Recruiting: The Athlete Hunting Season Is On

The basketball team at California's Long Beach State College was floundering when Jerry Tarkanian was hired as coach six years ago. But Tarkanian knew just what to do about the situation. With impressive speed he recruited new talent and turned out a winner his first season. Last spring, when Tarkanian departed for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, he left behind one of the top teams in the nation.

Last week Long Beach learned the high price of success. No sooner had the N.C.A.A. opened its annual convention in San Francisco than the Committee on Infractions hit the school with a three-year minimum probation in basketball and football for violating dozens of association rules. Among the Long Beach transgressions: moving one prospect's family to a home near the college, offering another money and jobs for his relatives, even repairing one candidate's wrecked car. For Long Beach, probation means no postseason competition or any participation in lucrative TV contracts. The only comfort was that the N.C.A.A. did not prohibit all further recruiting.

A halt in recruiting would paralyze the athletic program at Long Beach or almost any school. Yet in recent months coaches have warned that, as pressures to win increase, recruiting is getting dangerously out of control. "You're out there trying to sell yourself and the facts about your school," says Texas Football Coach Darrell Royal, "and the guy ain't hearing a word you're saying. All he's wondering is when you're going to start talking about money."

The N.C.A.A., with a full-time staff of four investigators--there were only two until 1972--clearly cannot police its 769 member institutions. And the competition for high school stars, particularly in football and basketball, gets more intense every year. "The go-getter gets the best man," says Tarkanian's new colleague, University of Nevada at Las Vegas Football Coach Ron Meyer. "You can't afford to leave a rock unturned." To lure their victims out and get them to sign letters of intent, many schools use inducements limited only by the imagination of their recruiters.

Illegal Offers. According to N.C.A.A. rules, colleges may offer student-athletes nothing beyond tuition, room, board, books and $15 a month. In fact, many prospects report receiving offers of much more. Offensive Tackle Marvin Powell, now a freshman at U.S.C., says some of the recruiters who came to his home town of Fayetteville, N.C., last year promised to buy him "anything from a Volkswagen to a Cadillac." According to Powell--who says U.S.C.'s offer was limited to the chance to play on a winning football team--alumni from other schools "were always slipping me a $100 bill when we shook hands."

This year's top high school basketball prospect, Moses Malone from Petersburg, Va., has been offered cars, a campus apartment and money. Jerry Eckwood, a fine football prospect from Brinkley, Ark., insists he has not been tantalized with extra benefits. But several big-time colleges have offered Eckwood's coach a job--provided Eckwood comes with him.

The most common inducement is free tickets. The N.C.A.A permits every player four tickets to each of his team's games--and then winks at the common practice of scalping those tickets. For the recent Sugar Bowl, Alabama Split End Wayne Wheeler hoped to get $100 per seat. At Alabama, the custom is so established that there is an unwritten rule requiring players who still have tickets on Thursdays before games to dump them at any price, so that they can concentrate on practice.

Flashing Bills. When Football Prospect Bill Seibolt from Brookline, Mass., visited Ohio State late in 1972, he found himself dining with Coach Woody Hayes. "I noticed his tie clasp," recalls Seibolt, now a freshman at Penn. " 'I really like that tie clasp, Mr. Hayes,' I said. Before I knew it, Hayes was giving it to me."

Though Hayes' gift probably did not violate any N.C.A.A. rules, it was symptomatic of the anything-to-please atmosphere that suffuses such recruiting visits. The most seductive sell may be offered at the University of Florida, where visiting prospects are entertained by the "Gator Getters," a group of coeds organized to escort prospects to games, meals and dances. Rumors abound that high school athletes courted by Florida "can't miss."

Though schools are required to house and entertain visiting athletes "on a scale comparable to that of normal student life," the rule is widely ignored. Richard Washington, now a freshman basketball player at U.C.L.A., visited half a dozen schools as a high school senior in Portland, Ore. "They flash you bills when you get there," he reports. "You get an expensive room, a player takes you to a top restaurant and fixes you up with a couple of girls. It's really nice." Students who travel to Las Vegas for a look at the University of Nevada are put up at a Strip hotel, given a tab for meals, and sometimes receive limited gambling money.

Woody Hayes and former Chicago Bear Star Gale Sayers (representing his alma mater Kansas) both visited Summit, N.J., recently--and for good reason. Summit is the home town of Running Back Willie Wilson, one of the East Coast's brightest high school football stars. The two football celebrities were only a part of a 40-man invasion force that, according to Wilson's coach Howie Anderson, lined up "like vacuum cleaner salesmen" to see Wilson.

No place is too remote. After 200 letters went out to Yankton, S. Dak., for Basketball Player Chad Nelson, some recruiters traveled there four or five times to make their pitch. Moses Malone's home in Petersburg has become a clearinghouse for college coaches, and Jerry Eckwood played one of his last football games in Brinkley with 50 recruiters cheering him on.

Even after a prospect has seen his last scout and heard his last offer, he still knows no peace. For weeks after returning from Ohio State, Bill Seibolt kept receiving giant postcards with pictures of the Ohio State stadium. Jerry Eckwood could not escape pursuit even at his brother's funeral; a recruiter from Oklahoma came to pay his respects.

"The whole thing has been getting to me," complains Willie Wilson. "It's hard to do anything or plan anything. I've been getting grouchy." Other prospects say that they feel guilty if they do not satisfy recruiter requests to visit schools. Many black athletes have an added complaint: recruiters often act as if blacks are more susceptible than whites to under-the-table deals. "White coaches think that since most blacks are poor, we'll jump at the money," says Marvin Powell. " 'Your mama need help? Tell her not to worry,' they say." Says Moses Malone: " People who try to buy me make me very mad."

Slow Reform. The expanding spectrum of recruiting abuses exasperates Veteran Penn State Football Coach Joe Paterno. "Recruiting is demeaning," he says. "The N.C.A.A. has not in any way met its responsibility in policing recruiting rules." But what can be done? Paterno suggests that the N.C.A.A. should follow the "vigilant example of the N.F.L." The N.F.L. has a staff of 28 professional investigators checking suspicious practices, and has succeeded in keeping pro football relatively scandal-free.

Marquette Basketball Coach Al McGuire speaks for other coaches, however, when he says that whatever reforms are proposed, "individual colleges aren't likely to de-escalate until everyone does." That day will not come soon if the N.C.A.A. convention is any indication. After disciplining Long Beach State and two other schools,* the N.C.A.A. delegates' only other major recruiting decision was to reject a proposal to restrict recruiting contacts with prospects. Instead, they voted to let collegiate athletes play one sport professionally without losing the right to compete in other college sports. The unexpected decision hardly seems calculated to dispel the play-for-pay attitude that is prevalent on so many campuses.

*Cornell was placed on a year's probation for illegally recruiting two hockey players, and Cal State-Hayward was disciplined for playing ineligible athletes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.