Cox’s job was more pressure than rewards

By Bob Hertzel

MORGANTOWN — He operated mostly in the background, which was the way the denizens of a university’s athletic compliance department prefer it. When their name makes it into headlines, when television lights glare into their eyes as reporters poke foam covered microphones in their face, chances are the school is facing trouble.

For the better part of 12 years, Brad Cox left the limelight to the Don Nehlens, Rich Rodriguezes and Bob Huggins of the world, but in many ways he was right there alongside them, educating them on what they could do and couldn’t do, monitoring what they did do.

Twice matters got hairy for Cox, as they often will in such a position. There was the Jonathan Hargett scandal that rattled the rafters at the Coliseum and cost Hargett his eligibility but left the university without blame. Then there was a scandal with the men’s soccer program that cost Coach Scott Seabolt his job and that has the university tied up in a lawsuit that has yet to go on.

But considering just how complicated the NCAA bylaws are concerning such matters as recruiting and eligibility, and looking at events that have mushroomed into scandals at Oklahoma, Indiana and currently at USC surrounding O.J. Mayo, it really isn’t much.

The other day Cox announced that after a dozen years in compliance, which is a job filled with more pressure than rewards, he was leaving his post as the director to move in as an assistant director of admissions at his state school. During his time at WVU, Cox was the liaison between admissions and athletics and saw that athletes remained on track to graduate.

As experienced as Cox is with the system, he possesses many valid opinions on what is right with it, what is wrong with it and how it might change in the future.

“If you go back to the 1980s, nobody had compliance, only people,” he said. “You had people who did fundraising and compliance or facilities and compliance. Then the Knight Commission came out with its big report and it really shook things up.

“Schools started having a compliance office. Ed (Athletic Director Pastilong) was probably one of the first ones in the country with Roger Jeffreys. But it has gotten more complex since then. There’s more rules to deal with. Even more is what the university has to do to have oversight. You have to have a lot of monitoring and assistants in place, even just to monitor phone calls,” he said.

While phone calls to recruits seem to be a rather simple matter, there were scandals involving basketball coach Kelvin Sampson both in Oklahoma and Indiana, forcing him out of the coveted Hoosier job after it was learned of more than 300 illegal recruiting calls.

Considering the magnitude of the bylaws that cover everything from amateurism to recruiting to academics, it would seem there is much room to simplify the NCAA’s code.

“There have been attempts at different areas of the manual to simplify and I think they’ve been successful, but there are so many rules and rules upon rules,” Cox said. “It’s for a good reason. They are trying to level the playing field for everyone and because of that there will always be substantial rules.”

Cox, however, believes there are a couple of areas that need to be addressed.

“One thing is there has been a trend over the last several years for sports to have different rules. When I do my rules orientation with the coaches, I would do football separate from men’s basketball, from women’s basketball, from soccer and the other sports because the rules are different,” Cox said.

“That not only makes it more complicated and hard on us to make sure the rules are being followed. It makes it more difficult for everyone. The rules are so divergent they need to be brought back together. When I first got in you didn’t have football specific, basketball specific rules like you do now. Now some sports are breaking out, like baseball, which recently broke out their own set of rules.”

The second area of concern is Bylaw 12, amateurism.

“They need to readdress what you can or cannot do to jeopardize your eligibility because there’s so much more out there now with the Internet,” Cox said. “When we had (Kevin) Pittsnogle he was so popular there were a lot of sites out there about him. This last year we had Owen Schmitt and Pat White. There’s so much out there and it shouldn’t come back on the kid or the institutions.”

There are also all these offseason playing opportunities like the summer league just completed in Pittsburgh and off-season baseball summer leagues, to say nothing of club and AAU teams on which kids play before they come to college.

“You’ve got these kids playing on these club teams and there’s a question of what they can receive. There should be a way to deregulate that and make it agreeable for everyone and give them a chance to play on teams,” Cox said.

The problem is you can’t be everywhere at once and most compliance staffs, including WVU’s, are understaffed.

Take the Hargett, Mayo or Reggie Bush situations, where there were charges of an agent offering money and gifts even before the athlete was in college and then after they were enrolled.

“You can’t be with them 24-7,” Cox said. “Then, once a kid is here 3-4 years and is a professional prospect, you worry if an agent has a runner on campus, taking them out to dinner once a week or buying them drinks. You try to educate them, make them understand what chance they may be taking if they go down that road. You can lose your eligibility and there be a lot of impact with that.”

There are people who push for the NCAA to pay its players and do away with amateurism, especially with the magnitude of the TV contracts it has in football and basketball, but Cox does not see that coming.

“Amateurism is No. 1 in the core principles of the NCAA and they want to stay with that,” Cox said. “I don’t see the time that is going to come into being. I know they have tried to do things like having a subsistence fund. They are trying to pump more money into the system. The subsistence fund was a good thing because you did have full-ride athletes who, after they paid their rent and bought their meals, didn’t have enough money to go to a movie. When you have a situation like that you have issues, you have athlete who is vulnerable.”

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.