Shoe scandal ripples through UW athletics

The University of Wisconsin men's basketball team, coming off its most rewarding season since 1941, faces potentially high penalties in a university investigation into possible NCAA violations stemming from athletes' acceptance of unadvertised shoe discounts, officials acknowledge.

Penalties in the case could include suspensions of players, similar to those announced Thursday for 26 football players and one women's soccer player.

But previous cases suggest that the NCAA might not stop there. Six teams have been stripped of their Final Four NCAA tournament records after the NCAA determined that ineligible players had competed.

Athletic Board chairman David McDonald said Friday that it's too early to predict what will happen. He added, "Suffice to say that whenever you're talking about people's eligibility being in question, you've got to be concerned."

At least seven members of the incoming men's basketball team, including four starters, accepted discounts, and several were tardy in repaying interest-free credit accounts at a local shoe store, a Wisconsin State Journal investigation found in July.

Employees at The Shoe Box, 25 miles northwest of Madison in Black Earth, told the newspaper that men's basketball and football players have been the most frequent recipients of discounts.

The impact of the UW's probe into possible NCAA violations began to emerge Thursday as university officials announced suspensions, ranging from one to three days, of 26 members of the football team and one women's soccer player for buying shoes at lower prices than those generally available to other students. The athletes were ordered to pay the value of extra benefits they've received to a charity and, in some cases, to perform community service.

In announcing actions against 81 fall sports athletes, Melany Newby, a UW-Madison vice chancellor leading the probe, said the university would apply the same standards to men's basketball players and other winter-sports athletes who will be involved in the next phase of the investigation.

But because the basketball team is scheduled to play 27 games, compared to the football team's 12 games, it appears likely according to NCAA guidelines that basketball players committing violations will have to sit out twice as many games as football players.

The suspension terms are based upon an NCAA guideline, devised in December, that recommends athletes sit out a certain percentage of the season, depending on the value of benefits they improperly received.

The suspensions announced Thursday of football players showed that the NCAA was somewhat flexible. For example, athletes receiving $300 to $499 in improper benefits will miss one game, or 8 percent of the season, although the NCAA guideline called for them to miss two games.

"That's the template," McDonald said.

Assistant men's basketball coach Brad Soderberg said Friday that his team is concerned about the potential length of suspensions for some of its players, based on the length of suspensions of some football players.

Other coaches and athletes have reason to worry, too.

Athletes on the women's basketball team, volleyball team, men's hockey team and the men's and women's teams from other sports, including crew, soccer and track, also have received unadvertised Shoe Box discounts from time to time, according to store owner Steve Schmitt and other employees.

Newby vowed the university probe will be thorough.

Members of the incoming men's basketball team accepting Shoe Box discounts included, in alphabetical order, Roy Boone, Travon Davis, Mike Kelley, Andy Kowske, Maurice Linton, Mark Vershaw and Charlie Wills, the State Journal found.

Shoe Box records provided by Schmitt showed that Boone owed $100 on a charge account; Davis, $855; Linton, $711. In addition, senior Duany Duany owed $590. The records don't reveal the players' total purchases or the amounts of the discounts they received.

Athletic Department records recently obtained by the newspaper highlight a further connection between Schmitt and men's basketball players, who gave him six free tickets in 1997 and 1998 while his relatives and employees received several additional free tickets.

NCAA rules permit players to give away their complimentary tickets, but forbid trades for items of value.

Schmitt said Friday that he complied with NCAA rules. "They didn't exchange it for anything," he said. "You've got my word."

UW officials, citing a federal student-records privacy law, deleted the names of players supplying the free tickets to Schmitt before forwarding the documents to the State Journal under the Wisconsin Open Records Law.

Schmitt said most of the tickets came from "Doc Duany, I think, because he came from Sudan and his family wasn't local."

In another matter, last season's Final Four appearance could be in jeopardy if the NCAA rules that any UW players were ineligible to compete at the time of the tourney, previous cases show.

An NCAA bylaw describes a specific penalty in such cases:

"When a participant in an NCAA championship is declared ineligible subsequent to the championship competition, all of the student-athlete's statistics in the championship; the team's championships won-lost record and all of its statistics shall be asterisked and footnoted, and its place in the final standings shall be asterisked and noted as vacated."

NCAA records show that 25 schools, including six that appeared in the Final Four, have been stripped of their men's basketball tournament appearances in the past 42 years.

The University of Massachusetts, which finished in third place in 1996, was the most recent team to suffer that fate after star Marcus Camby was found to have violated NCAA rules by taking money and gifts from agents. Although school officials weren't aware of his violations at the time of the tourney, they were forced to repay the $151,000 it received for reaching the Final Four.

McDonald said that as the next phase of the university's investigation begins, "There's a sense of urgency. Nobody likes how close it came yesterday."

The suspensions were announced just three hours before the football team began its season against Western Michigan.

The men's basketball season begins Nov. 21 at Tennessee.

Story Filed By The State Journal