NCAA should fix its badly flawed system January 25, 2004
I promise that the NCAA has not permanently hijacked my column. At some point in the near future, it will return to worthy topics like Mike Shula’s recruiting year, or the success of Sarah Patterson’s gymnastics teams, or Mark Gottfried’s basketball team and its surprising ride up the RPI rankings. This is not going to turn into a space for the weekly entertainment of a few devoted cultists, like some weekly “Star Trek" rerun or “Our Favorite Visigoths" on The History Channel.
The main purpose is to be about sports, and it will be about sports soon -- but not today.
Instead, it is time to once again address a critical point that affects both the past of the Alabama football case, and the possible future of all the litigation that stems from that case. That issue is the use of confidential source testimony.
In the last week or so, two separate articles have appeared (one in The Birmingham Post-Herald, one on Sports Illustrated’s Internet site, SI.com) making an identical claim -- the claim that the NCAA “didn’t use any secret witnesses" in its case against Alabama. If such a claim had appeared in just one place, it might be written off a writer’s opinion. But it appeared in two different places, and SI.com even said that “SI.com has learned that ..."
So it’s clearly a tack being floated by someone of the NCAA side of the issue. And that would be fine. There is certainly nothing wrong with reporters using sources and forming conclusions from that information. But a week ago, an NCAA spokesman was griping about “the cavalier treatment of confidential documents." At the same time, someone on the NCAA side -- maybe in Indianapolis, maybe elsewhere -- was discussing what did or did not occur in an Infractions Committee hearing that was supposed to be -- you guessed it -- confidential.
In other words, it is yet another moment that will soon be available on “NCAA Hypocrisy: The Five-DVD Set."
More importantly is that regardless of what anyone has “learned," the issue is, at the very best, somewhat hazy. The NCAA’s “no secret witness" position is based on the proposition that the “confidential source" named in the Infractions Report (and widely reputed to be a Birmingham recruiting analyst) wasn’t really a “secret" because he had been identified to Alabama officials and “waived" onto the record by someone at UA.
Even if one accepts that semantic wrangling, there are issues. Did the confidential source ever agree to go “on the record," as NCAA bylaws require? Was he ever identified to the Committee on Infractions? Was the waiver, ill-advised as it was, a “blanket" waiver, or was it specific to certain issues?
And there is more. Even if the “confidential source" was waived into the record, what about the “administrator ... and his coaches" unknown to Alabama whose testimony was discussed? Alabama raised that issue on appeal. Was that a rival SEC athletic director? Was it a coach?
And there is still more. At one point in its rebuttal appeal brief (Page 21), Alabama notes a curious discrepancy in the Infractions Report, where the Committee refers to “the witness" as testifying in the summer of 2000 that “the assistant high-school coach [Milton Kirk]" was “upset and might talk." That didn’t seem to fit the “waived" source, the recruiting analyst, because, as UA notes, that source “did not even know the assistant coach in question." Now, it has come out that there were some confidential sources in Memphis who did know that coach and knew him well -- but how could the Committee of Infractions have known about his testimony? If it wasn’t introduced at the hearing, as it apparently was not, did it come to the Committee on Infractions through some back door? If that’s what happened, that opens a whole new can of worms, even uglier than the worms we already have at hand.
Much of this might be resolved if the NCAA would release a full transcript of the hearing, instead of clinging to “confidentiality." Even then, it might be hard to draw a conclusion with certainty. As it is, no definitive statement that “no secret witnesses were used" carries any weight. No matter what anyone might have “learned," one thing has definitely been “learned" in this process -- you can’t accept what the NCAA says at face value.
This is, of course, a two-sided process. At this point, the other side -- primarily Tommy Gallion, the attorney for Ivy Williams and Ronnie Cottrell -- has made a lot of accusations and not a great deal of proof. Gallion says the proof is forthcoming. When it comes, it should be scrutinized with the same intensity as the NCAA position, and any discrepancies or flaws should be reported in the same way. That’s why the process should be open, and all documents made available -- so the public can have as much information as possible before forming an opinion.
The issue really isn’t about what Alabama did at this point. The penalties are just about past, and restitution won’t really be feasible. The point is that, instead of defending a badly flawed system, the NCAA bureaucracy should fix it. Instead of protecting its own turf, it should be concerned about fair treatment for its member schools. That should already have been “learned" a long time ago, but once again it’s apparent that it has not been.
Cecil Hurt can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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