The lure of sex as a recruitment tool must be stopped
by Tony Basilio
In June of 1986, the world of college athletics was knocked off its axis of complacency by the sudden death of 22-year-old University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias. Just a few days after he was named as the first pick in the National Basketball Association draft by the World Champion Boston Celtics, Bias perished while celebrating his perceived invincibility, the victim of a crack cocaine overdose and a sports culture that didn’t seem to care.
After a feeble attempt to cover up the evidence, Maryland Head Coach Lefty Driesel lost his job, and the NCAA instated drug-testing policies and drug-abuse education programs for its athletes. They heard the warning and heeded it, and big-time college sports are cleaner today for their efforts.
More recently, the University of Colorado has been embroiled in a controversy that is sending ripples through all of college football. To wit: seven women claim to have been raped by Colorado football players or recruits since 1997. Most of the alleged incidents took place during the tenure of current Head Coach Gary Barnett.
With his program under investigation and his job at stake, the suspended Barnett promises to clear his name and remain at the university. That doesn’t seem likely; something needs to change, at Colorado and elsewhere.
As was the case after the Len Bias tragedy, the time has come for some serious self-examination in college sports, only now focusing on the use of sex—and therefore the objectification of women—as a recruiting tool, especially in football.
It’s a scenario that plays out all too frequently: A highly touted high school prospect is flown in on a private jet provided by the school. Like visiting royalty, he is greeted at the airport by school representatives and taken to a multi-star hotel. He will take a cursory look around campus, maybe meet a coach or two, watch some game film, tour the facilities, and listen to the pitch.
Then it’s time for the real inducements, which usually involve a wild night on the town with a couple of current players. A “hostess” is sometimes provided by the school, often a young woman who has no qualms about showing a virile young prospect a good time. (The school knows who the good girls are, by the way, and they are paired with like-minded athletes. An athlete who identifies himself as “spiritual” will most likely be shielded from the debauchery.)
The recruit then stays out all night, drinks to excess, and perhaps has several women made available to him. If the party goes well, maybe he decides to sign a letter of intent and play football for the university next year. Small wonder that these kids arrive on campus with a ravening sense of entitlement; Caligula should’ve had it so easy.
To be sure, this scenario doesn’t play out with every prospect and every hostess at every school, but it goes on enough that, for the first time, the NCAA is addressing the near-epidemic use of sex as a recruiting tool. To quote Dennis Dodd, a widely-traveled college football expert with CBSsportsline.com: “[The NCAA] turn their heads when it comes to sex and the use of women because it goes on everywhere. They need to do something about this before it’s too late. That is if it isn’t too late already.”
The most troubling aspect of all of this is that through such practices, coaches and administrators give tacit approval to the sexual objectification (and thereby, the mistreatment) of women. Then they express outrage when athletes act on similar impulses after they arrive on campus, as may have been the case at the University of Colorado. Richard Lapchick of the Center for Sports and Society observes that, “Colleges have allowed a kind of culture to exist where they’re using sex as a vehicle. Formally or informally, they’re creating a climate that sets in motion a feeling of license on the part of players at that school that they can have sex with women against their will.”
NCAA President Myles Brand has at least given lip service to the idea there may be widespread abuses. He has promised a task force that will examine recruiting practices and define concrete regulations for official recruiting visits.
Just as the death of Len Bias prompted a sea change in our attitude towards drug use in sports, let’s hope that this latest avalanche of negative press will shame the NCAA into measures that will make the ugly business of Boulder a thing of the past. College football players will stop treating women like concubines only when the coaches and administrators in charge stop encouraging them to do so.
Tune in and talk sports with "The Tony Basilio Show" each weekday from 3-6 p.m. on the network (670 WMTY-AM, 850 WKVL-AM, 1140 WLOD-AM, 1290 WATO-AM, or 1400 WGAP-AM).
February 26, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 9
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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