Tough News at UofH

[Harry]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/foot...ston/index.html

When Alex Brown became a coordinator for student-athlete academic support at the University of Houston in 1994, he believed the job would allow him to help black student-athletes earn their degrees. Instead, Brown says, he became the athletic department's "fixer," the man coaches and academic counselors went to when an athlete's academic eligibility was in peril and a quick remedy was needed.

From 1995 to 2003, Brown says he solicited from other University of Houston professors at least 25 improper grade changes for UH athletes at the behest of coaches and other school officials. In addition, he says he changed grades for at least 30 athletes in the class he taught, Introduction to African-American Studies, and committed other acts of academic misconduct.

Brown, who was fired from the university in January 2004 and indicted by a grand jury earlier this year on charges related to stealing department funds, detailed his role in a series of interviews with SI.com this week. Other former University of Houston athletic department employees and former athletes contacted by SI.com substantiated Brown's charges that several school faculty members were willing to bend and break the rules for athletes.

"I was the best book-cooker in the athletic department. I was the go-to man," Brown says. "Everybody knew it. But I wasn't the only person doing wrong."

Brown twice met with NCAA enforcement officials earlier this year to discuss his accusations against the school. Brown says the first meeting occurred in February, when he traveled to Indianapolis to meet with NCAA assistant director of enforcement Eddie Weatherington. Brown says he then met with Rich Johanningmeier, the NCAA's associate director of enforcement, at a Houston hotel in April. The NCAA contacted the University of Houston on May 13, and a subsequent internal investigation by the school found 14 grade changes for student athletes between 1999-2005, says athletic director Dave Maggard. "The investigations found nothing irregular about the grade changes, the number of grade changes or the purpose or reasons for the grade changes," says Maggard.

NCAA spokesperson Jennifer Kearns told SI.com that the organization would not comment on the issue.

Brown says the grade changing began long before 1999 and claims the wrongdoing is more far-reaching than the school's internal investigation revealed. "My reaction to the results of [Houston's internal] investigation was, 'Damn, that's all they found?' They must not have looked hard," Brown says. "And I told the NCAA to look back to 1994, but the school went back only to 1999-2000. I guess they only looked at what they wanted to look at."

Brown was accused of stealing money from the university in December 2003, when he oversaw the athletic department's book distribution program. He is scheduled to go to trial on theft charges on Aug. 29. If convicted of the felony, Brown faces between 180 days and two years in jail and up to $10,000 in fines.

Brown denies stealing the money and admits he spoke to the NCAA and then to the media about his allegations to gain a measure of revenge for the theft charges. "Am I doing this because I am angry? Absolutely," he says. "But I just got fed up with all of it."

Brown had previously filed a federal lawsuit against the school in August 2001, accusing former athletic director Chet Gladchuk of racial discrimination and alleging he was denied promotion to associate athletic director because he was black. Brown says he dropped the case after Gladchuk left the university.

Brown's attorney, Jolanda Jones, a former Houston track star, has subpoenaed a host of school employees, including Maggard, to testify in the theft-charges trial. Jones vows to use the trial to expose the wrongdoing she believes has festered in the athletic department since she was an athlete there in the late 1980s. She has requested documents she says will detail Brown's grade changing.

"We will push to get the truth out about what goes on in the athletic department to keep athletes eligible," says Jones, "and it will be excruciatingly painful for them."

"Each year, Professor Brown signed documents stating that if he knew of an NCAA violation, he was obligated to report it," Maggard says. "He never reported a violation to our compliance director. Why only now is he coming forward and saying there were violations?

"I can only speak to what I have seen since I was hired [in 2002]. I have seen nothing to indicate the types of things he is talking about."

'Kamikaze summer' courseloads questioned

Brown believes his final act of academic misconduct at the university, which he says took place during the summer of 2003, may have been his most serious violation of NCAA and school policy. He says he was involved in a scheme to ensure star offensive line recruit Brandon Evans would be eligible to play that fall. Brown says an athletic department employee told him that Evans, a transfer, was 27 credits short of being eligible to compete. According to Brown, the official created a plan that would allow Evans to get the credits he needed. The plan included enrolling Evans in Brown's course -- AAS 2320 -- as well as an independent study class that Brown monitored. Brown says Evans never attended a single session for either course nor did he turn in any assignments, a fact Brown says he passed along to school officials. "They said that they would take care of it, they would get him to turn something in before the fall semester started," Brown says. "So I gave him the grades. But he never turned in a thing. It was absolute academic fraud."

Evans may not have had time for Brown's classes because of the courseload he took at other schools in or near Houston that summer. According to an employee in the registrar's office at Houston Community College, Evans was enrolled in an art history course there that summer. Brown says Evans also took classes at San Jacinto College and Lee College in Baytown, Texas. (Neither San Jacinto nor Lee would provide information about enrollment without student consent or a social security number.)

