UT should remember proverb of glass houses
Mickey Herskowitz
Houston Post
1994
The University of Texas runs one of the cleanest college football programs in America and always has. Which doesn't mean that Texas, or its ex-students, never paid a football player or provided cars and phony summer jobs.
They have, the whole 10 yards.
This commentary is prompted by the suggestion that the Longhorns are unhappy because they feel the Texas Aggies were let off lightly by the NCAA. The Aggies lost their bowl and TV privileges for 1994, the only substantial sanctions in a five-year probation.
The Aggies had been investigated for a solid year, after the disclosure that A&M players were paid for summer work they did not perform. Coach R.C. Slocum suspended four players prior to the 1993 Cotton Bowl and would later dismiss two from the squad. The less visible damage is the continued impression that the Aggies are chronic law-breakers. They have received some form of probation seven times since the early 1950s.
In the same period, there were six investigations of Texas, resulting in five reprimands and no penalties. The reasoning was this: since Texas had not been disciplined for the previous violations, it shouldn't be treated as a repeat offender. The moral: don't get caught the first time.
I once worked on a book with a Texas booster who boasted of having supported 10 athletes with what he called $10,000 "scholarships". In his files, he had the letters to prove it. He wasn't modest about his generosity, and one day an investigator from the Southwest conference office called on him. The sleuth was kicked out of his office. Nevertheless, he stopped funding the players.
The statute of limitations on these cases ran out long ago, but Texas exes, of all schools, have no cause to complain or gloat. Only in recent years has the NCAA put such a premium on what is referred to as "institutional control." The Aggies were held accountable for the actions of a prominent grad, whose company in Dallas employed the players who took a hike.
In the case of Texas, the summer jobs didn't exist at all, except on paper, and no one had to fly to Dallas or Alaska to check it out. Only a few blocks from the campus, friendly legislators kept 12 to 16 players on the state payroll. The players did not know where they worked or what they did. Your tax dollars at work.
None of this is meant to excuse A&M on the grounds that everybody does it. Nearly everybody has, of course, and some try harder than others to obey the rules. No coach was more honest with his players than Darrell Royal. But college football had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy long before the military.
One reason Royal retired was the reaction of a Texas regent to his complaints about rampant cheating by Oklahoma. The regent advised the most successful coach in the school's history to quit b****ing and just outbid them. Deciding that a whole lot of fun had gone out of coaching, Royal retired to a more sedate lifestyle.
To my knowledge, there is not a coach in the Southwest Conference today who doesn't go to lengths just short of physical pain to stress compliance. I put Slocum near the top of the list. The NCAA praised him and his staff even as they put the Aggies on the hot plate.
The argument isn't about Texas receiving special treatment, or whether the Aggies deserve our sympathy. Simply put, the time has come to pay the players a modest monthly wage for the 30 hours or so they devote each week to football. Bobby Bowden and Lou Holtz favor the idea. Many coaches do, along with 100 percent of the players.
This would stop making hypocrites of those who judge them and those who write about them.