Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 26, 1990 TAG: 9006260053
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: BILL BRILL LENGTH: Medium
Bestwick has fully recovered from the physical problems that forced him to step down as athletic director at South Carolina. He has regained 40 pounds he lost and no longer takes medication.
Nearing 60, he is once again "the old redhead," as he likes to refer to himself.
Bestwick still is employed at South Carolina, and last year he made a thorough financial survey of 35 colleges, primarily the members of the ACC and Southeastern Conference, along with Eastern independents. UVa athletic director Jim Copeland said it is "a hell of a survey, one of the most comprehensive reports I've ever seen."
Bestwick has written a report on his survey for the athletic directors' magazine, and he made an oral report at their convention earlier this month.
The information he obtained only strengthened Bestwick's longtime views of many of the ills of college athletics.
He remains opposed to paying athletes a stipend - "That's a bunch of bull," he says - and he says few people in the public, and not many more in the media, understand that most programs run in the red.
His study was a comparison of budgets, where the money was spent, and it enhanced his belief that there is a lot of waste.
You should understand by now that the 1991 NCAA convention will deal with cost containment, and the presumption is there will be cuts across the board, including football and men's basketball, conceded to be the revenue-producing sports.
Bestwick says cuts in those two sports are ludicrous, that it would be done only because of a sense of fairness, which should not be construed as good business.
What really offends him is the way non-revenue sports are conducted at most, if not all, of the 35 schools he surveyed.
He is aware of the restrictions required by Title IX, a government edict aimed at giving women athletes a fair share of the scholarship aid. But, Bestwick says, there is enormous waste in some of those programs, as well as in men's non-revenue teams.
Before you call him a chauvinist, hear him out.
What Bestwick's survey, done by sport, race and gender, substantiated was that 96 percent of the non-revenue athletes were white, and an astonishing percentage of them were from out-of-state.
At UVa, for example, Copeland said 70 percent of the athletes were non-Virginians, with football having the largest percentage of in-staters.
Teams such as North Carolina's dominating women's soccer team are comprised almost exclusively of out-of-state students.
Obviously, out-of-state scholarships are far more expensive at state schools. Further, Bestwick says, in many of these sports, those with country-club backgrounds - golf, tennis, swimming - many of the athletes really don't need scholarships.
What he would propose would be that in non-revenue sports, athletes would be offered tuition, or room, board and books. They could choose one, but not both. The rest of their scholarship aid would be determined by need.
Told that need-based scholarships have been discussed for years but that nobody ever had been able to compose a plan that seemed equitable and workable, Bestwick said with a snort, "If we can put a man on the moon, I think we should be able to come up with a need-scholarship plan."
So how could schools regulate the recruitment of athletes, so that more opportunities would be available to in-staters?
UVa's Copeland said no school would order a coach to recruit strictly in-state, "but you could control it to some degree with the financial commitment."
In other words, the non-revenue coaches would be given less funds, including recruiting money, and they likely would bring in more players on the far cheaper in-state scholarships.
When Bestwick was told that the coaches would react negatively to restrictions on the premise that would make them less competitive nationally, he said most schools really didn't care that much.
Other Bestwickisms:
He says the ACC should expand and take back South Carolina and add Virginia Tech. "That's what the TV people really want them to do," he said. "The [football] TV ratings in Virginia are lousy."
Reorganization will occur in the next few months. "I think things will be really interesting," he said. South Carolina has been mentioned as a possible expansion entry into the Southeastern Conference, as well as remaining in an expanded Metro.
His golf game, it must be said, is not quite what it was because he doesn't chip as well. He remains a fierce competitor, however, as some gin rummy partners discovered.
by CNB