Keegan: Buck must stop at top

With each passing day since last Friday’s unveiling of the NCAA notice of allegations given to Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway, it becomes increasingly difficult to forget the image of Richard Nixon wiping sweat from his upper lip in the wake of the Watergate scandal and uttering his most infamous quote: “I’ll accept responsibility, but not the blame.”

Page 49 of the 2005-2006 NCAA Division I Manual includes Bylaw 6.1.1, which reads: “A member institution’s chief executive officer has ultimate responsibility and final authority for the conduct of the intercollegiate athletics program.”

Which brings us to Stanford athletic director Ted Leland, hired by Hemenway in 2001 to audit the KU athletic department. In that report, which Hemenway gave to Al Bohl upon his hiring, Leland recommended increasing the compliance staff. Instead, Bohl made Janelle Martin, then compliance director, take on extra duties.

Hemenway, who returned a phone message promptly Wednesday, was asked if he signed off on Martin’s duties being increased, when the Leland report advised the opposite.

“As I remember, that’s something he informed me he had done, but that’s a few years back and I don’t remember the details of it,” Hemenway said. “He told me what he was proposing to do with Janelle and as I always said to every athletic director, whatever we’re doing we’ve got to maintain a commitment to compliance.

“Let me say this, in circumstances like this it’s always easy to look around and try to find somebody to blame. Clearly, things didn’t go as we wanted them to go. Clearly, that Al didn’t serve very long as athletic director tells you there were a number of things that didn’t go the way we wanted them to and the way he wanted them to.”

Earlier in our conversation, Hemenway was asked if Bohl’s failure to follow Leland’s recommendations had a role in his firing. He answered that he didn’t think it appropriate to discuss personnel matters in the newspaper. Once he realized he had said more than he intended to say, he stopped himself and said: “I’m not going get involved in the blame game. The fact is, the university fell short of standards we set for ourselves and we’ve got to accept that responsibility.”

Hemenway, as does any chancellor of such a large institution, has a great deal on his plate. But that doesn’t excuse him from the responsibilities of Bylaw 6.1.1. He trusted Bohl to run the show and is doing the same with Lew Perkins, who has increased the compliance staff to three full-time members and has budgeted for two more full-time positions.

“The thing I think that is being overlooked in this discussion is that when Lew came in he put in place the structure to ensure the compliance, and the things we’re talking about are things we’ve already fixed,” Hemenway said. “To some extent, the NCAA is saying they agree. The NCAA has examined the materials and interviewed people and basically said it agreed these are things that needed to be fixed.”

At last Friday’s news conference, Perkins was asked by a Kansas City reporter: “Just how big a mess did you walk into, Lew?”

I asked Hemenway during the telephone interview whether it’s fair to say that Perkins inherited a “mess” and completely cleaned it up, given that both the academic fraud allegations within the football program that KU self-reported and therefore does not dispute, and the self-reported Don Davis/Darnell Jackson mess occurred since the hiring of Perkins.

“Lew has said, and I would agree, there isn’t a university in the country that guarantees there’s not some violation occurring the moment that they speak,” Hemenway said. “What you can do is say we’re going to be eternally vigilant. The system Lew put in place, and I was pleased to see him do so, a lot of it is education. We’ve got to educate student-athletes and boosters and employees. They’ve got to be on the look-out all the time for infractions, violations. You have to explain to the athlete, these are things you can do and these are things you can’t do.”

The chancellor’s answer to this follow-up question made him seem out of touch with the athletic department: To what extent was Darnell Jackson educated on the rules?

“All I know about that case is what I read in the newspaper,” Hemenway said. “I don’t know to what level he was educated.”

Again, Bylaw 6.1.1, on page 49 of the 2005-2006 NCAA Division I Manual, reads: “A member institution’s chief executive officer has ultimate responsibility and final authority for the conduct of the intercollegiate athletics program.”

It doesn’t say anything about reading the newspaper to find out what’s going on in the athletic department.

That’s not an image the NCAA will want to picture from a school trying to disprove a charge of “lack of institutional control,” especially not from a chancellor who left the position of auditor of compliance, a chancellor’s position, not an athletic department position, vacant for three stretches, one as long as 10 months.

On the other hand, KU will have many factors going in its favor for the Aug. 13 hearing in front of the NCAA, which six-to-eight weeks later will either say KU’s self-imposed penalties were sufficient, or will hand down additional ones, the worst case being a postseason ban, which isn’t likely.

One thing weighing in KU’s favor: Perkins, instead of conducting his own investigation, immediately hired an independent outside party, former NCAA enforcement official Rick Evrard, a partner with the law firm of Bond, Schoeneck & King in Overland Park. The NCAA prefers outsiders dig for dirt because the NCAA is suspicious about the size of the shovels insiders use to dig dirt on themselves.

– Sports editor Tom Keegan can be reached at 832-7147.