Complete Onions Archive

Weekly College Basketball Review

May 21st, 2004  

The other side of the 5/8 rule

Now that the NCAA has repealed the 5/8 rule allowing coaches a max of five scholarships in one year or eight in two years, maybe this is a good time to point out how the rule was never as bad as made out to be and how shallow many complaints about it really were.

It certainly wasn’t depriving 200 athletes the chance of attending college on a basketball scholarship, as the NABC laughably suggested. Its effects were exaggerated, and the real problem with the rule was that coaches didn’t like it, nothing more. That certainly shouldn’t have been enough reason for it to be overturned.

The arguments against this rule were valid in a few cases, but most of the complaints were just folly. For instance, there is Myth #1, that on a widespread basis the 5/8 rule was shortchanging coaches out of keeping sufficient rosters. It’s funny, because the school that has been held up as an A-1 example of why this rule was so bad is the same one that makes the case for why the argument is so bogus.

Arizona was in a roster crisis early last season, supposedly due to early NBA Draft entries but just as much because of injuries and transfers. The 5/8 rule was presented as their real problem, but if that’s so, how was Lute Olson able to add Serb import Ivan Radenovic at the middle of the season? Doesn’t that indicate the Wildcats had at least one scholarship open, or did Radenovic qualify for some unused biology department grant-in-aid?

Then there was Texas, Oklahoma State, Mississippi State and all the schools who jumped at the chance to get the Baylor players late last summer when they were allowed to transfer. If the 5/8 rule was really crippling so many schools, how did everyone and their brother have room for these guys towards the end of the summer, well after recruiting is finished and rosters are set for the next season?

They were able to because many coaches purposely keep their rosters below the maximum number of scholarships allowed. This is especially true at the so-called power schools. The 5/8 rule wasn’t keeping the rosters down; for reasons at their own discretion, the coaches were doing it themselves. A coach admitted such in an article by ESPN’s Andy Katz on this rule, but the article whizzed right past this point.

Another myth: The 5/8 rule was hurting schools who were being torn apart by NBA Draft early entries. Again, we already noted that most of the major schools have purposely kept their rosters small. Besides that, though, how much are these schools really being hurt? Georgia Tech did just fine last year without Chris Bosh. Arizona’s Wildcats aren’t going to be confused with Northwestern anytime soon. Duke didn’t seem to be missing Jason Williams or Carlos Boozer that much, not when it can just go out and recruit another Chris Duhon or Shelden Williams.

It’s not surprising that schools like Arizona were the poster child for complaints about this rule because they are the most visible, but these schools are still dominating recruiting as they always did. If anyone was getting hurt, it’s those schools in the background.

How about VMI, which was fortunate enough to land Jason Conley, then lost him when he transferred to a bigger school, in large part because coaches at larger schools persuaded him he could play at a higher level? Or Western Kentucky, which was smart enough to offer Patrick Sparks a scholarship when Kentucky didn’t, then watched Sparks go and walk on at UK two years later, anyway? These were the real victims; not the Mississippi States and Arizonas.

What it boils down to is this: coaches didn’t like this rule because it was something they didn’t control. They lost the right to reshape their rosters by any means possible and they hated that with a passion. Or maybe they just hated being told what to do, period.

You can’t necessarily blame them for feeling that way, because as they frequently noted, there was no 5/8 rule in any other NCAA sport. They’re also obviously going to look out for their best interests, and that’s not surprising nor completely bad.

The problem, though, is coaches have proven just that: they look out for their own interests and have no concern for the greater good of the sport. See Baylor, Georgia, Fresno State, Missouri and St. Bonaventure, just to name a few. All of these problem situations had coaches at their center of corruption.

Of course, we know not all coaches are bad apples, but it seems plainly obvious that enough are to prove that someone else needs to make the rules. Coaches certainly shouldn’t be allowed to make the rules before breaking them, yet that’s exactly what the NCAA is doing here. By pandering to their cries, the message basically sent by the NCAA to coaches “We trust you.”

That’s a dangerous precedent for college basketball, and giving coaches free reign to run players off again isn’t exactly an athlete-friendly move. And no matter what someone else tries to tell you, it really does happen. Now they can do it again with impunity, taking the cowardly path around what they perceive to be recruiting errors.

The 5/8 wasn’t perfect, for sure, and needed some tweaks. It was a move in the right direction, though, and it would have been nice to see coaches actually have tried to adjust to the rule and see how it worked in the long run. At the very least, the rule deserved more time to see how it truly affected the game.

The guess here is, if they had adjusted, coaches would’ve been forced to recruit more creatively and selectively, and maybe not waste scholarships on the rent-a-players with no intention of staying four years. In the long run maybe they recruit for fundamentals and teach more, and not just bring in the best athletes and teach them a bunch of set plays. At the worst, coaches would’ve had to learn how to do more with less and emphasized teaching. Is that such a bad thing?

