University Daily Kansan
Friday. October 24.1975
9
Coaches criticize stifling NCAA regulation
"The athlete is the most important person in the whole NCAA. He has to come first. And yet the people who administer athletics seem to not him last."
"I'm upset with a big, vast, bulky organ that no longer has a heart or an arm for the bed."
Those biting words were recently issued from Bob Timmons, University of Kansas track coach, as he reviewed the results of the 2015 Convention on Economy last August.
"I think it a disgrace" Timmons says,
"absolute disgrace, the things they've done."
WHAT HAS THE NCAA DONE?
In an attempt to combat inflation and assure its member schools of a degree of financial security, the NCAA has voted new rules and restrictions affecting almost all colleges to incorporate athletes; coaching, recruiting, scholarships, squad size and eligibility.
The new rules didn't appear out of nowhere, however. In the past five years, as a result of economic conditions, 20 NCAA schools have had to eliminate their football programs. Many athletic departments were forced to reduce soft ink to fill a swimming pool:
Some schools gave serious thought to dropping their entire intercollegiate athletics.
So when it was learned that the NCAA had called a convention for mid-August to
'I think it's a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, the things they've done.'
consider 73 cost-cutting proposals, athletic directors and college presidents across the country.
EVERYONE APPLAUED THE NCA as it called on delegates from its 700 member schools to meet August 14-15 in Chicago.
But later, those cheers of approval turned into snails of reproach, as the ramifications of the new rules were subjected to closer scrutiny.
In a recent survey of KU coaches, reactions to the NCAA's new rules ranged from mild displeasure to冻屎 demotion. Words such as "diots", "atsurd", "ridiculous", "tragic" and "disastrous" siped their comments.
The amendments to the NCAA constitution and the by laws that caused the greatest stir fall into the following four categories:
COACHING STAFFS - The NCAA has a put a limit on the number of football and basketball assistants a school may employ. The limit on football is one head coach, but the limit on basketball coaches, KU now has 11 full-time assistant coaches. The rule takes effect Aug. 1, 1976.
UK basketball is unaffected. The NCAA
unit is two full-time assistant and one
team-level player.
SCHOALSHIPS—A Division 1 school can award only 95 football and 15 basketball full-scholarships (room, board, tuition, fees, books and course expenses). The $1$ a month stipend has been eliminated. The rule doesn't take effect until the 1977-78
SQUAD SIZE—A rule limiting the number of athletes a school can take on a road trip. This rule has an effect for several months. While the NCAA and Big Eight conference have had travel squad limits in the past, this is the first time a squad has been assigned a maximum.
'I don't believe the coaches had any type of input that they felt they should have.'
school year, but schools must begin making
努赶 toward conforming now.
RECRUTTING—The NCAA has placed a limit on the number of prospects a school can fly in to recruit at the University. A limit on paid visits has been assigned to each sport. Before this year, no such limits existed.
The NCAA has said a high school athlete can make no more than six paid visits to schools recruiting him. The college may visit one prospect more than three times.
A limit on the time of year a coach can visit a high school athlete has also been granted.
An observation by Dick Reamon, KU men's swim coach, was typical of the early 1960s.
"I'M ALL FOR SAVING MONEY," he said. "There have got to be some curbs. But, at the same time, I do think that some long term changes are needed than groom behind them are needed."
The issues that arouse emotion are numerous. One of the biggest was the fear of death.
"I don't even know what they were thinking about," said Sam Miranda, KU basketball assistant coach and recruiter. "I can't get no input by coaches, I'm sure, on this."
Miranda said, "It should have been that you can visit from March 1 to September 1.
Miranda was talking about a rule that prevented him from visiting a high school
Rather than pressuring a player to sign with a college while he is in the middle of his season, Miranda said it would be much better to allow contacts before the start of the season, when the athlete and his coach are more relaxed and less busy.
"IT'S COMPLETELY backwards."
"I don't understand how they can sit down
Ken Stone Sports Writer
and make a rule that is just backwards on what the parents want, the boy wants, the high school coach wants and what the teacher totally different from what it should be."
Floyd Temple, KU's baseball coach since
1964, agreed that coaches had little in-
terest.
"THESE 'NO QUESTION about it,' Temple said. "Very few coaches were contacted as to how they felt, I think they went into it a little too quickly."
In fact, Temple said, "They put in some
ides that aaren really going to save that
moment."
Such sentiment was echoed by Bob Lock-
wood, men's gymnastics coach.
"I don't believe the coaches had any type of input that they felt they should have given," she said.
"I think all coaches knew—and all athletic directors and faculty reps knew that we would have to have some kind of cost-cutting change.
