July 2, 2009

Court Overturns $2-Million Verdict for Former Coach at U. of Louisiana-Lafayette

A Louisiana appeals court has struck down a $2-million jury verdict in a race-discrimination lawsuit brought by a former football coach at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

The coach, Jerry Baldwin, one of the few African-American coaches in big-time college football, was fired in 2001 after three losing seasons. He sued the university, asserting he had been dismissed because of his race. In 2007 a state-court jury awarded him $2-million.

The university appealed that verdict, and on Wednesday the state’s First Circuit Court of Appeal ordered a new trial in the case. Among other problems, the appeals court said jury selection and expert testimony in the trial had been flawed.

The coach’s lawyer, G. Karl Bernard, told the Associated Press he would ask the appeals court to reconsider its decision, or appeal to the state’s Supreme Court. —Libby Sander

July 1, 2009

NCAA Appeals Committee Reduces Penalty for Alabama State U.

The NCAA’s Division I Infractions Appeals Committee has reduced a penalty imposed on Alabama State University last year for major rules violations in its football program.

In December the Division I Committee on Infractions placed the university on five years’ probation for breaking NCAA rules on recruiting, student aid, eligibility, and academic fraud. Alabama State appealed the ruling, asserting that the five-year probation was “excessive” and constituted an “abuse of discretion.”

Yesterday the appeals committee issued a decision that reduced the penalty from five years to three. The infractions committee failed to consider a two-year probation the university had already imposed on itself, the appeals committee stated.

The reduced probation period will conclude in December 2011. —Libby Sander

June 29, 2009

NCAA Will Recommend Sickle-Cell Testing of Athletes

As part of a settlement involving the NCAA, Rice University, and the family of Dale R. Lloyd II, a Rice football player who died after a workout in 2006, the NCAA announced on Sunday it would now recommend that athletes be tested for the sickle-cell trait.

The condition, a genetic blood disorder that affects one in 12 African-Americans, can result in “exertional sickling,” which CBSSports.com reports is the leading cause of death among NCAA football players in the last decade. During strenuous exercise, sickle-shaped red blood cells can clump together and pile up, blocking blood flow to limbs and organs. Seven out of 19 nontraumatic college-athlete deaths since 2000 are related to sickle-cell complications.

Mr. Lloyd’s family sued Rice for failing to test for the trait and faulted the NCAA for being negligent in warning about the risks associated with the blood disorder and overexertion

A National Athletic Trainers’ Association survey in 2006 found that 64 percent of Division I-A schools already screen for the trait. The NCAA now recommends that athletics departments check for the sickle-cell trait in all athletes, if it is not already known, during their required medical examinations.

Those with the condition will most likely still be able to compete but may need more time to adapt to intense workouts. —Ashley Killough

June 23, 2009

At Forum on Title IX's 37th Anniversary, Talk Focuses on Academics, Not Just Sports

Washington — At a White House roundtable today marking the 37th anniversary of Title IX, participants celebrated the strides made in athletic opportunities for women since the landmark gender-equity law was enacted, in 1972. But a large part of the conversation also centered on the academic component of Title IX, which has traditionally been overshadowed by the attention on sports.

At the roundtable, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and a White House senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, joined a panel that featured prominent athletes, such as Dominique Dawes and Billie Jean King, as well as representatives from NASA, the Education Department, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They spoke of the key role of Title IX, which bans discrimination based on gender in education programs receiving federal funds, in ensuring fairness and access for women in higher education.

In his presentation, Mr. Duncan announced $2.4-million in grants to 13 groups that help high-school girls improve their proficiency in mathematics and science. Other panelists praised the announcement, calling it a positive step in what they see as a growing need for more opportunities for girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and math. —Ashley C. Killough

June 20, 2009

Kansas State U. Audit Finds Possible Financial Shenanigans

An audit released Friday by the Kansas Board of Regents has found thousands of dollars worth of payments to companies owned by current and former university officials, The Kansas City Star reported. The officials include Bill Snyder, the football coach; Tim Weiser, a former athletics director; and Robert S. Krause, a former vice president for institutional advancement and former athletics director.

The 34-page audit, which describes other poor accounting and possible IRS problems for the university, is part of an exit review by the Board of Regents of Kansas State’s former president, Jon Wefald, who left this year.

The audit, prepared by the firm Grant Thornton, does not call the accounting practices illegal, and it praises Mr. Wefald for, among other things, increasing enrollment and academic excellence at the university.

The report describes Mr. Krause as a “visionary” active in Kansas State’s economic development but goes on to say that “the concentration of influence by President Wefald through his aggregation of reporting and oversight duties in Mr. Krause has led to a blurring of the lines” between some of the entities reviewed, which included the university’s foundation, the alumni association, a golf-course management group, and the athletics department. —Heidi Landecker

June 18, 2009

NCAA Stands By Penalty Requiring Florida State to Forfeit Football Victories

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has rejected Florida State University’s appeal of a penalty that requires the university to forfeit victories in football and nine other sports because of academic misconduct by athletes, The Tallahassee Democrat and other news organizations reported today after Florida State released a transcript of the association’s response.

The NCAA’s Division I Committee on Infractions imposed that penalty and others on Florida State in March after an investigation of an academic-cheating scandal involving 61 athletes who competed while ineligible in 2006 and 2007. The university had protested only the victory-forfeiting penalty, while accepting the NCAA’s findings and other sanctions. (See the Tallahassee newspaper’s article for a lengthy description of Florida State’s arguments against the penalty and the infractions committee’s responses.)

The case is far from over, however. Florida State has until July 1 to file a rebuttal, after which the NCAA can file another report — and Florida State will be allowed to respond to that. The university’s president, T.K. Wetherell, vowed to pursue all appeal opportunities with the NCAA “before going anywhere else.”

