Commentary : NCAA Should Not Let This Pass

When it comes to a shoot-out between the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. and Jerry Tarkanian, the basketball coach at Nevada Las Vegas, it’s more than a little difficult to pick sides.

The NCAA, after all, is world class in pompousness, arrogance and highhandedness. And Tark the Shark comes by his nickname, at least, honestly, sharks not being noted for their observance of the rules of civilization.

The immediate inclination, when it was announced Monday that the Supreme Court had found in favor of the NCAA in its 12-year legal war with Tarkanian over the possible violation of his Constitutional rights, was to proclaim a pox on both their houses and go on with more urgent matters. This business has, after all, been dragging on for a long time.

Tarkanian’s boss, President Robert C. Maxson of UNLV, even suggested that some vague statute of limitations had expired, saying that his coach had suffered bravely through it all and now, because it had proved its point, would the NCAA kindly take its victory and let it go at that.

Nobody seems very sure what’s going to happen, but if the NCAA does drop the case, it will have spent all that time and money for nothing. The court case might have answered a question of constitutionality, but what preceded it was a simple matter of crime and punishment. That shouldn’t be forgotten.

In 1977, the NCAA found UNLV and Tarkanian guilty of recruiting violations. As punishment, it put the school on probation for 2 years and ordered UNLV to suspend Tarkanian for 2 years.

It was a novel approach, punishing a coach for his own misdeeds. What normally happens in such cases is that the school gets probation, which deprives the athletes--the guilty and the partially guilty alike--of postseason play, and the school of the money that goes with it.

The coach? Well, heck, once in a while, one gets fired. But not very often. He may get his hand slapped but he goes on coaching, collecting his paycheck, vowing that it was all a misunderstanding and cussing the NCAA for swinging wildly with its heavy hammer.

And just as often, it seems, the guilty coach gets off without so much as a reprimand. He simply skips off to another school, or the pros, before the hammer falls.

Larry Brown, for instance, isn’t suffering at Kansas, which recently was set down. He picked up his national championship ring and scooted on down to join the San Antonio Spurs. Sorry about that, Jayhawks. Good luck and all that.

Tarkanian, himself, has some experience in that sort of thing. In the early ‘70s, he took Cal State Long Beach from nowhere to the top 10 in just about no time. Hey, nobody ever said the guy couldn’t coach--or recruit.

Then he left for UNLV, just about the time the NCAA was announcing sanctions against Long Beach for recruiting violations. Long Beach suffered, and so did Lute Olson, the unsuspecting coach who followed Tarkanian and had to live with the mess left behind.

Tark? He was living the high life in Vegas, turning another basketball nonentity into a glittering national power, gathering to his bosom a lot of good basketball players.

Of course, some people questioned their credentials as college students--one of Tark’s recent projects had no high school diploma and was supposed to visit his parole officer regularly--but if the school wanted them, well, a lot of schools take kids who have no business being there.

But once again, the NCAA took issue with the way those players were brought into the school. Once again, Tarkanian was found guilty of improper recruiting. UNLV was put on probation, and ordered to suspend Tarkanian.

Tark considered that a constitutional violation of his right to earn a living at his chosen profession and sued the NCAA. That’s what the long legal battle was all about.

So now, having been told by the Supreme Court that it may order a school to suspend a violating coach, should the NCAA uphold its original sentence? Should it demand its 2 years of retribution?

Yes, it should.

The portrayal of Tarkanian as a lovable rogue who is simply cutting a few corners doesn’t make it. He is a professional coach who knows exactly what he did, what he is doing.

Despite the UNLV president’s supposition, there is no evidence that Tarkanian has been through anything resembling anguish during the case. He has gone right on recruiting, coaching, winning.

Besides, he’s the one who sued. If he had won the suit, would Maxson have been talking about what Tarkanian had been through? Not likely.

The NCAA has been handed a golden chance to make a real difference in college sports. Once the coaches start sharing the punishment, there may be less cheating, perhaps even considerably less. And if school administrators know that they will have to juggle coaches during suspension periods, maybe they will pay a little more attention to how coaches are bringing in players.

Obviously, there is a lot of hypocrisy in college sports. And just as obviously, there is no way it will all be made to go away. But making the coaches--not the players--answerable for their own actions is a good place to start.

Go for it, NCAA.