Evans, who now plays for the Houston Texans, could not be reached directly by SI.com, but he said through a Texans spokesperson that he attended all his classes that summer and turned in the work required. Evans told KPRC TV in Houston, "I took 27 [hours] that summer and the rest I took 40 [hours] between the whole school year."

Evans would not have been the first University of Houston athlete to use those schools to retrieve credits needed to stay eligible. Brown and other former school employees say it was a common practice, dating to 1996. Athletes took so many courses at that trio of colleges that one UH employee referred to them as "kamikaze summers."

An athletic department intern, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal from university officials and alumni, says that in the summer of 1996 he was asked by Maria Peden, the school's assistant athletics director for student-athlete academic services, to drive football players to Lee College several times. He says she even let him use her convertible BMW to transport them.

Brown says having athletes take classes at Lee College was a systemic abuse of a loophole in NCAA policy. Lee College has a three-week semester it calls a May Mini Session. It falls between the end of Houston's spring semester and the start of its summer session. Brown says school officials would count Lee College credits as having been earned in the spring. Thus, an athlete could still take classes during Houston's summer session and not exceed the NCAA maximum of six credit hours a summer. "Grades were in, we had walked [at commencement], but somehow those Lee College classes were still counted toward the spring semester," Brown said.

Maggard said that when he was hired by the school, he was concerned about the classes athletes were taking during the summer, which is why he instituted a rule stating that the school would not pay for summer classes that did not contribute toward an athlete getting a degree. As for Brown's charge about the mini-session at Lee College, Maggard says: "That's a new [accusation]. We would have to look at the records and see how many students did that."

Brown, 57, was hired as assistant director of African-American studies at the University of Houston in 1989 after teaching at Prairie View A&M. In 1994, he applied for the position of associate athletic director for academic affairs at UH, which included supervision of academic support for athletes. He didn't get the job, but the woman who did, Janice Hilliard, tabbed him as her second in command. Brown supervised the academic counselors for the various sports and also counseled athletes, including men's basketball players until 2000.

Brown says he was first asked to orchestrate an improper grade change for an athlete shortly after he joined the athletic department. A university official approached him with the transcript of safety Delmonico Montgomery, and asked if Brown could find a way to raise Montgomery's grade-point average. "The team was leaving for the charter [plane] that day, it was the Friday before the opening game, and everyone was frantic," Brown says.

He took a grade-change form to a professor he knew was sympathetic to athletes. The instructor signed the form without hesitation, Brown says, and Brown then got it signed by the head of the department and by someone in the dean's office, as both must approve a grade change. After they signed the form, he took it to the registrar's office so it could be recorded. Montgomery's NCAA eligibility needed to be certified by the school's faculty representative to athletics, so Brown raced back to the athletic department, where he says an unknowing Montgomery was waiting to learn his fate while the rest of the team sat in buses outside wondering if their star defender would be joining them on the trip to the airport.

Brown says he took the certification form to the athletic department, where they had a rubber stamp of the faculty rep's signature "They stamped it and then I walked Delmonico out to the buses," Brown says. "When we got outside, the whole bus started cheering."

Later that night, Brown went to a restaurant where former players were hosting a reception. "Before I got there, word had spread about what I'd done," Brown says. "When I arrived, everyone wanted to buy me a drink."

That incident contributed to Brown's reputation as the man to go to when an athlete's transcript needed a quick fix. He would push already forgiving professors to raise an athlete's grade when asked by coaches or counselors. He said he enticed professors with tickets or promises of athletic clothing. Once he arranged for football tickets to be provided to a professor's son and his Little League teammates. "One professor used to joke with me that he helped a certain player so much that the player should name his first child after him," Brown says.

The stable of professors Brown says he could count on to raise a grade or turn an incomplete into a grade include some of the schools most distinguished faculty. Brown says those professors changed grades without requiring extra work from the students or, in some instances, requested more work but were willing to change the grade before it was turned in. "And then more often than not the athlete wouldn't turn anything in later," Brown says.

One of Brown's former assistants, who often filled out grade-change forms for him, said she got so tired of the frequent trips to the registrar's office to retrieve the forms that she ultimately brought back a stack of between 15-20 and stored them in a credenza in Brown's office. The assistant said she witnessed Brown facilitate change grades for football or basketball players "at least 15 times," and said she often delivered the signed forms to the registrar's office herself or sent them using inter-office mail.

"Any time a season was about to start, when an athlete needed to be certified to play, the coaches would come to Dr. Brown's office," said the assistant, who asked not to be named. "Then we'd fill out more [grade-change] forms."

At the center of Brown's allegation is the class (AAS 2320) he taught three times a year -- during the fall semester, the spring semester and the summer session. Brown drew on his experiences growing up in Birmingham, Ala., during the Civil Rights movement. He once marched with Dr. Martin Luther King and was mentioned in a chapter of James Forman's book The Makings of Black Revolutionaries.