It would’ve been awful nice if the coaches would put all of their energy complaining about this rule into something else, say, ways to police their profession better. But the coaches themselves indicated they had no interest in that at their NABC “ethics meetings” held last fall. That alone should’ve been reason enough for the NCAA to disregard the howls about this rule.

-All these new “sweeping” academic reforms the NCAA is promising now, supposedly in exchange for getting rid of the 5/8 rule? Yeah, you can forget about them making much difference.

For one thing, the standards aren’t even set yet, which is especially curious. If you’re talking about a cause-and-effect where these new rules made it fine to scrap the 5/8 rule, shouldn’t you have the rules finalized at least to make sure they’re effective? One might say these new academic standards were just a convenient way for the NCAA to quiet the coaches while trying to present the front that presidents are actually as interested in education as they claim to be.

You’re also living in a dream world if you think schools that aren’t graduating players are really going to pay the piper in the form of being held out of postseason play. Does anyone honestly think the NCAA is going to put in any standard that will consistently keep jock factories like Oklahoma or Arkansas from participating in the NCAA Tournament? The standards are going to be so weak that the number of schools missing won’t be much different than the number sidelined due to probation.

If there are schools in danger of getting the ziggy, it will encourage cheating in the form of grade tampering or pushing even more guys through the standard jock curriculum, meaning even more General Studies majors. Coaches will also put more pressure on athletes, teachers and academic support staffs to make sure their kids are eligible by any means necessary, even more than before.

The other real joke about the new standards forcing athletes to stay on a path towards graduation is that it’s not a rule that’s pro-athlete at all. Suppose an athlete decides after 1-2 years that he/she would like to change their major? Or maybe they want to take a more difficult major that could require a longer time? In both cases, they can forget it, because it might throw them off the NCAA’s preferred education track. They’ll be stuck in majors they don’t like, and if it results in a crappy education or a degree they could care less about, too bad. The result for many athletes is they're going to be rushed through classes to make sure they graduate. But this is what passes for reform for the NCAA, an organization that will always talk the talk about student athletes but will never do anything to endanger its profitability.

-By the way, now that these university figureheads are showing how serious they are about academics, does that mean all of these coming conference changes are off? Seems to me that having Boston College in the Big East instead of the ACC would show B.C. athletes that their school is serious about them graduating more than some pressure standards. Ditto for those at schools like UTEP, Marshall and South Florida moving to different, geographically insane leagues. If the NCAA was really interested in helping athletes get an education, it wouldn’t be allowing these ridiculous conference confederations where teams travel from Idaho or Colorado or Massachusetts to Florida for a league game.

-UTEP to Conference USA…still trying to figure that one out. Apparently the school feels good about moving from one perceived dead-duck conference to another perceived dead-duck conference that’s even more spread out than the WAC. Whatever. It’s also a shame so many schools are fighting for position in line for in case the Mountain West expands. The MWC has been overrated from the start and it isn’t even close to the BCS conference it thinks it is (especially in football, where the Mid-American Conference’s top half is better). If the WAC schools would get the ants out of their pants and stay put, a league with Boise State, Fresno State, Hawaii, New Mexico State, Nevada and Utah State, among others, would do quite well. It would’ve done even better with UTEP.

-Come on conference commissioners and athletic directors, don’t more than a handful of you have any kind of long-term foresight? It’s been proven over and over again that over-expansion is a recipe for failure for most leagues and that establishing a strong core of schools is the way to go, yet conferences continue to chase the fool’s gold. If it adds two more schools and splits into divisions as it sounds like is planned, the Colonial Athletic Association is only guaranteeing its future failure. For one thing, it’s spreading itself out way, way too far if it adds Northeastern and Georgia State. Unlike the ACC, the CAA is never going to make enough money to make this a worthwhile venture. By dividing into two divisions, the CAA is also ensuring that fans are never going to feel any kinship with schools in the other division. Even if, by some chance, Northeastern and Georgia State become the two best basketball programs in the league, the rivalry will be nothing like even a Virginia Commonwealth-UNC Wilmington game. The result is there will always be some schools feeling like red-headed stepchildren. Add in the football factor (the main reason the CAA wants to expand) and you’re going to eventually have issues and a division between the basketball and non-basketball schools. Expect schools like VCU, Old Dominion and UNC Wilmington to be looking at other leagues in the next 5-10 years, and if the CAA falls apart, don’t say we didn’t warn ya’.

-A lot of people are making a big deal about Louisville losing so many players to the NBA Draft, but the Cardinals will be just fine. They still have a good team coming back and the most important recruit of all, Rick Pitino. Plus, as mentioned in the diatribe about the 5/8, the big schools aren’t getting hurt by these early entries as much as the picture is painted. Mississippi State didn’t exactly get plundered last year, did it?

