Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 20, 1993                   TAG: 9310200174
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

BLACK COACHES SEEKING HELP FROM U.S. CONGRESS

After a 90-minute meeting Tuesday with an estimated 50 men's and women's coaches, Rep. Kweisi Mfume, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that a task force will be established to look at the problems that have grown out of recent cuts in scholarships and coaching jobs in Division I basketball.

"We are in a battle to win the lives of our children," said Mfume, a Democrat who represents Maryland's 7th District.

That battle led to the BCA's decision to boycott the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Issues Summit that began Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C., and could lead to other action, including a possible boycott of the first official practice day Nov. 1.

Among those attending Tuesday's meeting were some of the nation's most prominent college coaches, including John Thompson of Georgetown, Nolan Richardson of Arkansas, Randy Ayers of Ohio State and George Raveling of Southern Cal. Raveling is a vice president of the NABC.

Asked how long this battle would last, BCA Executive Director Rudy Washington of Drake said, "Until the changes are actually made."

Among the changes the BCA wants the NCAA to consider making are: re-establishing a 15-scholarship limit that existed as recently as two years ago; keeping the current academic guidelines for freshman eligibility intact rather than proceeding with more stringent rules beginning in 1995; increasing the access college coaches and players have to disadvantaged youth in their respective communities, regardless of whether they are talking to prospective recruits.

Under the new rules, a freshman would need to enter college with either a 2.5 grade-point average or a 900 score on the Scholastic Assessment Test (21 on the American College Test) to be eligible for a Division I athletic scholarship. The standards currently are 2.0 and 700 (or 18).

Thompson, the most impassioned speaker at a news conference after the meeting, said many of the coaches attending Tuesday's session would not have been given the opportunity to play, or eventually coach, under current NCAA guidelines.

"The problem is standardization," said Thompson, who staged a one-man boycott of Proposition 48 guidelines a few years ago by leaving the bench and walking out of the Capital Centre before a Georgetown game. "If you standardize all the missions of all the institutions out there and make them all the same, then a certain element of society is automatically eliminated - and that includes the poor and certain Afro-Americans. We coaches are all for standards. But we are not for the misuse of academic instruments by educational institutions. You just can't do that."

Though many of the NCAA guidelines the BCA members find objectionable have been in existence for a couple of years, Washington said his organization's recent course of action grew out of complaints by high school coaches during a national convention in Atlanta earlier this year.

"It wasn't just one guy. It was a great number of coaches coming up to people like John Thompson and George Raveling and Nolan Richardson and telling them that they couldn't get scholarships for their kids," Washington said. "I think today is a start to help alleviate that problem."