Flak Magazine: Kick Out the Sports! 12.22.03

The National Collegiate Athletic Association formed in 1906 in response to President Theodore Roosevelt's worry that colleges weren't policing themselves effectively. It's been 97 years, and all it takes is one look at the sports page to conclude that the NCAA, for whatever reason, has not solved problems ranging from under-the-table payments to academic violations to general moral turpitude.

It's time to bring in a new sheriff, and that sheriff is the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

What is the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, you may ask? To those outside academia, it appears to be merely a mild-mannered accreditation agency. But to academic institutions in the Southeast, this powerful cadre of tweed can make or break their existence, giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to how a school structures and conducts its educational programs. A thumbs down can mean the loss of accreditation, and with it millions of dollars in federal aid for the school and its students. The hits to a school's pocketbook and reputation could put it out of business, as if it were some rogue truck-driving institute.

On Dec. 9, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools put Auburn University on probation for one year — kind of a thumb sideways — for violations involving its athletic department. Not, as the NCAA would, probation for just Auburn's athletic the whole university. The Southern Association believed that the school's board of trustees did too much day-to-day meddling, particularly in the athletic department, and demanded the school president be firmly in control.

As a result of two years' worth of legal wrangling between Auburn's trustees and the Southern Association, the list of problems the association uncovered is sealed under court order. It's nonetheless safe to assume that stuff like two trustees sneaking out of town on a trustee/booster's plane with the current president and athletic director in tow to conduct interviews with a potential head football coach for a position that was not, technically, open, would be a no-no.

If Auburn doesn't clean up its act in by next Dec. 9, the Southern Association has the authority to pull the school's accreditation. That could kill, say, the English department along with the athletic department. Forget the NCAA forcing serial cheater Southern Methodist to drop football temporarily in the late 1980s — this would be the real death penalty.

I mean, demanding that the school president have control over the athletic department in order to a keep college alive — if you held every NCAA Division I university to that standard, a lot of schools could disappear!

Imagine, roving bands of unusually erudite Wyatt Earps, busting down the outlaws in the nation's athletic programs. It would be High Noon, but Gary Cooper would be wearing a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows instead of a cowboy hat, and wielding a questionnaire instead of a six-shooter.

Then again, maybe Auburn and other schools won't back down and change how they run their athletic programs. And sometimes having the school president firmly in control of athletics can get a school in trouble, as happened in the debacle at St. Bonaventure, where the now-deposed leader figured a welding certificate from a junior college was good enough to get a hoops savant enrolled and eligible to play basketball.

But the accrediting agencies may be the best hope to bring some order to the college sports frontier. To paraphrase an old college cheer, the Southern Association, the Southern Association, he's our man, if he can't clean things up — no one can.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.