KANSAN
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
Wednesday, April 29,1981 Vol.91, No 142 USPS 650-640
Financial demands force college athletic abuses Alums put emphasis on winning, recruiting
Part One examines the financing of the KU athletic department and the recruiting problems facing coaches and athletes. Part One also includes a discussion of the university in policing the country's sports programs.
The series will examine football and basket-
ball—the two major sports involving the vast
sports fan base.
Some sources thought that by speaking out, they would be subject to harassment or even lose their jobs. For this reason, the names of some of the sources have been withheld.
By REBECCA CHANEY and CINDY CAMPBELL Staff Reporters
Intercollegiate athletics today inspires conflicting images. A picture of determined players soaked with the heat of competition has been tarnished by shadows of over-sized, under-educated students balancing a book in one hand and a ball in the other.
During the past year, the plight of the student- athlete has been chroniced in the pages of Sports
See related story page 5
Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine and the Kansas City Times.
Tales of fraudulent uses of state money, NCAA violations and academic improprieties have appeared with increasing regularity in Kansas and other states.
The University of Kansas athletic department has not escaped scrutiny.
Rather than focus on exactly what questionable activities may go on in KU athletics and who may be involved—something both administrators and the NCAA have found difficult to pinpoint—the Kanas asked sources to explain how such practices occurred and why they continued to occur despite concerted efforts to bring them under control.
MOST OF THOSE interviewed by the Kansan suggested that the financial predicament of the athletic department was backing the department into a corner.
Athletic Director Bob Marcum said controversial issue was under investigation, although highly visible, were only
small part of the problems facing intercollegiate athletics.
"You have to look at financing," he said. "Overall, the condition of intercollegiate athletics is not different from a lot of businesses, but you have the same options most business does."
"The thing you'd better be concerned about is unlimited expectations with limited resources."
Marcum said he believed that the University and students needed to participate more fully in university life.
Marcum's request for a $3 student fee to support non-revenue sports was approved last night by the KU Athletic Corporation. Acting commissioner Bruce Sullivan recommended to the Board of Reserves in May.
"As more and more of financing is outside of the University, we rely more on fund-raising, conference money and playing games outside the stadium solely for the revenue," he said. "As long as this financial pressure is external, more and more pressure follows in terms of winning, and you have to be very careful not to take short cuts, whether in recruiting or whatever."
Other sources also traced the beginnings of athletic problems to the department's financing.
"It's obvious that people who want to have something to say in athletics are those who are helping in some way to support the program," Del Brinkman, NCAA/Big Eight faculty representative and dean of the School of Journalism, said.
"Control still needs to be within the program itself and the administration of the University, but it gets tougher to remain in control when alums or booster contributes most of the money for tuition."
As Marcum said, "Fund-raising used to be the on the cake. Now it's one-third of the budget!"
Alumni are willing to assume so large a portion of athletic funding because they want to be closely associated with successful KU teams, and also to assist sports information director.said.
"They want to see their names in the programs on the booster pages and have their name on a plaque," he said. They want people to know that Halle has made it able to influence the coaches and the program."
ODD WILLIAMS, of the Williams family for which KU's athletic scholarship fund is named, said that contributors to the athletic corporation sometimes made suggestions to department officials, especially when they thought a coach or athletic official was "incompetent."
"Anybody contributing certainly has a right to their opinions as to how the program proceeds," he said. "Athletics are very much in the public eye. People are very emotional about their teams. But it shouldn't be any problem if you have strong leadership in your programs."
But Williams said he did not try to influence the athletic department because he thought it was "so patently presumptuous" of people to ask them to run the team, so he would to run the department than the athletic officials.
Shankel also acknowledged the pressures on the University by alumni.
"There is some," Shankel said. "But if the chancellor and athletic director can't stand a little pressure, maybe they should be in a different school." And because of our alumni are generally very supportive.
A FORMER KU ADMINISTRATOR, who asked not to be identified, said University policy could be adversely influenced by such organized groups as the Alumni Association.
"The alumni association is way too strong, just another sort of committee to entrust the coaches, but you can't control the alumni."
Dick Wintermorte, president of the KU Alumni Association, said that all fans who contributed to the athletic department and who bought tickets were likely to be brought under the umbrella of the association, even those who were not actually alumni.
"We have four members of the athletic corporation who are elected to sit on the board and represent the Alumni Association," Wintermute said, "and that is the extent of our involvement."
The athletic department, considered a financially self-contained corporation, relies almost completely on Fund contribution. Fund contributions to college scholarships last year, the fund generated more than $1 million.
"I think the athletic program should be a self-supporting separate corporation, not funded by the state," Williams said. "It's only right then that it should raise the money for its own
department, especially in the most legitimate area, scholarships."