"BUT THE COACHES IVE visited, and myself in particular, are concerned that the so-called cost-cutting legislation is really not cutting costs."
Cyde Walker, athletic director, has had similar suniplions for a long time.
"Im opposed to national legislation," he said. "Although this action on the part of NCAA member schools was disguised as an economy move, I really feel it might have been a move toward bringing the big schools in line with the smaller schools."
Walker said many small schools voted to cut scholarships, coaching staffs and recruiting because they thought they could benefit from a competitive advantage of the larger schools.
KANSAS ISN'T IN THE financial bind that many schools its size are in, Walker said, so few of the rules would eventually save KU much money.
Bud Moore, KU football coach, said,
"We're spending as much money recruiting
than we did in the past."
'This helps the metropolitan areas. A lot of them will be helped by the rules.'
farther. You're much more particular in your evaluation.
"You're a heck of a lot more careful with it, and you can make a mistake if burt comes from," he says.
Both Walker and Moore pointed to the disadvantage that the NCAA had put KU in regarding schools in larger population areas.
"THEIS DEFINITELY HELPS the metropolitan areas." Walker says, "We're in a non-pepalous area. Therefore we must bring in more people than, say, Southern Cal, UCLA, Ohio State or Texas. A lot of them will be helped by these new rules."
But the first amendment to be considered at the next Special Convention of the NCAA-on Jan. 13, 1976 at St. Louis-will be a rule limiting coaching staffs in non-revenue teams to one head coach and one part-time assistant.
Moore said, "Penn State can have 75 gays from a heavily-populated area, we are going to have to pay his way. It is a definite handicap most every school in the Big Ten."
Another handicap, say KU coaches, is the limit on the size of coaching staffs. Right now, only football at KU will be affected by NCAA rules.
"I went out all over the country and tried to hire the best people with the idea that we would make a difference," he then. Then, all of a sudden, with less than a year gone, we find out that we'll have to let some people
"I came here with the idea of getting a good job, and all the time I've been here we've been losing literally thousands of dollars. So now I may have to go back to a job that really wasn't much better than the one I left five years ago."
"I think it's totally unfair," Moore said. "We're in one of the few professions in the field that have no peer pressure."
'I'm after a job right now. My situation is really a frightening one.'
"IT'S HARD FOR ME, personally speaking, to get excited about the rest of (the restrictions) because I see myself without a job in the fall of 76.
When the time comes to fire three
"So I see all the work that I've put in here gone, almost like I was forgotten. It's bam-bam you're gone and that it. You hate to be alone." I leaned along and hesitate you out of a job."
assistants, who will Moore let go?
If the NCAA is threatening to legislate coaches out of their jobs they are also tending to prevent athletes from competing, said Moore.
"I HAVEN'T THOUGHT that far ahead yet," he said, "I haven't considered that at all. And I won't start thinking about it until January." NCAA convention (in January)."
Of the rules that limit a football traveling
squad to 48 and the home squad to 60, Moore
would have said:
"WHEN THESE KIDS WERE recruited they were told they would have the opportunity to make the traveling squad or to bring them to school. It limits you to 60 guva dressing at home."
Gary Pepin, KU assistant track coach,
doesn't have much hope that the NCAA will
receive an award.
"We've got guys that can't even dress for the home games. They have to sit in the stands like someone who's not participating, even though they were out there sweating and bleeding (in practice) like everybody else."
'What is proposed scares the hell out of me. These idiots . . . they don't know anything.'
"Right now, I'm desperately looking for a job," he said. "In fact, I'm after a job right now. My situation is really a frightening one."
if the rule limiting basketball teams to a travel squad of 10 had been in effect at
the NCAA tournament, last March, KU
will play to play the last part of one
game with four.
AGAINST NOTRE DAME, Ted Owens,
Kansas basketball coach, assigned the,
Jayhawk team.
“The ridiculous thing,” Owens said, “is the limitation of 13 at home. That saves no money. It prevents a youngster, who works in an office team, from even wearing your uniform.
"I'm perfectly willing to cut down our
"scholarship level. If we cut it up, that's
pleasant. But we have a lot of fine young
people in this city who want education.
Now these rules discourage them."
Equally discouraging is the possibility that the NCAA might vote in January to further limit pre-season practice in football and basketball and also put a limit on other, non-revenue sports, which previously could practice all year round.
"WHAT IS PROPOSED, frankly, scares the hell out of me," Reason said. "These idiots that voted on my sport, they don't know anything."
"What difference does it make whether I start in September or October? This is ridiculous. This is absolutely aburd. And that doesn't work for an event? That doesn't cost anything."
Kirkland Gates, men's tennis coach, said the cuts the NCAA had made were the result of a "bad team."
