Remember the good old days of college sports? How about 1995? Common sense ruled. Or did it?
Just 30 years ago, UA basketball coach Lute Olson was forced to make one of his three assistant coaches a “restricted earnings coach,” limited to just $32,000 a year. Now the six UA assistant coaches — five assistants, one president of operations — make a combined $1.6 million.
In ’95, All-American guard Damon Stoudamire was suspended by the NCAA for one game, Damon’s “Senior Day,” because his dad accepted a free airline ticket. Now, UA transfer Henri Veesaar got an expenses-paid trip to North Carolina to accept what could be an offer of more than $500,000 to play for the Tar Heels.
Arizona star Damon Stoudamire answers questions from reporters in 1994.
Also in ’95, UA All-Pac-10 center Ben Davis was suspended from the 1995 NCAA Tournament because he reportedly accepted $3,400 from an outside agency. Now, former UA football players Jacob Manu, Jonah Coleman and Ephesians Prysock jumped to Washington for what has been estimated to be a cumulative $500,000.
In 1995, former Arizona athletic director Cedric Dempsey, at the beginning of his term as executive director of the NCAA, attempted to halt what he feared would be widespread spending — the arm’s race — by insisting “cost containment” was the safest future for college sports.
Nobody was buying that.
Last week, I asked Sean Elliott, Arizona’s 1989 NCAA college basketball Player of the Year, how he might’ve reacted to the NIL/transfer world of college athletics.
“My mom gave me $20 a month to spend, that was all I had beyond my scholarship,” Elliott recalled. “Sometimes I had to give $10 to Anthony Cook because he had no money. It would’ve been very tempting to listen to an offer for big money.
“At the end of my sophomore year, Coach Olson had been very hard on me. He really rode me, pushed me hard. Now I know it was his way of helping me get better. But then I didn’t like it. If someone had offered me the money being offered today, I probably would’ve taken it and left Arizona.
“I just wonder when all this money is going to kill motivation. I played hard to get better, to get to the NBA, to make money. Now they get hundreds of thousands of dollars in college. What’s the motivation?”
The arm’s race that Dempsey feared is upon us.
