Thursday, April 23, 1998 | 9:38 a.m.
News that the NCAA's board of directors had passed a rule Wednesday allowing Division I athletes to hold part-time jobs didn't exactly generate an enthusiastic response from UNLV coaches.
Far from it, in fact.
"This is going to be a mess," said women's track coach Karen Dennis. "I think it could be a problem for coaches when it comes to scheduling competitions and practices. Kids already have a zillion excuses for missing a practice. Now they can tell us they have to work or they had to cover for somebody at work."
"It might be self-defeating," said UNLV men's basketball coach Bill Bayno. "It might bog the kids down. We're going to evaluate it. But it's going to be hard. It's not easy to fit work in with school and basketball."
"I don't really like it," added head football coach Jeff Horton. "Number one, you're here to get a degree and number two you're here to play the sport you got your scholarship in. Now you toss in working in that equation and something's going to suffer."
The rule takes effect this August. The board, which consists of 15 college presidents, including UNLV's Carol Harter, met in Indianapolis on Wednesday and adopted the recommendation made by the NCAA's management council.
The ruling means that for the first time in several decades, Division I athletes on scholarship can hold part-time jobs during the school year, including those arranged by school boosters. However, there is a $2,000 limit per school year on the amount of income an athlete can earn and freshmen athletes may not participate. Previously, athletes on scholarship were only allowed to work during summer and winter vacations.
Many opponents of the new ruling believe it will lead to cheating. Others fear that it will provide an unfair recruiting advantage for schools in large metropolitan areas where part-time jobs might be much more plentiful than someplace like, say, Pullman, Wash.
"When you've got as many players as we have, it's going to be a headache to get that many jobs," said Horton. "We've have 85 players on scholarship which means you have to come up with 85 part-time jobs that they can work into an already very busy schedule. And what if one guy gets a job making $4.75 an hour while one his teammates gets $8 an hour at his job? And what about transportation? What if the job is on the other side of town and a kid doesn't have a car? He'll have to catch a bus and that'll take away even more time.
"My biggest concern is that something is going to suffer, either academically or athletically," Horton continued. "We're usually not done practicing until 6:30 or 7 at night. Then they have study hall until about 9:30. That means they'll either have to work late at night or early in the morning."
"We run our practices around the sun," said Dennis. "If it's real hot, we'll practice either early in the morning or in the evening. But what if someone has a job at those times? We're already working around lab schedules so that they can graduate on time. Now you throw in a job. We'll never be able to get anything done around the office.
"I understand that they need to make money, but they already do," added Dennis. "Nobody has a better paying job on campus than someone with an athletic scholarship. They get about $14,000 each year for 20 hours of work each week, and they're paid in advance. What other job can do that?"
Horton also expressed concern over possible abuse of the new rule by overzealous boosters.
"I think it's going to be a hard rule to enforce and follow up on," he said. "One reason I'm surprised the NCAA passed the rule is because of the involvement of boosters. They had been trying so hard to eliminate that part of it."
UNLV athletic director Charles Cavagnaro, while admitting there are some "logistics" that needed to be worked out, doesn't believe the involvement of boosters will be a big problem.
"If you think about it, boosters already set up jobs in the summer already for a lot of these athletes," Cavagnaro said. "And there will be the same kinds of regulations in place. You'll have the 'equal work for equal pay' guidelines. Students athletes will be paid the same as someone else. So you won't have athletes getting $15 an hour for a job someone else makes $5 an hour at."
Cavagnaro also pointed out that an athlete playing in a fall sport could always wait until the spring to work , or vice versa.
"Why deny someone the chance to earn some money or perhaps get a job that might help them down the road with their career?," he said.
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