“This committee is just wrong,” he told the Associated Press. —Charles Huckabee

UC-Davis Settles Lawsuit With Female Athletes

The University of California at Davis and three female athletes have reached a settlement in a federal class-action lawsuit alleging sex discrimination in the university’s sports program, the university announced.

The athletes — two club field-hockey players and a club rugby player — sued Davis in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento in 2007, asserting that the university had not provided sufficient opportunities for female athletes to participate in sports.

The settlement, which awaits a judge’s approval, calls for the university to create a varsity field-hockey team and to contribute $110,000 to the development of club sports. It also requires Davis to reach specific proportions of male and female athletes by the 2019-20 academic year. —Libby Sander

June 8, 2009

Plans for Oklahoma State U.'s Athletic Village Are Still On Hold

Eleven months after Oklahoma State University lost $282-million from a facilities fund in the stock-market meltdown, plans for a 151,000-square-foot athletics village on its Stillwater campus remain at a standstill.

The Chronicle reported last fall that the project, which is to include indoor and outdoor football-practice fields, a baseball stadium, a tennis complex, a soccer-track complex, and an equestrian center, was on hold. At that time, a representative of the university said an indoor-practice facility for several sports team, which would cost $60-million, would be its first priority when money became available.

Not much has changed since then. The university still lacks the $60-million to complete the facility, as well as the funds to build the rest of the athletics village.

T. Boone Pickens, whose donations were largely responsible for the recent renovation of the football stadium as well as much of what was invested in the facilities fund, said a finished athletics village could now take as long as 10 years. The 81-year-old billionaire oil tycoon told the Tulsa World that he hopes it is completed before then.

The university is in the final stages of a $283-million renovation of Boone Pickens Stadium, which it financed with the $125-million that remained from Mr. Pickens’s initial gift, $63-million more that was donated by Mr. Pickens in October, a $35-million loan from the Oklahoma State University Foundation, and $10-million raised by the athletic director, Mike Holder.

The university spent about $50-million in 2007 to purchase and remove all structures within the 100-acre site slated for the village, a move that was controversial locally. The site remains empty. —Erica R. Hendry

May 31, 2009

College Sports Programs Use Privacy Law to Hide Their Inner Workings, Newspaper Says

College athletics departments across the country routinely invoke a 1974 student-privacy law to conceal information about the inner workings of their sports programs, keeping the public in the dark about violations of NCAA rules governing the $5-billion-a-year enterprise, The Columbus Dispatch reported.

The Ohio newspaper investigated how all 119 colleges in Division I-A interpret the federal statute, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or Ferpa, which bars colleges from releasing students’ personal information without their written permission.

Former U.S. Sen. James L. Buckley of New York, who was the law’s chief legislative sponsor, told the newspaper that Congress’s intent was to shield academic records from public view. But several of the colleges contacted by the Dispatch cited the law in refusing to release any documents relating to NCAA violations. Others released heavily redacted documents, blacking out all the names mentioned in reports.

The law has been used to shield the identities of athletes who have cheated or committed crimes, of coaches who have broken recruiting rules or committed academic fraud, of rogue boosters, and even of a television broadcaster, the newspaper said.

“That’s not what we intended,” Mr. Buckley, now a retired federal judge who is 86, told the Dispatch. “The law needs to be revamped. Institutions are putting their own meaning into the law.” —Charles Huckabee

May 28, 2009

U. of Kentucky Men's Basketball Program Suffers a One-Two Punch

Lawsuits and NCAA investigations rank close to the top of an athletic director’s list of potential headaches. Mitch Barnhart, the University of Kentucky’s athletic director, has been hit with both in the past 24 hours.

The head coach Mr. Barnhart fired in late March after two seasons, Billy Gillispie, sued the University of Kentucky Athletic Association in federal court yesterday. In a 24-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Dallas, Mr. Gillispie says the association, acting in a “make-believe world,” has failed to honor the terms of the written agreement under which he was hired by withholding payments of $1.5-million a year for four of the five years remaining on his seven-year contract.

In a statement, Kentucky officials said yesterday that Mr. Gillispie’s lawsuit was “surprising” because the university had still been negotiating a “good faith” separation with the former coach.

Then, this afternoon, the university announced that it filed a separate lawsuit earlier today in Kentucky’s Franklin Circuit Court. A lawyer for the university, Stephen L. Barker, said in a statement that the “memorandum of understanding” under which Mr. Gillispie was hired in 2007 was not an enforceable contract and therefore did not require the university to give a reason for terminating him. Mr. Gillispie repeatedly rejected the university’s attempts to reach “a definitive long-term employment contract,” Mr. Barker said.

Meanwhile, a Memphis newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, reported that the team coached by the man Mr. Barnhart hired to replace Mr. Gillispie, John Calipari’s University of Memphis, is under preliminary investigation by the NCAA for possible rules violations. Kentucky hired Mr. Calipari under a $32-million, eight-year contract on March 31, just days after dismissing Mr. Gillispie.

In a statement released yesterday, Kentucky officials said Mr. Calipari had received a letter from the NCAA stating that he is not at risk of being charged with any violations in the case. The coach “was forthcoming with the University of Kentucky during the hiring process about any issues under investigation at the University of Memphis at that time,” the statement read.

But if the board room and the courtroom bring only stress to Mr. Barnhart and other administrators in Lexington, Ky., some solace might be be found on the hardwood next season. In addition to bringing along at least two of the top players who had committed to play for him at Memphis, Mr. Calipari has held on to many of the top recruits who committed to the Wildcats before his arrival. The result? A recruiting class that experts say could be the most talented in recent memory. —Libby Sander