Vol. 2 No. 3, April 1997
Inside the Aggies: Compliance Champions | Circle the Wagons | Counter Intelligence | Q&A With Ray Dorr
Aggie Flashback: Jeff's Journey

Compliance Champions
While Texas Tech Fails to Make the Grade, A&M Watchdogs Earning All A's

By Homer Jacobs

The combined records of the Texas A&M men's and women's basketball teams for 1996-97 were 18-36 overall and 6-26 in Big 12 play.

A&M's baseball team dropped its first two series of Big 12 play to Baylor and Missouri, respectively.

And the Aggie football team sat home during the holidays after a 6-6 season.

Disappointing? Yes.

But through all of the anguish, Aggie fans can take heart. You pull for Texas A&M, not Texas Tech.

As the Houston Chronicle published four stories in its Sunday edition March 9, detailing the downfall of Tech's athletic department, and specifically its academic integrity, there were chronologies of crime, biting columns and harsh statements throughout.

It was enough to make the statue of Will Rogers on the South Plains campus break its bronze mold and turn 180 degrees. Yes, maybe the back end of Rogers' horse should point toward Lubbock, not College Station.

You see, the carrot really is in Aggieland these days when it comes to compliance and academic support. Institutional control weaves through the A&M campus like Reveille VI on the way to chemistry class.

It was just a decade ago when A&M's integrity came under the NCAA and media microscope. Two probations later, and through all the chronologies and columns in the Dallas Morning News, all is quiet on the A&M front. In hundreds of newspaper column inches written on the Tech ineligibility case at the Big 12 Tournament, there was no references to the past problems at Texas A&M.

It was a subtle compliment from the Chronicle. Suddenly, nothing is rotten in Aggieland. A&M is not the dead horse anymore that everyone must beat when it comes to NCAA improprieties.

In comparison to Tech's unraveling, the summer job incident a few years ago doesn't seem so bad, does it? Actually, it was never as premeditated and evil as it was portrayed by some. There were some lax workers and managers at a summer job site, and the problem was magnified by A&M's checkered past with the NCAA.

But the problem has been corrected, and if the situation did anything for Aggies and their school, it's that A&M now boasts of the nation's premier NCAA compliance program. Tech's problems are just the latest example of how far A&M has come in regard to playing and studying by the rules.

"I'd say our compliance office headed by Tedi (Ellison) is second to none in the country," said Dr. Karl Mooney, A&M's associate athletic director for academics. "I don't know of any compliance organization in the country that has not only the resources, but a lot of compliance programs are viewed as the sheriff of the university. But here, it's more along the lines that we're all in compliance.

"A lot of that is a credit to Tedi and her group because the way they work with everybody, making sure we know the rules and follow all the procedures we can. They're kind of like our guardian angels in that they look over our shoulders and make sure we're doing it right to start with."

At Tech, there appears to be no guardian angels, evident by the hellish events that have beset the Red Raider program. Two men's basketball players were ruled ineligible during Tech's Big 12 Tournament game with Iowa State for not being certified as staying on an NCAA-mandated degree plan.

The oversight by Tech officials caused coach James Dickey and a talented, NCAA-bound basketball team to forfeit all of its conference games, dropping Tech to 8-20 for the season. More than anything else, it was a major blunder by an academic support team. But the overtones were obvious — and does the NCAA hate this — that Tech has lost "institutional control" of its athletic program.

At A&M, the opposite is occurring. Take, for instance, last year's football season.

A&M coach R.C. Slocum suspended his most experienced safety, Typail McMullen, for the season for violating academic and other team rules.

He later held arguably the team's top two players -- linebacker Keith Mitchell and wide receiver Albert Connell — out of the first half of the Southwestern Louisiana game for missing class earlier in the week.

Both moves hurt A&M directly, but there was no hesitation by Slocum. It was the right thing to do.

Texas Tech, on the other hand, played more ineligible players last football season than, well, a Nebraska national title squad.

Remember Sammy Morris, the Tech fullback who burned A&M for the winning touchdown in the 13-10 Raider victory? Just days later, Morris was ruled academically ineligible for the season. And how about defensive end Tony Daniels, the defensive stud who caused Dante Hall to fumble near the A&M end zone as the Aggies were about to take a 17-6 lead? He's been ruled ineligible for his senior season because he was academically unqualified to play as a freshman.

And let us not forget the Byron Hanspard case.: Zero-point-zero.

In basketball, A&M coach Tony Barone lost two players --senior Derrick Hart and freshman Steve Houston — to grades because the A&M gumshoes found problems in their report cards. The problems were called failing grades.

The point is not to hammer Texas Tech. The hammer will fall soon enough in Lubbock. But A&M officials must be commended for what is happening on campus.

A&M has become paranoid, yes, in terms of its stance with the NCAA. But while you likely have to log in your time in the bathroom in the athletic department, a proactive stance on top of the paranoia has kept A&M far ahead of the pack in compliance.

"What just happened at another school, they're now having to look back and say, 'How should we have done this?'" Mooney said. "I think Tedi gets a lot of credit for taking a real proactive stand and just getting us on the right track to start with."

Mooney said A&M is able to avoid most eligibility and certification problems because the athletic department has a specific person (Pam Reynolds) in the office of Admissions and Records who specifically checks such matters. Reynolds is one of the many "checks and balances" Mooney says keeps A&M from having oversights such as the ones that are rolling through Tech like hell-bent tumbleweeds in a March dust storm.

Mooney said Tech, however, does not have such a person whose sole responsibility is to act as a watchdog for such certification problems. And to certify just a good student-athlete, Mooney says, there is a complicated, 13-step process that only experienced academicians can decipher. Add the mess that a poor student or transfer drops off at the door, and the job becomes a major task.

But the A&M checks have required people like athletic Wally Groff to write a few big checks as well. A&M uses a state-of-the-art computer program developed on campus that helps sift through mounds of NCAA mumbo jumbo. Red flags fly up when discrepancies in compliance or eligibility occur.

The program cost $65,000 to develop, and a portion of athletic department money goes toward the salary of a school computer programmer who upgrades the program anytime the NCAA updates its manual.

A&M is high-tech. Tech, apparently, is just Tech.

Of course, there will be more problems for the A&M athletic department over the next few years, both on and off the field of play. But in the back rooms of the athletic department and in the academic support cubicles at Cain Hall, the Aggies are playing like national champions.

"We have had two athletic directors (since 1989) who have really seen the need to put the resources into compliance and academic support services, not just because of the recruiting advantages it gives you, but because it does prevent those kinds of things from happening," Mooney said. "You just have to feel for the kids on the Tech basketball team who are just looking at all their hard work over two semesters and years, really, for the seniors. They thought, 'Hey, we're going to the Big Dance.' And then suddenly, it all evaporates because of an error that could have been avoided.

"Without jumping up and down on Tech, because it is unfortunate, I think we've had some leadership here that has allowed us to step right up to the plate and hit a home run."

And for Texas A&M right now, that figurative home run should rekindle the spirit of Aggieland as much as any touchdown run, slam dunk or literal homer over the Olsen Field fence. Join the Foundation
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