Sport: The N.C.A.A. Calls Foul!

When you live next door to the cops, it is best to keep your nose clean. The University of Kansas in Lawrence, only 35 miles from the headquarters of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in Mission, Kans., last week painfully learned that lesson. The N.C.A.A. put the Kansas basketball program, which produced last year’s national champions, on probation for three years and withdrew one of its 13 athletic scholarships. The reason: Kansas improperly spent some $1,200 to recruit an athlete who ended up not playing for the Jayhawks anyway. The most hurtful part of the N.C.A.A. action was its ban on postseason competition, which makes Kansas the first team to be unable to defend its title in the play-offs.

Although severe, the penalties were not unprecedented. The N.C.A.A. stringently enforces its codes governing recruiting and payments to athletes. Over the years, New Mexico and North Carolina State, among others, have been hit with probation. Both the football and basketball programs at the University of Cincinnati were disciplined late last week for rules violations, and Southern Methodist University’s football program is currently serving the N.C.A.A.’s “death penalty” — a one-year total ban on competition — because players took under-the-table money.

$ The investigation of Kansas basketball, according to an N.C.A.A. report that mentioned no names, focused on a “highly visible transfer student.” Most observers think the player is former Memphis State star Vincent Askew, 22. Askew was urged to transfer to Kansas by then Jayhawks coach Larry Brown, who left this spring to pilot the N.B.A.’s San Antonio Spurs. Askew spent the summer of 1986 on the Lawrence campus but did not sign on. He returned to Memphis.

Whoever the unnamed athlete was, the N.C.A.A. says that among other things he received a $183 airline ticket from Kansas representatives, was paid $297.12 for work he did not perform and was lent $350 for a family problem — all relatively minor breaches of the recruiting rules, perhaps, but ones that the N.C.A.A. pointedly made an issue of on principle. “When I left Kansas,” said Brown last week, “I was led to believe that this was no big deal. I now realize that every time you are investigated by the N.C.A.A., it’s a big deal.”

The penalties could have been worse. The Kansas football program was put on probation from 1983 to ’85. When a school is guilty of two violations within five years, the N.C.A.A. can invoke the death penalty. “Kansas was on the bubble,” commented David Berst, N.C.A.A. director of enforcement, “but no severe violations involved any of the players on the team.” Kansas athletic director Robert Frederick said the school will not appeal the probation, which will subject recruiting to rigorous scrutiny.

Kansas is not alone in its troubles: 20 other college programs are on N.C.A.A.-ordered probation, and further hard-nosed action is expected. Five- time basketball champion University of Kentucky may face disciplinary action next year. The Oklahoma and Oklahoma State football programs have been asked by the N.C.A.A. to answer accusations of recruiting irregularities. In sheer volume of charges, the University of Houston may top the list. Some 250 alleged violations have been charged against its football program.