Ain't College Grand?

The deadline for underclassmen to declare for the NBA draft came and went this weekend, and I feel robbed again.

James Worthy was the last of the big stars to make the jump, joining Terry Cummings, Dominique Wilkins, Clark Kellogg. Quentin Dailey & Co. The only top returning next year will be Ralph Sampson, and he would have gone too it the Los Angeles Lakers had been able to put together a deal to guarantee the Virginta center that he would end up in the smoggy city.

I don't like all this hardship business. I don't like to see basketball players skip their last set on in college. I was overjoyed when Herschel Walker decided not to bring the same practice to college football this year, but you and I both know that he will go next year after he wins the Heisman Trophy that he wants so badly.

Why do all of these players decide to go pro? It can't be that they think they will be more admired. How could they? The NBA is an infinitely less classy outfit. Instead of announcers with the wit and charm of Billy Packer, the pros give us Johnny Most, the man with more chins than he has irritating phrases.

When you think of college basketball coaches, the great strategists come to mind: John Wooden, Dean Smith, Bobby Knight. NBA coaches are getting better. Very few are left who wear those medallions on big metal chains around their necks. The new trend setters have been the three Lakers' coaches since Bill Sharman--the ones who lost out to Richard Gere for the lead in "American Gigolo."

The reason for going pro is simple--money, as much as possible. That's why Worthy waited until after Sampson announced to make his own decision. He knew that he would be worth more in a draft that didn't include Sampson, so when Sampson stayed, Worthy went.

And you really can't blame the players for trying to bring in the megabucks by going hardship. After all, if the USC football team is any indicator, the best college players only pull in $2,000 a year under the table. High school stars may be even more undercompensated. According to the Birmingham Post-Herald, current University of Alabama forward Bobby Lee Hurt only received a percentage of the revenues from soft drink machines and gate receipts while in high school--even after he threatened transfer to another school.

He should have gone to arbitration.

Apparently, the only time that the "amateur" athlete can make a really big score is when he is being recruited. Georgia Tech basketball coach Bobby Cremins has already spent over $100,000 on recruiting this year and claims that he isn't done yet.

Word has it he's a big tipper.

But Cremins at least tries to hide his expenses in the regular budget. When LSU assistant coach Ron Abernathy had a briefcase containing $3,000 in cash stolen while on a recruiting trip recently, head coach Dale Brown claimed that Abernathy was carrying the money around to pay some personal bills.

They pay their assistants well down in Cajun country.

When the best players go through high school and college with money always dangling in their faces, we can't expect them to do anything but go for the pro bucks as soon as they can. And this is what saddens me.

I've always preferred college sports to the pros because the games seemed purer. The older I get, though, the more I wonder. The NCAA needs to do something now, before even its pretense of amateurism fades. Sure, the ruling body just hit USC with a two-year TV ban for its indiscretions, but will that be any more effective than the one-year disqualification from bowl appearances imposed on the Trojans in 1980?

Dr. Gene Hooks, athletic director at Wake Forest, thinks that a total ban on recruiting in the sport involved would be a better remedy, especially in the case of schools with less prominent programs.

"For instance, if the NCAA told Wake Forest we couldn't appear on television or go to a bowl for the last two years, that wouldn't have exactly wiped us out," he said.

One gets the notion that NCAA enforcement actions are only for appearances, and then only when more pressing matters don't interfere.

Clemson, whose football team finished atop the wire polls last season, got a letter from the NCAA on March 29 stating that a number of allegations of rule violations had been substantiated. Why, then, hasn't Clemson been sentenced yet? According to one Atlantic Coast Conference official the delay is probably the result of a big television deal that the NCAA has negotiated for the Clemson-Georgia game slated to open next fall's football season.

If the NCAA can't do any better than this, then maybe it should go pro and spare Herschel Walker the agony of making a decision next year.