Columnist Dean Juipe: Coaches have all the advantages

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, July 19, 2000 | 10:51 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

The trouble with college sports is Matt Doherty.

He wouldn't see it that way, of course, but those blinders may be blocking his view.

As of a week ago, Doherty is the new basketball coach at North Carolina. A former player with the Tar Heels and a starter on their 1982 national championship team, he broke into tears when his alma mater selected him to succeed Bill Guthridge as head coach.

The emotional moment would have been universally touching if not for the fact Doherty had four years remaining on his contract at Notre Dame.

He coached one season with the Irish, posting a respectable 22-15 record and contributing to a second-place finish in the National Invitation Tournament. He used that success to routinely speak optimistically about Notre Dame's future and his desire to rebuild the program into a national powerhouse.

But then Carolina called.

Suddenly, Doherty turned his back on Notre Dame and followed the money trail. With the Tar Heels offering $350,000 per season on a six-year contract and with considerable supplemental income assured from deals with TV, radio and Nike, Doherty came out of the switcheroo with piles of cash. He also gets to take over an established program that annually challenges for national honors.

Did we mention that he still had four years remaining on his Notre Dame contract? And that he took all of his Notre Dame assistants with him? And that school starts in South Bend next month and that the recruiting season peaked this week? And that one of his assistants has already contacted Notre Dame's two 2001 recruits about changing their plans and going, instead, to Carolina?

If you sense more than a token indignity, it's the result of the NCAA permitting coaches to chase their whims while at the same time restricting any and all freedoms of the athlete.

Once enrolled, a college athlete all but surrenders his or her legal rights and is cast into a subordinate role that is, at best, potentially stifling, and, at worst, demeaning. In exchange for a scholarship or maybe as little as financial assistance for purchasing books, the athlete helps bring hundreds of thousands of dollars to the school and is neither paid a red cent nor allowed to financially capitalize in any respect.

In addition, should that athlete have a desire to transfer to either a greener pasture or an obscure outpost, the NCAA has an assortment of legislative hoops that are intended to block the move. A transferring athlete is also required to sit out an entire year before regaining his or her eligibility.

Yet Doherty -- and others like him, both before and since -- hop and skip from job to job, breaking contracts in the process, without facing even the slightest negative repercussion. The process is so stilted that N.C.'s president, Bill Friday, even had the audacity to praise Doherty for his "integrity" moments after introducing him as the school's new coach.

Integrity? Where's the integrity in breaking a contract simply to feather your own nest?

Doherty merely reaped the benefits of a prejudicial system that treats well-lawyered coaches as free agents and clout-free athletes as servants.

It isn't right. At the very least, why doesn't the NCAA require Doherty to sit out a year?