four days later, an in-house investigation was completed.

In light of the findings, university President Robert Carothers decided to forfeit the team's next game, on Oct. 19 against Connecticut, thus surrendering all revenue that the school would have taken in. Needless to say, the decision damaged the team's chances for the Yankee Conference title. This was no slap on the wrist. This was decisive action taken against a team whose members had violated the law.

"This is not about football," Carothers said. "This is about community standards. This is about character."

The trailblazing doesn't stop there, for the university sanctions continued with two players being removed from the team and four others being suspended indefinitely.

This happens alongside a time when Lawrence Phillips, late of the Nebraska football team, gets convicted on battery charges for pushing his ex-girlfriend down the stairs, only to receive a four-game suspension from head coach Tom Osbourne and continued play in a national championship game. Finally, a person with the power to make a decisive ruling in light of alleged or proven judicial infractions actually does so.

This decision takes on even greater significance in light of the banter surrounding this past weekend's marquee matchup in pro football, with Barry Switzer coaching the Cowboys against Jimmy Johnson's Dolphins.

I will never forget a Sports Illustrated cover in 1987 with then-star Oklahoma Sooner quarterback Charles Thompson being led to a police car in handcuffs after being convicted on drug trafficking charges and sentenced to prison.

This event was just the final straw that finally got Switzer booted out of Oklahoma after a tenure that saw steroid abuse, machine gun fire from the football dorm, fights and charges of sexual assault. The sad part was that the school's administration stood idly by, counting the Sooners' take from the Orange Bowl.

Or how about Jimmy Johnson's University of Miami football program, comprised of teams that were so notorious that the word "convicts" was interchangeable with "Hurricanes". His grip and the grip of Dennis Erickson (now with the Seattle Seahawks) were so loose that Sports Illustrated called for the temporary termination of the program in a cover story.

Through all of the hype leading up to the game this Sunday, there was no mention of the shameless way these men allowed their teams to flaunt the law and continue playing while the universities seemed to do little, if anything, to stem the tide.

The worst in all of this is the way that the University of Nebraska has handled the exploits of Tom Osbourne's team.

When the Cornhuskers won the national championship a year ago, they had on the field at some point or another a convicted batterer in Phillips, a wide receiver with attempted murder charges pending in Riley Washington and a defensive lineman, Christian Peter, who had served out a conviction for sexual abuse.

It is infuriating that the University of Nebraska administration would have allowed people like this to represent their institution, not to mention allowing them to attend the school on scholarships.

This blatant disregard is brought into even more stark relief by this fact: When the New England Patriots drafted Peter and found out about his track record, they promptly cut him. Now let's compare: an institute of higher learning allows Peter to stay in school while the NFL, not known for it's scruples, doesn't pick him up.

It is naive to think that collegiate sports isn't big business and a prime moneymaker for the universities. This does not, however, give university administrators the right to let members of said teams, and the student body as a whole, run roughshod over the law and school policy while remaining in school and continuing to compete.

The actions taken by Carothers need to herald a new way in which universities handle these sorts of infractions by members of their athletic teams: decisively and with authority, instead of in a haphazard, passive manner.

As an example of university policies that need to be given more credence, a task force at the University of Nebraska, enjoined in October of 1995, made this recommendation: "That the University of Nebraska-Lincoln adopt a policy of zero-tolerance of abusive or violent behavior that disrupts the community by threatening the health or safety of any person or persons."

Amen.

Mark Shapiro