ALTHOUGH THE FINANCIAL status of the KU Athletic Corporation often has been questioned, Kansas Attorney General Robert Stephan ruled last summer that the KUAC was a state-supported program because "there can be no question that the University and the KUAC maintain a complementary and contractual relationship."
The former KU administrator said he never liked the separation of the athletic department from the University as a whole.
"We don't give the chemistry department or other departments a free hand," he said.
"In college athletics you start asking, 'Why?' Why does it have to be self-supporting? It gives license to the department, to the athletic director, to do anything they have to do to make money. It opens the gate for all sorts of infractions."
"Athletics and sports are big—part of the public domain," Williams says. "It's not just the sport, but a way of life."
The former KU administrator listed examples of other universities that were not self-supporting, such as Ohio State, where all athletic department revenue becomes part of the total university budget, much like high school athletics oerate.
Williams said there was a real over-emphasis in athletics.
Some sources suggested that university administrators, in the quest for funds from win-atevery cost alumni, were forcing coaches into elite straits—win and bring in revenues, or be fired.
Declining enrollments and inflated costs have placed ticket and television revenues, along with bringing the school to the attention of potential administrators a new and lucrative light for administrators.
"Maybe the feeling that we're responsible for the well-being of the whole athletic program puts a lot of pressures on coaches," Don Fambrough, head football coach, said. "We feel it now more than ever before. 99 percent of your schools rely totally on football. We're fortunate that basketball does as much as it does financially at KU."
But Fambrough said coaches were competitive by nature and that outside pressures, although they existed, were sometimes exagorated.
IT HAS BEEN SAID that improprieties by
increased penalties for cheating may
be increased penalities for cheating.
Marcum also suggested severe financial penalties and the immediate dismissal of anybody employed by the University found to be involved in violations.
"If a school is in violation, penalize the entire athletic department," Marcum said. "I'm sure there are some schools that wouldn't want the football team to teepalearn every other sport."
Weltner said such penalties would hurt minor sports that depended on revenue-producing
"You can figure that men's basketball and football are sacred cows," Weltner said. "No matter what penalties are assessed, when the ball is in play, it will be the other sports that pay the price."
“It’s not so much because of how much they (football and basketball) draw, but because they are so traditional. People have identified with them for years and years.”
**INDIANA BASKETBALL** coach Bobky Knight
the prevents problems with stern
talks to alice
"I tell the guys that if they try to interfere at all, I'll call the NCAA, and then I'll let everybody in Indiana know that they were the ones who risked getting the university placed on probation," Knight said in an interview with Newsweek.
Williams said he did not believe principals had to be sacrificed in order to compete. "Maybe that's why we're not Big Eight football champions," he said.
Yet even schools with losing teams have been found to be cheating. The Oregon State University team lost in the 1978 NCAA tournament with a disarray of 110 record, was denied on probation for playing with an ineligible athlete.
House panel considers med scholarship limits
Williams said it was natural for any coach to want to win above all else.
"That's just a matter of trying to do your job in the best way possible," Williams said. "Your success is judged by the number of games you win. But we really have lost perspective of what athletics should be for; namely participation and enjoyment of the game."
Staff Reporter
See ATHLETICS page 5
By GENE GEORGE Staff Reporter
Hayden, R-Atwood, said that the restrictions would better serve the medical needs of Kansas and would eventually generate enough money to sponsor a scholarship program for nursing students.
Proposed restrictions in the state-funded medical scholarship program, which should be passed by the House Ways and Means Committee today, will pay off in the future. Committee Chairman J. Mike Hayden said yesterday.
The restrictions, which sprang from Senate attempts to kill the scholarship program, were approved by a Ways and Means subcommittee yesterday. Hayden, who was chairman of the subcommittee meeting, said that there should be no probation for the subcommittee to fail the full committee.
*RESTRICT THE NUMBER of scholarships to 100 per entering freshman class. There is currently no such scholarship limit. The restriction would go into effect in the fall of 1982.
*Raise the interest rate from 10 percent to 15 percent for those students who want to pay back their debt.*
The subcommittee recommendations are to:
*Restrict the areas of Kansas where new graduated doctors can serve to pay off the grant*
*Expand the payment schedule from only 10 annual payments to permit paying off the
scholarship in either five annual payments or in one lumn sum.
Hayden said the limitations were not meant to discourage students from using the program.
"It meant to better serve the people," he said. "It tries to get students to want to serve the people."
But State Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Parsons, said the program was used by students as a cheap meal option.
THIS YEAR, he said, the state issued 160
KU College of Health Sciences in Kansas, City,
KS.
Johnston, who tried to kill the system, said the students had no intention of fulfilling their
State Rep. Robert J. Vancrum, R-Overland
responded by offering a bill to restrict the
Pakistan.
Hayden explained that the subcommittee took the Johnston bill, erased most of the wording and substituted its own version of the Vancrum proposal.
