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Monday, March 23, 1998

Texas fiasco tarnishes reputations of all involved

By Frank Luksa

The Dallas Morning News

(KRT)

DALLAS -- However the basketball crisis at the University of Texas plays out, the conclusion is preordained. Everyone involved will emerge wounded or maimed. There'll be no winners, only varying degrees of casualties.

The list of victims is already long in advance of a resolution expected this week, perhaps as early as Monday. Suspense attends the eventual list of survivors in a case bound to linger after it's been officially closed. This episode won't be over when it's over.

Any summary of individual damage begins with coach Tom Penders. He's been smeared by allegations of verbally abusing players and failing to develop their talent. His ability to recruit against these charges, regardless of their merit, has been impaired.

The verbal abuse rap is of dubious weight. Penders more often has been accused of too soft a touch. The other charge is hurtful even when considering the source of complaint - teen-age players challenging the knowledge of a man with 27 years' service as a college head coach. It leaves Penders to confront two poisonous points in the future when he recruits tender minds made suspicious by unrest among ranks advertised as elite and the nucleus of a national contender.

First, that he's not much of a coach. He didn't make them better. Players didn't improve as much as they or their watchful parents thought reasonable. Second and worse, this message came from what Penders claimed was the best cast of recruits he'd assembled in 10 seasons at Texas.

Eroding support

A measure of internal support and alumnus allegiance to Penders eroded a year ago when he flirted with Rutgers before turning down a job offer there. Big Cigars were insulted that he allowed negotiations to go that far and felt if Penders wished to join their perception of a lightweight rival, let him go. Others are grateful to Penders for advancing the program into an NCAA tournament qualifier eight times in 10 years but are restless that he hasn't gone farther.

Now this matter flares, bearing legal implications and a possibility that the four years remaining on Penders' contract are in jeopardy. Penders said he'd spoken with DeLoss Dodds and been told he had the athletic director's full support and confidence. Such an assurance would have carried more clout if the mostly mum Dodds had said it aloud.

Penders again is the lone source on how the academic progress report of freshman guard Luke Axtell reached an Austin radio station, where it was aired last Wednesday. Penders said assistant coach Eddie Oran told him he faxed the report to the station to justify Axtell being suspended by Penders for impending academic failure. This is where the case began - Oran's disclosure has escalated into a possible violation of federal law under a Buckley Amendment designed to protect the privacy of students and the Axtell family has hired an attorney.

Oran appears most vulnerable to in-house penalty, even legal action by the Axtells for committing an elementary breach. Nor had Penders been absolved of innocence last week by the investigation of Patricia Ohlendorf, UT's counsel to the president. She said Penders' version of events had yet to square with evidence at hand. That didn't mean it wouldn't, but Ohlendorf's theme implied she didn't think Oran was the lone culprit.

Players in limbo

As for Axtell, the local from Austin Westlake, he's been released from scholarship to seek a transfer. His freshman year ended in turmoil and as a waste. What would've been his sophomore season looms as a period of inactivity to regain eligibility. Axtell's persona is subject to interpretation by anyone interested in his talent: Is he a skilled prospect with a legitimate beef, or a whine-prone, spoiled temperament influenced by intrusive parents, and also an academic risk?

Axtell was among four players who took complaints of Penders' methods to Dodds with a threat to quit the program. The others were freshman center Chris Mihm and freshman guard Bernard Smith, plus sophomore forward Gabe Muoneke. Whether they leave or return is thought to hinge on results of Ohlendorf's investigation and subsequent action, if any.

Finally, there's Dodds as supervisor of an all-losing athletic empire this season in football (4-7), men's basketball (14-17) and women's basketball (12-15) and a baseball campaign (10-16) in progress. Critics submit that if Dodds is the ultimate authority, he's ultimately responsible for these results. And he should have been aware of a festering basketball situation before it spun beyond apparent control.

On the upside, things run smoothly for new football coach Mack Brown. He doesn't have a tough act to follow anywhere.

(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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