Posted on: Friday, April 23, 2004

Keep your shirt on, NCAA

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

When Jason Ching walked into the locker room at Notre Dame Stadium during a 1996 recruiting trip, his already wide eyes quickly took in the storied names on the lockers:

Joe Montana, Tim Brown, John Huarte, Paul Hornung, Johnny Lujack and ... Jason Ching?

Hanging in the locker was a Notre Dame jersey with number 99 on it, the number Ching wore at Punahou School, and a sign that encouraged him to make the jersey part of the school's history.

"That underlined everything right there," said Ching, a USA Today High School All-America defensive lineman who eventually played for Notre Dame and is now a Chicago-based certified public accountant.

Many Division I-A schools, including the University of Hawai'i, have employed jerseys with recruits names or numbers as part of their sales pitch, but under a slate of proposed NCAA rule changes being fast-tracked to adoption, the practice could be prohibited by this summer.

Stirred to action by allegations of recruiting abuses at Colorado and elsewhere, the NCAA was shocked to find how loose some of its rules were. Indeed, there apparently was no specific rule in the phone book-thick manual against the services of prostitutes.

Players have talked of being picked up in corporate jets. Said UH coach June Jones, "One school — and I won't say which one — sent the Nike jet to American Samoa for a recruit."

But in preparing to institute much-needed and wide-ranging changes in the recruiting process, the committee has swung the same Louisville Slugger at everything it has seen. Some recommendations, such as prohibiting charter flights, lavish wining and dining, palatial hotel suites, limo use, drugs and alcohol are both overdue and no-brainers.

Others, such as doing away with the jerseys (which players haven't been allowed to keep) and forbidding the placement of a player's simulated highlights on a stadium scoreboard, tend toward the manini.

"You know the jerseys are bait, but they are fun," said UH linebacker Ikaika Curnan, who was also recruited by Wisconsin and Arizona. "It is something you'll remember."

UH quarterback Tim Chang said he was whisked to "the best steak place in Seattle" while at Washington. When he visited California-Berkeley, Chang said he was shown a locker with a jersey with his name on it and, later, a highlight film of his games at Saint Louis School. "It was neat. It gave you a feeling of what it might be like to be there," Chang said.

If some of the proposed rules like jersey restrictions are passed, Curnan said, "I feel so sorry for the new high school recruits coming out."

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.