Presidents must take blame, too

What's the first thing that happens after the NCAA opens an investigation into a particular school? Someone gets fired.

What typically happens after the ruling and the penalties are announced? Someone else gets fired.

Usually, it's either the head coach or one or all of his assistants. Often, the athletics director will fall on his sword as well. But guess who remains to feign shock and vexation and vow to never let these kinds of things happen again?

The college president, that's who.

Remember what Andrew Sorensen, the former Alabama president, said in one of the school's responses to the NCAA? Sorensen excoriated several of the disassociated boosters, referring to them as "renegade boosters." He singled out the best known of the group, Logan Young, saying "Mr. Young has caused a substantial injury to the university and to the principles of (the NCAA) and the SEC."

Yet it didn't stop Sorensen from previously accepting Young's generous financial gifts to the university or telling him he could have a sky box to comfortably watch the games. It also didn't stop Sorensen from hobnobbing with Young and engaging him in personal conversations. Everyone at Alabama embraced Young when it was convenient.

The bottom line is that college presidents want to have it both ways. And it's time they are held accountable.

Who says?

Well, a distinguished professor in Texas recently made this point and, regrettably, hardly anyone noticed. It's really too bad because it makes more sense than all the reforms that come firing out of NCAA President Myles Brand's laser printer like hamburgers on a fast-food assembly line.

Michael H. Granof, a professor of accounting at the University of Texas, recently wrote a piece in the New York Times stating it was time to move up the food chain in terms of holding people accountable. Granof, who is also on the university's athletic council, says that big-time athletic programs are "the most visible and high-risk activities of a university. Whether the president of a scandal-ridden college actually knows about any charges of rules violations is besides the point. He should know."

Granof wrote that one way to reform the system is to apply the lessons of Enron and Arthur Anderson to collegiate athletics: "When a university's athletic program is engulfed in scandal ... more than the coaches and players should be held responsible. So should the university's president."

Granof pointed to sweeping legislation passed by Congress to hold corporate chieftains accountable for their actions. He states that the NCAA should come up with its own version of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which makes the top officers of public companies liable for what they report.

Granof told me recently that in addition to holding the president's feet to the fire, "I would hold trustees accountable, similarly to the way in which we hold members of corporate boards of directors accountable."

Sorensen ruled at Alabama during one of its darkest periods. Under his tenure, he saw to it that Gene Stallings was pushed out and Mike DuBose hired. (He claimed he didn't want DuBose, but who was the president?) After DuBose's affair became public, Sorensen said publicly that he didn't know "for sure" if he could still trust his football coach "to abide by NCAA regulations. That makes it most difficult," Sorensen said.

He hired and fired Bob Bockrath as athletics director. He allowed DuBose to remain and eventually brought in Mal Moore. (He claimed he didn't want Moore, but who was the president?)

This NCAA disaster occurred on his watch. Why didn't Sorensen ever stand up and take responsibility? Well, because nearly from the moment of his arrival he was looking for a better job. He practically begged for the Vanderbilt job, even lobbying Alabama supporters with Vanderbilt ties for help. He went after the job at North Carolina. He tried to return to Florida, where he had been provost, but people there howled at the prospect.

Meanwhile, problems were running rampant on his own campus. Shortly after the eviscerating sanctions came down, Sorensen finally found another job as president of the University of South Carolina.

Bottom line: He was the captain of the ship. However, while the careers of many connected to the program were destroyed, he survived and even prospered.

Don't you think there is something terribly wrong with that?

And if the NCAA would listen to Granof, it might be different in the future. His proposal -- just like with corporate America now -- would require the president to certify that the athletic department is in compliance with all rules.

"If university presidents knew their jobs were on the line," says Granof in his proposal, "they might be expected to institute the same types of reforms that corporate executives did when faced with the Sarbanes-Oxley law."

It's a good idea. But it makes too much sense for the NCAA to adopt. It is much easier firing coaches than CEOs, particularly since the college presidents are now in charge of making the rules.

(Paul Finebaum's column appears Tuesdays and Saturdays in the Mobile Register. Contact him at finebaumnet@yahoo.com.)