He knows -- and tells -- truth about NCAA

Wednesday, March 9, 2005
By JOHN LEVESQUE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

If the NCAA has a heart and a brain, it will promote Bill Saum and David Price, give them enormous raises and tell them they can't have anything to do with enforcing the NCAA's rules anymore.

That would please B. David Ridpath even more than the event that occurred Monday in King County Superior Court.

In the meantime, knowing that the NCAA agreed to pay Rick Neuheisel $2.5 million of a $4.5 million settlement has made Ridpath "absolutely giddy."

Ridpath doesn't like the NCAA.

More precisely, he doesn't like how the NCAA operates.

Even though his impressions of Neuheisel are of a guy who plays fast and loose with the truth, Ridpath is delighted the former University of Washington football coach has taken a bite out of the organization that purports to regulate college athletics.

"You would not believe how they jump on people and how they target people," Ridpath said yesterday from his office in Starkville, Miss.

Actually, after reading about NCAA tactics the past few weeks, I think I might.

"For years they have skewered people for not following the rules as they see them," Ridpath said. "... They hold people to a different standard, and yet when held to that same standard they throw money and try to spin themselves out of trouble."

Ridpath, an associate professor of sport administration at Mississippi State University, knows the skewer's sting as intimately as anyone. Four years ago, when he was athletic compliance director at Marshall University in West Virginia, he was run through and then slow-roasted over the NCAA's coals.

His story is fascinating because it's similar to what occurred at the UW, except for who took the fall and ended up suing the university.

In the case at Marshall, it wasn't the football coach. Bob Pruett is still going strong, even after his football program was hit with four years' probation by the NCAA. Instead, it was Ridpath, who held the position analogous to that of Dana Richardson, author of the infamous UW memo that said participation by athletic department personnel in "March Madness" basketball betting pools was permissible.

Ridpath never did anything as egregious. His "crime" was not being aware of a scam that allowed Marshall athletes to "earn" $25 an hour for doing little or no work at a company owned by a longtime booster. He had been hired to clean up a messy program, but he became the scapegoat when the university hired a pricey attorney to protect itself and its high-profile employees like Pruett.

Why do I believe him?

Because Marshall University promoted Ridpath and gave him a raise after it got slapped by the NCAA. That would tend to silence most people, but the NCAA dossier on Ridpath has a black mark next to his name, which means he isn't likely to get another job in the compliance field.
So he is suing Marshall and Pruett, he has testified before Congress and he's happy to talk to just about anyone else about the NCAA's excesses in rule enforcement. Since the NCAA doesn't have to abide by the sort of due process we're accustomed to seeing in the American system of jurisprudence, Ridpath says it is free to do just about anything it wants in investigating suspected doers of wrong.

Visions of thumb screws in a dungeon and firing squads at dawn float immediately to mind. Ridpath indicated it's not far from the truth.

"I've seen them make people cry, belittle people, use covert racism, tell lawyers to shut up and say they have no rights," he said. "It's unlike anything you've ever seen.

"They will ruin the reputations and careers of anyone who doesn't follow or who misinterprets the rules as they see them."

Ridpath said he believes he and Neuheisel were targeted because they didn't cave in.

"I was very vigorous in defending Marshall," he said, "and if you give the NCAA static, they don't like that. They will get you in the end because they know they can."

Ridpath finds particularly sweet irony in the NCAA's complaint that it wasn't able to mount a full defense in the Neuheisel trial because of a ruling by Judge Michael Spearman that arose out of a discovery that the NCAA had changed its bylaws but hadn't notified Neuheisel's defense team.

"I was not allowed to give my case, either," he said. "I was shot down as some incompetent nut job. ... When the NCAA took me down, it was a sad day for college athletics because I cared about the rules and I was shown the door."

Ridpath said nothing will change until the NCAA enforcement process is overhauled.
Starting with Price, the vice president of enforcement, and Saum, the director of gambling activities, would be fine with him.

The testimony from the trial over Neuheisel's lawsuit against the UW and the NCAA indicates Price and Saum do indeed embrace a systematic disregard for fairness and openness in investigating suspected violators and in applying punishment.

My favorite revelation from the trial involves Saum, who directed the early investigation of Neuheisel's participation in a March Madness pool in 2002.

An internal NCAA e-mail showed that Saum suggested investigators who were trying to co-opt one of Neuheisel's chums should consider going to the man's boss and saying he wasn't cooperating with the investigation.

Another favorite moment came when Price admitted the NCAA violated its own bylaw when it failed to tell Neuheisel it was going to grill him about allegations that he had taken part in auction-style betting pools.

I believe these two tactics can be found in the "Blackmail and Cheat" chapter of the NCAA Code of Investigative Behavior.

And I agree with Dave Ridpath that it's high time Price and Saum were "rewarded," the way Ridpath was, for their diligent adherence to NCAA practices and procedures.