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Keep athletes within the law: Zero-tolerance policy needed

By Daily Bruin Staff

Oct. 29, 1996 9:00 p.m.

Wednesday, October 30, 1996

ETHICS:

Sports industry must decisively crack down on all convictsTwo
weeks ago, there was a decision taken by a university official that
was almost unprecedented in the world of college sports.

A university president, not a coach or athletic director,
imposed sanctions on the school’s football team when team members
broke the law.

This is the situation in a nutshell: On Oct. 7, at least six
members of the University of Rhode Island football team rushed into
the Theta Delta Chi fraternity house, while 25 of their teammates
barred every exit from the house. The six players allegedly beat up
three fraternity members. Four days later, an in-house
investigation was completed.

In light of the findings, university President Robert Carothers
decided to forfeit the team’s next game, on Oct. 19 against
Connecticut, thus surrendering all revenue that the school would
have taken in. Needless to say, the decision damaged the team’s
chances for the Yankee Conference title. This was no slap on the
wrist. This was decisive action taken against a team whose members
had violated the law.

"This is not about football," Carothers said. "This is about
community standards. This is about character."

The trailblazing doesn’t stop there, for the university
sanctions continued with two players being removed from the team
and four others being suspended indefinitely.

This happens alongside a time when Lawrence Phillips, late of
the Nebraska football team, gets convicted on battery charges for
pushing his ex-girlfriend down the stairs, only to receive a
four-game suspension from head coach Tom Osbourne and continued
play in a national championship game. Finally, a person with the
power to make a decisive ruling in light of alleged or proven
judicial infractions actually does so.

This decision takes on even greater significance in light of the
banter surrounding this past weekend’s marquee matchup in pro
football, with Barry Switzer coaching the Cowboys against Jimmy
Johnson’s Dolphins.

I will never forget a Sports Illustrated cover in 1987 with
then-star Oklahoma Sooner quarterback Charles Thompson being led to
a police car in handcuffs after being convicted on drug trafficking
charges and sentenced to prison.

This event was just the final straw that finally got Switzer
booted out of Oklahoma after a tenure that saw steroid abuse,
machine gun fire from the football dorm, fights and charges of
sexual assault. The sad part was that the school’s administration
stood idly by, counting the Sooners’ take from the Orange Bowl.

Or how about Jimmy Johnson’s University of Miami football
program, comprised of teams that were so notorious that the word
"convicts" was interchangeable with "Hurricanes". His grip and the
grip of Dennis Erickson (now with the Seattle Seahawks) were so
loose that Sports Illustrated called for the temporary termination
of the program in a cover story.

Through all of the hype leading up to the game this Sunday,
there was no mention of the shameless way these men allowed their
teams to flaunt the law and continue playing while the universities
seemed to do little, if anything, to stem the tide.

The worst in all of this is the way that the University of
Nebraska has handled the exploits of Tom Osbourne’s team.

When the Cornhuskers won the national championship a year ago,
they had on the field at some point or another a convicted batterer
in Phillips, a wide receiver with attempted murder charges pending
in Riley Washington and a defensive lineman, Christian Peter, who
had served out a conviction for sexual abuse.

It is infuriating that the University of Nebraska administration
would have allowed people like this to represent their institution,
not to mention allowing them to attend the school on
scholarships.

This blatant disregard is brought into even more stark relief by
this fact: When the New England Patriots drafted Peter and found
out about his track record, they promptly cut him. Now let’s
compare: an institute of higher learning allows Peter to stay in
school while the NFL, not known for it’s scruples, doesn’t pick him
up.

It is naive to think that collegiate sports isn’t big business
and a prime moneymaker for the universities. This does not,
however, give university administrators the right to let members of
said teams, and the student body as a whole, run roughshod over the
law and school policy while remaining in school and continuing to
compete.

The actions taken by Carothers need to herald a new way in which
universities handle these sorts of infractions by members of their
athletic teams: decisively and with authority, instead of in a
haphazard, passive manner.

As an example of university policies that need to be given more
credence, a task force at the University of Nebraska, enjoined in
October of 1995, made this recommendation: "That the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln adopt a policy of zero-tolerance of abusive or
violent behavior that disrupts the community by threatening the
health or safety of any person or persons."

Amen.

Mark Shapiro

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