The demand will always far exceed the number of scholarships available, *Hayden said.*
THIS HYBRID VERSION should free up enough money to fulfill the Ways and Means Committee's plans to start a program for nursing students.
"In the future, that freed money will be phased in when says it." "It could go up to the point in 1986 when we could do it."
"But in the first few years, with the restriction phased in starting in 1852, it will only free up enough territory for a good harvest."
MARK MCDONALD/Kansan staff
A boatman takes advantage of the nice weather and clear skies to get some boatriding in at Clinton Lake. The weather forecast for today calls for sunny, with a high of 87, lows on touch of 56.
By REBECCA CHANEY
Staff Reporter
KUAC votes $3 increase in student fee
After showing signs of hesitancy and indecision, the KU Athletic Corporation voted last night to recommend a $3 raise in student fees next fall.
In a final vote, there were only two dissenters to a proposal recommending that Acting KU Chancellor Del Shankel take the Board of Regents over the fee from $1.50 to $4.50 for non-revenue sports.
However, the motion carried the stipulation that the fee be removed in one year, and that a wholly revised philosophy concerning the funerary corrolegiate athletics be developed by that time.
"I think they acted irresponsibly," Bert Coleman, student board member and student body president, said after the meeting. "It was pushed through without concern for students and over student opposition, without any kind of research."
AFTER NUMEROUS objections by Coleman and student board member Steve A. Leben, the board voted to recommend the fee. Coleman and Leben were the only dissenting votes.
"The same people who voiced concern over not
being able to about it are the ones who voted
for ktck." Colman said.
"We plan to fight it, and I urge all students to voices their opposition. We are going to try to get them to change."
See KUAC page 11
Weather
It will be sunny today, with a high of 78, according to the KU Weather Service. Winds will be out of the west-northwest at 5 to 10 mph.
Committee rejects Regents' spending of increase
Tomorrow, the high temperature will again reach into the upper 70s, and the temperature will be higher.
Tonight's low temperature will be 56, and skies will be more clear.
By GENE GEORGE and DAN BOWERS
Staff Reporters
The House Ways and Means Committee, in an effort to write the Board of Regents a message, snapped the phone.
The committee, which wanted the Regents to stick to the originally recommended 15 percent increase in student fees, decided not to allow the Regents to spend the extra money it would get from the 22 percent fee increase the Regents approved April 16.
The House panel's action contradicts one taken Monday by the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and sets up a showdown between the two chambers in a House-Senate conference committee. House Ways and Means Chairman J. Mike Hayden, R-Atwood, said yesterday.
THE MEASURE GOES to the full Senate today, when lawmakers return to Topeka for the start of the three-day veto session. The conference committee would meet later this week.
Committee Vice-Chairman Bill W. Buten said yesterday that he was sure the issue would be
"But if there is no resolution of it (in the conference committee)," Bunten, R-Topkea, said, "the budget would stay at the 15-percent level, and the extra fees would be collected, but would go into the fee fund and could not be spent."
Acting KU Chancellor Del Shankel's reaction was "one of extreme disappointment, to say the
Yesterday's vote was a shock to Laredo
the Smith, who said the committee we
"trying to govern."
"It isn't so much to disapprove the increase as it is that they want to make a political issue out of them."
"In the Regents action, the whole thrust was to try to help us retain the quality of what we're supposed to be doing," Shankel said. "This just takes that opportunity away."
But Bunten said that House members' position
Under the 22 percent increase, KU students would pay $124 more in fees starting this fall.
on the 22 percent increase had been clearly defined.
"Everyone was surprised when they (the Regents) went to 22 percent," Bunten said. "The committee felt that the 15 percent increase was enough for the students to bear next year."
Instead, the Regents added 7 percent more to the lawmakers' figure, and now need legislative approval to spend the extra $2.6 million that would be generated.
Bunten said he thought the Regents "were on the right track," but tried to do too much too soon.
THE LEGISLATURE PRESSURED the Regents to raise tuition next year 15 percent by cutting nearly $6 million in state general fund money from the board's 1982 budget.
The Legislature wanted the 15 percent increase in fees to make the Regents conform to an unwritten agreement that all Regents们 should pay 25 percent of their stipulation costs.
"I would have rather had a full hearing on the manman said. "I opposed to making a snape decision."
Loren H. Hohman, D-Toppea, ranking minority member of the committee, he said thought that the committee did not have enough information percent increase to make a decision yesterday.
However, Smith, who said both the governor and Legislature "knew darn well that we needed the money," said the conflicts between House and Senate would be resolved.
Shankel, on the other hand, could not express the same confidence that Smith did.
"We'll be talking to people about the problems this would create," Shankel said, "and we'll be trying to persuade them that the action the Senate took was the right action."
If the issue bolts down to a confrontation between the House and the Regents, Joe McFarlane, academic officer for the Regents, would not could back down from its 22 percent increase.
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