Maligned NCAA to examine new policies

By Scott Street

Daily Bruin (UCLA)

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is considering proposals that would change the definition of amateurism, NCAA president Cedric Dempsey said at a Final Four press conference last week in Indianapolis.

Athletes in violation of amateur standards were historically defined by the NCAA as student athletes who competed professionally and/or accepted money for their performances. Violations in recent years have ranged from Olympians accepting prize money to athletes receiving assistance pay for prep school tuition. A number of violations investigated this year by the NCAA centered on youth basketball programs that introduced a number of high school players to sports agents.

Dempsey told reporters gathered at the RCA Dome that the college sports' governing body was considering several proposals, largely influenced by the growing complexity of collegiate eligibility cases including those involving this year's youth basketball.

"We need to start rebuilding the culture, wipe it out completely," Dempsey said. "We're going to change the culture and have the right people making the right decisions of where these student athletes go to school."

The NCAA is considering proposals, which would allow student athletes to take out loans based on their future earning potential as professionals and insure themselves against potentially career-ending injuries. The proposals would also allow high school graduates who compete professionally before enrolling at a university to go back to college and be eligible to compete on the amateur level.

According to Jane Jankowski, Public Information Coordinator for the NCAA, the proposals announced last week have been in the making for more than two years following an increase in reinstatement requests filed by student athletes who have violated the NCAA's standards for amateur athletes.

"We are trying to find a way to include these athletes as a result of possible violations," Jankowski said.

Though Dempsey cited recent violations involving college basketball players such as brothers Kareem and JaRon Rush when announcing the proposals, Jankowski said that the legislation would cover all sports and was in development long before this year's cases.

"This is something we were addressing before some of the most recent eligibility cases," Jankowski said. "It is geared towards all of the sports in the NCAA."

The NCAA had come under attack in recent months for their investigations of several college basketball players, including UCLA's Rush, who was initially suspended for 44 games for accepting money from a former AAU youth basketball coach and a sports agent. The suspension was later reduced to 24 games after UCLA filed an appeal.

The complexity of that case prompted UCLA Athletics Director Peter Dalis to say Feb. 1, "You are talking about a young man who made a decision when he was 16 or 17 years old ... to hold him accountable is difficult. The intellectual separation cannot be made for a young man of that age."

The NCAA, as Dempsey noted, hopes that this new legislation could limit the influence agents have on student athletes, in addition to loosening the strict definition of amateurism the NCAA has held.

"It is going to take months of education," NCAA spokesman Wally Renfro told The New York Times last week. "The notion of something that's been there 100 years, this concept of amateurism is a Holy Grail. The perception has been that if you go play pro, you're dirty."