When he started teaching at the University of Houston, Brown required his students to complete a series of reading assignments, take two exams, write a 10-page research paper, review a book and prepare an oral presentation. It was a popular class, he says, but initially did not attract many athletes because it was an elective and did not fill a requirement toward a degree in most disciplines. But after he moved into the athletic department, Brown gradually tailored the course to accommodate athletes. He began teaching it twice during the summer because so many players stayed for summer school, and he eventually got approval for his fall and spring classes to meet only once a week (and at night). Brown says he stopped giving in-class exams, assigning only take-home writing assignments. "I knew athletes were getting their girlfriends or mamas to write the papers, but I didn't care," Brown says. "Changing grades was a lot of work. If they turned in something, I had an excuse to give a player a good grade and then didn't have to feel so slimy changing it later."

Though Brown's course was an easy one, he says athletes still cheated. In 2001, according to Brown, six male athletes turned in the same paper for his class. "The only thing they changed was the cover sheet," he says. He took the matter to at least one school official and a coach. Brown says they assured him the six would be punished. He claims the athletes did not resubmit the assignment, yet he did not flunk them because "I knew I'd just be asked to change their grades later."

Brown's class was not the only one in which athletes allegedly got away with cheating. Several former Houston athletes contacted by SI.com told of athletes receiving improper assistance, including some taught by professors other than those Brown mentioned.

Brown says one professor of a class that was popular with athletes sometimes gave his tests to an academic counselor so the athletic department could administer them. Former football player Kyle Brown (no relation), recalled the circumstances under which he and others took one of the professor's exams. "After practice on a Sunday, all the football players in that class and some other athletes went to a room in the athletic department to take the test," Kyle Brown says. When the players arrived, they were given a blank form to fill in the answers for the multiple-choice test but also one with the answers already filled in. "All we had to do was fill in the blank form with the answers they gave us," Kyle Brown says. "Sometimes, there were not enough forms with the answers, so we'd pass them around."

Kyle Brown said he saw the professor travel on the team bus and attend walk-throughs before games, a privilege he says was extended only to "special guests."

"I don't know anything about that first hand," says Maggard. "But going by what people have told me about [the years] prior to when I got here, nothing like that would have occurred."

Brown points to the high number of professors, heads of academic departments, and deans who signed off on grade changes as evidence of a systematic problem. "It is an institutional issue," he says. He said the cheating contributes to the larger crisis: the school's failure to graduate its athletes, particularly African-American males. "Look at the graduation numbers; they're embarrassing," Brown says.

Houston's four-class average graduation rate was 44 percent, according to the most recent results released by the NCAA. However, as recent as the NCAA's 2000 synopsis, it was 31 percent. Houston's record of graduating black male athletes is even lower. The school's most recent four-class average in that category is 33 percent and was 30 percent or lower in each of the four years prior. (The Division I average was 60 percent for all athletes and 45 percent for African-American male athletes, according to the most recent figures available.)

"The university has had a problem educating athletes for a long time," says Jones, who is a member of the university's athletic Hall of Fame. "It's shameful."

"The graduation rate for athletes has been going up since I got here," says Maggard. "The most recent numbers are higher for athletes [50 percent] than they are for regular students [40 percent]."

Brown said he initially thought his grade fixing was aiding the athletes' cause but came to believe he was being exploited while no one benefited. He says that when Evans enrolled in the fall of 2003 after his "kamikaze summer," Brown vowed to never again cheat for a Houston athlete.

"I told the academic counselors not to put another athlete in my class again," he said. "I told them that if they did I was going to flunk [the athlete] whether he did the work or not."

That was in October. By January, Brown had been fired. When he returned from Christmas break, he says he was questioned by campus police and then handcuffed in the parking lot outside the athletics building. Brown claims the university manufactured the theft charge to get rid of him once he would no longer agree to cheat for athletes. He also wonders if it was retaliation for a separate incident.

At the end of the 2003 fall semester, Brown claims he identified at least six football players who had not returned their books. He says he feared that they had sold them and pocketed the money, so he ordered the athletics business office to put a stop on their registration for the spring semester until the books were returned or paid for. The six were not eligible to compete in the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Day unless they registered for the spring semester. Brown says an athletic department official sent a memo to the business office ordering the holds released, allowing the players to register and play. Brown says he doesn't believe the six ever made restitution for the books, which he claims were worth several thousand dollars, a potential violation of NCAA rules.

"It made me sick," says Brown, who is now selling basketball equipment. "Look, I am not proud of what I did. Had I set out to be crooked and dishonest, I would be pleased with myself. But I am not . . . I did it because I was getting a decent salary, state benefits and good vacation time. I liked my job and wanted to keep my job.

"But eventually, I got tired of it. It gets old. An athlete would come in with this swagger and expect things to be done for him. It made me sick."

George Dohrmann is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated. He can be contacted at george_dohrmann@simail.com.