FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 11, 2004
Contact: Josh Freed
(202) 225-4431

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO) released the following opening statement for the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing into NCAA athlete recruiting practices:

Rides on private jets, lavish meals at fine restaurants, weekends at four-star hotels, police escorts. While this sounds like the life of a movie star, it was standard treatment for Willie Williams, a sought-after high school athlete recruited to play football by several major universities in Florida.
Unfortunately, there is more. Abundant booze, illicit drugs, strip clubs, prostitutes and sex parties. This is not the seedy underbelly of professional athletes or rock stars, but the not-so-hidden practice of colleges and universities recruiting high school athletes to play football or basketball for them.

We do not know how pervasive these incidents are, but we do know that far too many allegations have surfaced concerning recruiting at far too many schools. Anyone reading the stories about these incidents has to wonder what in the world is going on when coaches and administrators allow young men, some only sixteen and seventeen years old, to enter into these situations.
That is why today’s hearing is so important. We need to determine whether there are systemic problems contributing to alleged sexual assaults by recruits and student athletes and unsavory, if not downright illegal, recruiting practices. While the most recent publicized allegations at my own state university, the University of Colorado, helped spur this hearing, regulations of amateur athletics have long been a concern of this committee, and I want to thank Chairman Stearns for all of his efforts in putting this panel together.

I would also like to welcome our witnesses here today. I hope they are able to help shed some light on how pervasive current recruiting problems are and what can be done to fix them. I would like to give a special welcome to Betsy Hoffman, the President of the University of Colorado. President Hoffman, we understand how particularly busy you are at this moment and appreciate your taking the time today to share your insights on national college recruiting practices.
I would also like to acknowledge President Hoffman for announcing last week a set of significant reforms to the recruiting practices of the University of Colorado’s football program. I hope that this is a model that she will extend to all of the school’s athletic programs.

College recruiting, however, is a nationwide practice that demands nationwide standards. In the highly competitive environment of Division I college athletics, coaches are scouring high schools across the country to find the most talented recruits for their programs. This puts schools and recruits under tremendous pressure.
Despite the national scope of recruiting and the fact that colleges and universities across the country are recruiting athletes far outside of their home states, the NCAA does seem to have clear standards as to how recruiting trips are conducted.

We all understand this intense competition for high school athletes. In preparing for this hearing, however, what was truly eye opening was to see how many allegations there were of incidents of alcohol and drug use and sexual incidents at colleges and universities across the country.

Allegations of the use of prostitutes, sex parties, booze, drugs and late nights out at strip clubs have popped up all over the place. At best, college officials seem to look the other way when these tactics are used to entice sixteen, seventeen and eighteen-year old boys to sign to their athletic programs.
Iowa, Michigan, Oregon, Alabama, Florida, Minnesota. These are just a handful of the universities where there have been allegations of sexual assault and/or reports of sex at recruiting parties.

If this isn’t an indication that we are dealing with a deeply rooted institutional problem, I don’t know what else it would take to make the public and we as lawmakers sit up and take notice. The NCAA must commit to doing its part to make sure that college sports programs across the country are run with integrity, excellence and respect.

The NCAA finally appears to recognize that there is a problem here. They have convened a special task force on recruiting to review these practices headed by NCAA Vice President David Berst, who will be testifying today.
That is also why it is so important that we are holding this hearing. The laundry list of allegations of assaults and other inappropriate or illegal behavior by high school recruits during campus visits reveals serious flaws in our college recruiting system. And that is what we need to focus on today.

We owe it to our institutions of higher learning, to our sports teams, and most importantly to our students across country, men and woman, athlete and non-athlete, alike.

I thank the Chairman again and look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses. 

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