KENTUCKY 'SOLUTION' ONLY ENHANCES PROBLEM

By Art Thiel P-I Columnist

MONDAY, June 5, 1989

Section: Sports, Page: B3

As the store clerk rang up the newspapers, she glanced over the headlines that told of the latest revelations in the scandal.

"This is such a shame," she said absently to the customer. "It's almost a sin."

"You mean the corruption in Kentucky basketball?" I said, and almost immediately regretted it, owing to the clerk's stare that would have withered an asteroid.

I was in Lexington, and I had just blasphemed.

"No," she said, creating in a moment a chill factor of 30 below. "I mean that they keep bringing up this crap."

I nodded quickly, scooped up my papers and left, hoping I could make the door before her lasers burned through my back and struck vital organs.

That was late March at the Southeast regional during the NCAA college basketball tournament. That was before the NCAA rolled a grenade under the Kentucky program, blowing it off TV and out of postseason play, stopping just short of blowing it off the sports map altogether with the so-called death penalty - no hoops for a year, period.

It was also before Thursday's announcement that reform-minded Rick Pitino was leaving the New York Knicks to eventually lead the Wildcats from the NCAA grave.

But to suppose that those two developments will have any substantial bearing on the state's attitude towards college basketball, as typified by the store clerk, is to suppose that Imelda Marcos will be content with a pair of old sneaks.

Pitino tried to talk the talk at his press conference Thursday.

"Stay away from our practices and our players," he warned UK's infamous boosters, who turned the $100 handshake with players into high art. "I think it will be a great challenge for us - seeing something so rich in tradition brought back in a correct manner."

Yet despite reading from the high moral script that pleases NCAA ears, Pitino blathered into the same trap that makes Kentucky such a cesspool of hypocrisy, arrogance and a tragically splendid paradigm for the corruption of big-time college sports.

"I don't want people here thinking of oil or horses but of Kentucky basketball tickets," he said. "I want them to be the most precious thing in life some day."

Yo, Rick. That's the problem, not the solution.

But how is Pitino supposed to understand that perspective when he is given a contract that contains the unwritten admonition to win at all costs?

His seven-year deal starts with a base salary of $105,000, or about what Don James gets to coach football after 15 seasons at the University of Washington.

But while James pulls an additional $100,000 to $200,000 from perks, Pitino's cornucopia is speculated to be worth another $600,000 to $800,000 from weekly radio and television programs, endorsements, speaking fees, clinics, shoe contract and summer camp, as well as other perks like country club memberships and the use of an automobile.

That doesn't include probable slush-fund payments destined to abate the wanderlust that burbles up in Pitino every couple years. He will, of course, let important UK folks know that coaching basketball at Kentucky is such a pressure-filled job, you know?

There are people in Kentucky who are not completely devoid of reason, most notably UK president Dr. David Roselle and athletic director C.M. Newton, both on board largely after the NCAA crimes for which Kentucky was arrested were committed. They have drawn wide praise for initiating and sustaining Kentucky's long-overdue housecleaning.

Yet Kentucky has been busted before - twice, in fact - to no apparent consequence for subsequent "reformers." The NCAA laid on a sort of death penalty on legendary Coach Adolph Rupp in 1952-53, forcing the Wildcats to play only exhibitions one winter because of payments to players. In 1976, Rupp's successor, Joe B. Hall, lost scholarships for two seasons due to recruiting violations.

Punishment is more severe this time, because the sanctions will also cost the school about $2.3 million in future as well as past revenues. Yet that didn't stop Kentucky from preparing a coaching contract worth perhaps three times that amount.

Pitino, Roselle and Newton will toil valiantly to keep the place spotless for as long as they can, if for no other reason than another arrest guarantees the death penalty.

But the horse breeders and coal-mine owners continue to pay large sums to UK and Pitino to generate pride and joy in a state otherwise economically and culturally depressed. Some silly NCAA rules, even national shame, won't overcome that.

If Pitino and the reformers don't keep UK basketball tickets the most precious things in the lives of many Kentuckians, they will find somebody who will.

Art Thiel is a P-I staff columnist.

cf/dr

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