-It’s hard to know exactly what to make of Towson’s hiring of Pat Kennedy. It’s easy to see him as a vagabond coach in the Larry Brown realm when you consider all the head coaching jobs he’s held (in addition to Towson the list includes Iona, Florida State, DePaul and Montana). You wonder if this isn’t just a job to get in position for another job. He’s also been described as more recruiter than game coach, and he didn’t exactly tear it up at Montana the last two years. However, for all the potential negatives one can note, the fact is he can recruit. You saw it at FSU and DePaul, and his classes at Montana graded out well, too. Considering how long Towson has been down, which is essentially ever since it entered the CAA, that’s something the Baltimore-area school can badly use. Moreover, the cupboard isn’t bare at TU, it’s just raw. The Tigers were young last year and were competitive in most games in the CAA. If Kennedy can convince the players on hand to stay, the Tigers shouldn’t be all that bad next year.

-Is Kennedy trying to coach in every imaginable climate in this country? He goes from New York to Florida to Illinois to Montana to Maryland. Where will he end up next?

One list of Pat Kennedy's top 5 "next" destination possibilities:

1) Texas-Permian Basin

2) Grand Canyon

3) CCNY

4) Claremont-Mudd-Scripps

5) DeVry

Too bad U.S. International isn't around anymore, or we'd personally start a rally to get him in there.

-USIU used to have one of the cooler and more original nicknames in the country when it was barnstorming the country as a Division I independent as the “Gulls”. This brings to mind Syracuse, which is now just the “Orange.” How stupid is that? When that change is recognized in this column, it will be the same day that every school in the country is no longer referred to by a nickname but by its primary color. In other words, Temple’s Owls will become the Cherries.

Syracuse is and always will be the Orangemen. Or Orangewomen. Branding continues to be a concept that never should’ve been introduced to sports marketing. And you wonder how many thousand the Cuse paid Nike to come up with that logo which any middle school art novice could’ve created?

-Montana fans sound as though they wanted someone with local ties as their next coach, and former Grizzly standout and NBA vet Larry Krystkowiak is an excellent choice. The Grizzlies deserve a coach who will be around for a while. Montana has a solid fan base, good facilities and a winning tradition, and among its past coaches are Mike Montgomery (now at Stanford), Blaine Taylor (Old Dominion) and Stew Morrill (Utah State). This is a program that can be a perennial 20-game winner and can make a little noise out west.

- Just a guess here: among the other schools that will be happiest with their new coaches will be Marist, Princeton and Southern Mississippi. Watch for Larry Eustachy to have Southern Miss in the NCAAs in three years, max. We also like Loyola of Chicago’s pick of Jim Whitesell, who is from that area and had a lot of success at D-II Lewis, a school better known as a volleyball powerhouse. Those local coaches from below Division I are often much better than anyone knows. And Southern Illinois also shouldn’t miss much with Chris Lowery coming in, although you can expect some learning on the job for the first-time head coach similar to what Matt Painter experienced w/SIU last year.

-Let’s get this straight: Missouri was found to have committed 57 NCAA rules violations under Quin Snyder (and a number of other transgressions may or may not have happened but investigators couldn’t find enough evidence to support the claims, perhaps because the NCAA doesn’t have subpoena powers or enough firepower in its investigative staff). And yet, it’s almost certain that the Tigers won’t get a postseason ban for this? We’re searching for a term better than “ridiculous”…the NCAA should be flat out embarrassed about its sanctioning process if this is true. 57 violations is the definition of “rampant cheating” or “lack of institutional control.”

-Been spending part of the offseason catching up on some of the many games recorded during the season that we didn’t have time to watch. Even though last season is over, thoughts from a few of these games…

-Wagner wasn’t as good this past season as they were in 2002-03, when they made the NCAA Tournament, but the Seahawks are going to miss their senior class this year as much as last year’s. The fabulous Jermaine Hall and Detrick Dye were the seniors on that NCAA team, but Wagner is going to miss Nigel Wyatte, Courtney Pritchard and a number of other seniors from this year’s team. Wyatte especially was a stud this past season. The good thing is the Seahawks have coach Mike Deane to oversee the roster turnover, but although this year will be Deane’s second at Wagner, expect next year to be the real transition season.

-The Oral Roberts duo of Caleb Green and Ken Tutt (freshmen this past year) is going to be a pain in backsides for the next three years. Green is an operator inside with a soft touch around the basket, while Tutt is only 6-1 but has a high release on his jumper that allows him to be lethal from 10-20 feet. The Golden Eagles really landed some gems with these two, and if they can add a few supporting players around them, the Mid-Continent is going to have another strong team to go with the solid programs at Valparaiso and IUPUI.

