Columnist Dean Juipe: Two-faced Howland simply bad for athletics

Dean Juipe

Friday, April 4, 2003 | 9:51 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It was three years ago, yet I still remember the exact words I used in writing about Matt Doherty jumping from Notre Dame to North Carolina as head basketball coach.

"He's what's wrong with college sports," I said that day, referring to Doherty being the latest in an endless parade of coaches who stiff their employers, betray their players and ignore their team's fans, leaving behind valid contracts and broken promises.

Doherty had time remaining on his Notre Dame contract but liked the idea of coaching at North Carolina instead. He felt it was an upgrade and wanted to better himself, and he was able to leave the Irish behind without any sort of financial penalty or personal reprimand.

The fact that his players could not do the same was and is patently unfair.

Doherty resigned this week at North Carolina after a turmoil-filled reign, yet it's hard to derive any satisfaction from his failures with the Tar Heels, especially with Ben Howland being hired at UCLA as he was Thursday.

Allow me to upgrade my 2000 comment pertaining to Doherty: Ben Howland is what's wrong with college sports.

While some could politely say Howland is nothing more than an opportunist, I see him in a different light. I see him from the perspective of the program, the contract and the players he left behind.

It was only a year ago that Howland signed a seven-year contract extension worth $5.9 million to continue coaching basketball at Pitt. And as recently as a week ago, or before the Panthers were eliminated from the NCAA tournament, Howland was professing his allegiance to the program and dismissing reports that he would succeed the fired Steve Lavin at UCLA.

He was fibbing, perhaps even lying, because within minutes of Pittsburgh being ousted he was pricing houses in Los Angeles.

The fact that Pitt went so far as to offer to upgrade his contract as an incentive to stay was as unimportant to Howland as the commitment he had made to the Panthers' A.D., their fans and the players he had recruited.

Two-faced? Too bad.

Howland's only concern was feathering his own nest.

But here's the real repulsiveness of his decision: NCAA rules prevent players from transferring from one Division I school to another without sitting out a season. Coaches have no such restrictions.

An organization that ostensibly protects the welfare of collegiate sports has two sets of rules, one that imparts a severe penalty on an unpaid athlete who feels a need to transfer and one that looks the other way as a wealthy coach is lured by still another deep-pocketed suitor.

I've got a suggestion and a solution: make coaches sit out a year if they want to resign from a valid contract and take another collegiate coaching position.

It's fair and it's equitable. It's treating the goose and the gander with an impartiality that doesn't exist today.

It would also put the NCAA in a position where it could both legally and morally defend itself from a lawsuit filed by an athlete with a sharp attorney who is looking to exploit the discrepancies in the NCAA rule book. As it is, the NCAA has a working class it treats with the back of its hand and a privileged class it invites to banquets.

It caters to its buddies at the expense of its proletariat, which is neither right nor fair.

It's a subject the NCAA needs to address. It's a sore point that needs some salve.