Some news items:

• At the Nike Camps, where 120 of the best high school basketball players in the country demonstrate their athletic ability for college coaches, a test showed that one-fourth read below a sixth-grade level and 10 were functionally illiterate. The chancellor of Louisiana State University said that the competition for high school athletes is so intense that some of those recruited "read at the fourth-, fifth- or sixth-grade level." A few years ago, a North Carolina State basketball recruit was admitted with a total SAT score of 470. For signing your name and answering a single question, you can achieve a score of 400.
• The Albuquerque Tribune revealed that despite promises to trim its debts, the University of New Mexico athletic department had tripled them in two years. Among the hidden costs: The University paid $2.6 million for a weight-training complex. Athletes complained of being told to take courses that did not count toward a degree. Several athletes had to pay for additional credit hours in order to graduate after their eligibility ran out.
• The University of Pennsylvania football team had to forfeit five victories after a university panel ruled that a star player who dropped a course and was enrolled in only two classes was a part-time student and thus ineligible. The day before the final game of the season the athletic department arranged an independent study course for the player, but the panel said the course had no bearing on the player's eligibility. The issue was brought up by two faculty members who said the athletic department had engaged in a "sleazy" maneuver to keep the player eligible.
• Over a l0-year period, the University of Louisville, a basketball power, graduated 16 percent of its scholarship players.
• When an SMU head football coach spotted a bulletin board in a Texas high school with cards from other recruiters, he took a $100 bill and tacked it over the rival recruiters' cards and announced to prospects nearby, "That is our business card."
• Steve Courson, an offensive lineman with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Tampa Bay Bucaneers, said he was told to take steroids as a 19-yearold sophomore on the University of South Carolina team. The team physician wrote out a prescription. In his book False Glory, he says steroid use was widespread among linemen, and amphetamines were pushed by coaches to get players "up" for games.

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© Vern Herschberger, Waco Tribune-Herald

• Less than half (43 percent) of NCAA basketball players graduate within six years. Of the transfers—players from community colleges and other four-year schools—38 percent graduate, 29 percent of the black players. Of athletes in all other sports, 58 percent graduated in the six-year span.
• An Australian basketball player enrolled at Seton Hall University in New Jersey in October, stayed long enough to help the team make the NCAA finals and left the following April. While he was at the university, his courses included First Aid, Youth Activities, Creative Movement and Ethics.
• At Texas Christian University, a high school prospect was taken to a motel and entertained with meals and prostitutes. He signed a letter of intent. During his four seasons with TCU, he was paid $27,100 to play.
• An SMU football player told Dallas TV station WFAA, "I received $25,000 to attend SMU." A few years later, an assistant football coach told a recruited player who was having trouble achieving the required minimum score on the ACT test to have another person take the test for him.
• A community college instructor in Nevada said she was going to give a basketball player an incomplete in a summer English correspondence course, but the grade form handed her by a college official had a C already written in. The incomplete would have made him ineligible to play for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. The student, the nation's second highest scorer, ran into trouble at UNLV anyway when it was revealed that his tutor had written a paper for him after the player had "verbalized" his thoughts to the instructor. He was suspended from post-season play.
• Dexter Manley, a professional football player, testified before Congress that he was illiterate during the four years he played football at Oklahoma State.
• A former football player at Texas Tech University sued the institution charging it had engaged in fraud, forgery and racketeering to keep him eligible. He said he was given grades he did not earn, was enrolled in a summer course in Florida without his knowledge and was wired money by the university when he was a junior college student. The suit was filed a week after the Houston Chronicle reported that the school's All-American running back and another player had earned a 0.00 grade-point average for the fall semester but were allowed to play in the Alamo Bowl. Texas Tech acknowledged that 76 athletes in eight sports had been ineligible to compete over a six-year period.
• At Northwestern University, two former basketball players were sent to prison for trying to fix games against Wisconsin, Penn State and Michigan, and four of the university's football players were indicted for lying to a grand jury about betting against their team. One admitted fumbling intentionally to protect a bet he had made against his team.
• The St. Paul Pioneer Press revealed extensive academic fraud at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. A secretary in the athletics academic counseling office over a four-year period wrote about 400 pieces of course work and take-home examinations for at least 18 basketball players. The NCAA found that the academic counselor and the head coach were "complicit" in the fraud, and it called the operation "among the most serious academic fraud violations to come before it (NCAA) in the past 20 years." The university was placed on probation for four years for 25 violations of NCAA rules. George Dohrmam of the Pioneer Press was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his "determined reporting, despite negative reader reaction, that revealed academic fraud in the men's basketball program at the University of Minnesota."
• Basketball coaches at Baylor threw away test answer sheets of prospects who took summer correspondence courses at the Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in Lakeland, Fla. They substituted their own answer sheets. The four coaches were indicted, and three assistant coaches were convicted of wire fraud for faxing the fraudulent tests across state lines.
• A study by the University of Michigan found that half of male college athletes bet on games and that 1 in 20 "engaged in activities that could have an impact on the outcome of games."

Information Available

Because of the exposure of the win-at-all-costs philosophy of many institutions, rules have been tightened and more information made available.

The NCAA maintains on its Web site (www.ncaa.org) a "Major Infractions Database" in the Membership Services section, where journalists can obtain details on NCAA actions regarding violations.