-When not watching the Brewers, games from this past season, older games or the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs, another option in going out of my way to avoid the NBA is watching other college sports championships. The NCAA Division I volleyball title match between BYU and Long Beach State was fantastic, and all of the Lacrosse playoff games-mens and womens, Divisions I, II or III-are fun to check out. The most underrated event in all of sports, the College World Series, takes place in June, too.

-Just had to make a mention of the passing of Frank Fallon, former play-by-play announcer for Baylor basketball and the Final Four PA announcer from 1978-98. Fallon also used to call Southwest Conference games and NCAA tourney games for NCAA Productions in the 1980s. There haven’t been many announcers with a better voice.

-Finally, just something for fun. Picked up a copy of the 1974 Sports Illustrated college basketball preview magazine on eBay for a penny a few weeks ago. Good magazine, and found it interesting looking at their preseason top 20 for that season 30 years ago.

1)       Louisville

2)       N.C. State

3)       Indiana

4)       UCLA

5)       South Carolina

6)       Kansas

7)       Alabama

8)       Pennsylvania

9)       Purdue

10)   USC

11)   Detroit

12)   Maryland

13)   DePaul

14)   Memphis State

15)   North Carolina

16)   Arizona

17)   Manhattan

18)   Marquette

19)   Arizona State

20)   Boston College

Listed as the “Five to Watch” just outside the top 20 were LaSalle, Southern Illinois, Auburn, Seattle and Hawaii.

This is presented as much for fun as anything, we’re not exactly sure what conclusions to come to from it. But just some observations:

-The top-ranked team in the country (Louisville) came from none other than the Missouri Valley Conference.

-It’s amazing how much different conferences were 30 years ago, although back at this time conferences actually adhered to the now-radical principle of geographic fit. Besides Louisville, a number of other top 20 teams were in conferences much different from what we know them for now. South Carolina was in the ACC and both Arizona and Arizona State were in the WAC. Detroit, DePaul, Memphis State, Manhattan, Marquette and Boston College were all independents.

-Parity back in this time was spread across a much more representative sample of Division I than it is now. SI writer Curry Kirkpatrick notes in the preview: “Indiana, Kansas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Memphis State, Arizona, Detroit. All can be legitimate contenders for the national championship if certain things fall right. In fact, New York, that wasteland of campus disinterest, even has a team, Manhattan College, that can, as they say, win it all.” Contrary to college football, basketball has not been a sport always dominated by the same schools, and at this time the NCAA Tournament wasn’t as big of a television property yet. Meaning the huge land grant schools weren’t sinking big money into buying programs just yet.

-The WAC was one wild and fun league. Kirkpatrick wrote an excellent feature story about the eight-team group, which included coaches such as Don Haskins (Texas-El Paso), Norm Ellenberger (New Mexico), Jerry Pimm (Utah), Ned Wulk (Arizona State) and Fred Snowden (Arizona). Remember, UTEP at this time was not yet 10 years removed from its national title. And no, Arizona basketball history does not begin and end with Lute Olson.

-Considering how strong some of the Alabama teams were in the 1970s, it’s very  surprising that the Tide has never been to a Final Four. A number of SEC schools are relative latecomers to NCAA tourney success (Florida and Auburn both made their first appearances ever in the 80s) but Bama isn’t one of them.

-LaSalle was led by a player named Joe Bryant. Nicknamed “Jelly Bean”, he would later be the father to a son named Kobe.

-As many might remember or have heard, Detroit was coached by a balding gent named Dick Vitale. And the Titans really were good under his coaching. It’s interesting how college basketball history might be changed if Vitale hadn’t left UD for the Detroit Pistons, because Vitale could’ve been a prominent college coach into the 90’s.

-Some schools are in a perpetual state of seeking recognition. About Southern Illinois, Kirkpatrick noted SIU had “the second best big man in the land in Joe C. Meriweather. But the Salukis for some reason still have a small-college image, even though they have been big time ever since Walt Frazier led them to the NIT championship in 1967.”

-Seattle really was a Division I program then. So were Los Angeles State, West Texas State and Oklahoma City, among several others.

-Lastly, everyone knows about the NCAA Tournament and the NIT, but I’d never heard about a third tourney held in 1974 and 1975 until being clued about it in the preview. Indeed, the Collegiate Commissioners Association Tournament was an eight-team tourney for schools that didn’t make the NCAA tourney and was meant as a reward for those teams that finished second in their conferences. The NCAA Tournament was made up of only conference champions through 1974; the field was expanded to 32 teams for the 1975 tourney. Indiana won the CCA tourney in 1974; Drake was its final champ in 1975. With the NCAA tourney expanding, there was really no need for the runner-up tourney after ’75.