"They just cut down the major sports, football and basketball, and then they said, "Well, we've cut back here, we must cut back give there."
A proposal that would prevent the gymnastics team from practicing in the fall might even be dangerous to his athletes' safety. Lockwood said.
"In gymnastics you have to have some kind of supervision," he said, referring to the 12 routines his athletes must learn in the six weeks prior to their first meet.
"IN GYMNASTICS, THE athlete can't go out and find the equipment, in as basketball or some other sport. He can't get a ball and shoot baskets to set into some kind of shame.
“It’s going to be a safety hazard. I think this is really a tragic thing. And I don’t believe it’s a real cost savings. What diff. between it and if we have two extra months of practice?”
"THE BEST WAY TO SAVE money in athletics is to cut out all sports," he said. "The problem here is that the NCAA didn't have any real directions in what they did.
"What if an athlete gets injured? Why, it would just be pitiful."
Timmons tried to put the NCAA's actions in perspective.
"The NCAA hasn't even spelled out what their goals are. So they go into a big meeting with 800 people and everybody is scrambling for directions to decide on 73 amendments.
"They didn't have sufficient time. As a group, it was obvious they didn't think about that."
Talley's job jeopardized by new cost-saving rules
By KEN STONE
MIRANDA SAID HE THOUGHT the upshot of some of these rules was the lack of sympathy the NCAA convention had for the individual athlete.
Sports Writer
'What-a-day! What-a-day! What a
BAEIATIFU, dai!'
YET TALLEY SAID HE was concerned that his job search may have been initiated a little too late. Other resistant coaches, including David Ely, coach staffing, are flooding the market.
"I don't think the coach head coach (Bob Timmons) or the administrative staff objects to us doing that," Talley said. "They pretty well know what could happen."
Rain is pouring on the track, the temperature is hovering at 55 degrees. The workout instructions on the track team website say: *Run at a speed of 440 at 65 secs, with a 90 sec, rest interval.*
And this crazy man strides into the locker room under the east stands of Memorial Stadium yelling in his Arkansas drawl, at his lungs, about what a beautiful day it is.
But instead of slowly counting the minutes until the NCAA's meeting, Talley is searching for another job. In fact, he has applied to four other large universities.
"It makes a man think," Talley says. "I know I've had second thoughts. I should have done it."
Consequently, Talley is concerned. The mood in the Allen Field House track office was low.
“It’s pretty basic,” he said. “The number one thing in athletics is the athlete.”
As any member of the University of Kansas track team can tell you, the "crazy" man is Thad Talley, KU assistant track coach.
On January 13, 1976, delegates from 700 NCAA member schools will meet at a special convention in St. Louis to decide whether Talley—and assistant coaches like him all over the United States—can keep their jobs.
Football and basketball staffs have already been reduced, and Talley said he didn't think the NCAA would leave coaching in the alone in the other, non-revenue sports.
But no amount of shouted "what-a-days" can divert Talley's attention from what he's been doing.
TALLEY LOVE TO HAVE his athletes still hilt braves, especially when they're too old. They're more resilient than ever.
Thad Talley may lose his job.
"You know, without the athlete, we don't have college basketball. Without the athlete we don't have the great crowds and the great enthusiasm. And when you keep taking away from the athlete, then I think you'll have some problems.
With reference to his own sport, Miranda
marmorized the feelings of his fellow cove-
lor.
The realization that he might have come in this way for nothing is frustrating, he said.
"ALL THE TIME I WAS trying to seek my goals. My ultimate goal is to be a head coach at a large university. And this was just another step up the ladder."
"I think all of us at some time or another have had misgivings and maybe wanted to get out of coaching," Talley said. "But what has happened is the fact that I haven't chosen to get out."
"Someone now is telling me that I'm going to have to get out. Here's something that I have spent 15 years or more preparing for, trying to get ahead, trying to do the best I can, starting off in a junior high and working up to this level of coaching.
"Now, they'll say. We're not forcing you to get out. You can still coach! Sure. What about you?"
"NOW, ALL OF A SUDDEN, by the vote of a hand, someone in some small school is telling me that I'm supposed to get out of coaching and into something else.
Tallay would rather get out of coaching
side slide back. So he plans to continue
loose play.
And if he can't find that head coaching position? What then?
"D I L E TO FEEL THAT, basically,
I'm a fighter, a competitor, a guy that
would not let something like this disturb
him." Talley said.
"Somewhere in this world there is a job for That Talley. It might be digging ditches or in business or in something else; maybe in something that I haven't even prepared."
"But there's a job for me."
Staff Photo by DAVID CRENSHAW
Thad Talley
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