Vento: Player's shouldn't live in public housing

The University of Minnesota will collect at least $1 million for playing Oregon today in the Sun Bowl. Shortly thereafter, negotiations with football coach Glen Mason on a new contract extension that will pay him more than $700,000 a year are expected to intensify.

All the while, two of the players most responsible for the team's first bowl appearance since 1986, quarterback Billy Cockerham and defensive back Jimmy Wyrick, are living in federally subsidized public housing in St. Paul.

The contrast raises two issues: With National Collegiate Athletic Association schools receiving more than $50 million from bowl games from Dec. 30 to Jan. 4 alone, should the players get a bigger share? The NCAA says no. And if they don't, should their low incomes, partially mandated by NCAA rules, allow them to live in subsidized housing even though the players receive scholarships and housing stipends? At least one congressman doesn't believe so.

Cockerham and Wyrick are in complete compliance with NCAA and state regulations, school and housing officials point out. But as the NCAA's television revenue continues to skyrocket - a $6 billion deal with CBS for its basketball tournament serves as the latest evidence - the irony of two star players living in St. Paul's Seal Street facility is obvious.

"The Sun Bowl sponsor (Wells Fargo) is certainly making money off the athletes at Minnesota. The university is making money off these athletes. Boosters and whoever travels with the team are getting something from the athletes,'' said Alan Sack, a former Notre Dame football player who co-wrote "College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA's Amateur Myth.'' "And then you have two athletes living in welfare-like housing. I hope I am not the only one who sees that as bizarre.''

Cockerham and Wyrick would not discuss their living arrangements with the Pioneer Press. Both declined to be interviewed for this story despite repeated requests made last week and again this week in El Paso, Texas, where the team is preparing for today's Sun Bowl. The two said through a university spokesperson that "they followed all the proper procedures in the application process and all the procedures in the housing process after that.''

Rep. Bruce Vento, D-St. Paul, who is on the House subcommittee on housing and is one of the leading voices in Congress on homelessness and affordable housing, believes the process might be flawed. He doesn't believe Cockerham and Wyrick should be allowed to use public housing.

Vento, who said he wasn't familiar with all details of the players' living arrangement, said, "on the face of it, I don't think there's any justification for it.''

"It's just abusing the system. That's wrong, and the first chance I get, if they're not already in violation of the law, they will be pretty soon.''

How they qualify

Under St. Paul Housing Agency rules, Cockerham and Wyrick qualify for public housing because their annual income falls below the $33,450 maximum to get into one of the 14 buildings operated by the agency, according to Al Hester, assistant to the St. Paul Housing Agency's director. Hester said students have as much right as the 143 other residents - 116 of which are elderly and/or disabled - to reside at Seal Street.

Rent in the Seal Street building or one of the other structures run by the St. Paul Public Housing Agency is 30 percent of that individual's total income, Hester said. Cockerham and Wyrick, if they declared the full cost of their room and board, would each pay approximately $180 a month.

Mark Rotenberg, the university's chief legal counsel, said the school does not tell athletes where they can live.

"The University of Minnesota doesn't investigate or control where the young men choose to live,'' he said. "We afford them the opportunity to live in safe, clean and convenient housing on campus and provide scholarship and meal money for that. If any student, an athlete or a physics major, decides not to take advantage of that opportunity, we do not control where they choose to live.''

One reason the players qualify for the housing is that NCAA rules limit the amount of money they can earn. Under legislation passed in 1997 by university presidents, athletes can work during the school year. But they are allowed to earn only an amount calculated by each school that is equal to the full cost of attending school beyond the price of tuition, books and room and board. The range is $1,500 to $2,500.

Athletes can work during the summer, although voluntary workouts and summer classes often limit the time they can spend at an internship or job.

During the school year, athletes receive a monthly housing stipend that varies by area. At Minnesota, athletes get approximately $600 a month, similar to what athletes get at Michigan ($650). Players can use the money to live in dorms or they can find their own housing and pocket any savings.

Wally Renfro, NCAA spokesman, said his organization and the universities that belong to it understand that the bowl season and all of college athletics would not be possible without the athletes. He declined to discuss the case of Cockerham and Wyrick, saying he was unfamiliar with their situation, but disagreed with the view that athletes are forsaken while schools make money.

"There are 973 schools that participate in an NCAA sport, and those schools spend over $3 billion on athletes a year,'' Renfro said. "The notion is that schools are making millions of dollars is not true. Schools are grossing millions of dollars, but very few are profitable.''

Still, the NCAA receives $77 million a year from ABC to televise the Bowl championship Series and will get $6 billion from CBS for the rights to the NCAA men's basketball tournament. The $6 billion, 11-year contract between CBS and the NCAA will begin in 2003.

And coaching salaries have escalated as a result. It once was ludicrous to think a football coach could make $1 million a season, but now several coaches earn that much. That group includes former Michigan State coach Nick Saban, who despite never coaching in a major bowl game was offered $1 million a season to coach at Louisiana State. That figure has become the goal for coaches like Mason, who sources say is being offered a pay raise - to more than $800,000 a year - after one winning season out of three.

In basketball, $1 million-a-year salaries are more common and coaches are more visible. University of Connecticut men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun, whose team won the national title last season, is trying to persuade the state's ethics board to allow him to associate his name with the university in commercials and other advertisements.

Renfro said that to pay athletes even $100 extra a month would cripple some athletics departments. "If you pay the 335,000 NCAA athletes even $100 a month over a 10-month school year, that would be $335 million schools would have to come up with,'' he said.

Renfro said athletes receive something of value from universities in the form of their scholarships, and that grant programs are available for student-athletes needing extra money. Leah Nilsson, a track and cross country runner at Michigan State and the Big Ten Conference's representative on the NCAA student-athlete advisory committee, said not enough students are aware of the available funds, money that she said athletes probably would use for something as simple as doing their laundry.

Many on the student-athlete advisory committee push for a monthly stipend to cover costs beyond a school's room and board rate.

"All it would take is $200 a month, or even just $100 would help,'' Nilsson said. "It would pay for the things not covered by room and board money - paying for a winter coat, a ticket to the movies.''

Schools used to pay the price of laundry, Sack said, but the NCAA, fearing rampant cheating, took those funds away.

"The NCAA and schools are paying athletes even less than years ago even though now they are making more and more money,'' he said.

Home on Seal Street

The Seal Street housing complex, a 20-year-old concrete structure off University Avenue, is the last place one would expect to find a University of Minnesota scholarship athlete. Each month, approximately 125 of the 145 residents receive a check from Social Security, money from a pension or supplemental security come.

Of the 29 residents not elderly or disabled, an unknown number are students and what the agency calls semi-elderly - people between the ages of 51-60. Hester said the number of students in all 16 of the agency's buildings "is not a huge number.''

Students were not eligible as recently as a few years ago, but then a large number of unoccupied single-person apartments were left vacant, Hester said. That is not the case today. There are only two vacancies in the Seal Street building, and Hester said those "will be filled in the next month.''

Yet because of the number of single-individual dwellings that become available every year, the agency gives "preference points'' to students, along with the elderly, disabled and veterans or relatives of veterans, according to application materials.

Hester said a student is not responsible for disclosing he or she is an athlete during the application process, which includes an interview.

"We would not ask for information like that,'' said Hester, who because of privacy laws could not specifically discuss Cockerham's or Wyrick's case or even confirm they were living at Seal Street. "To base a case on something like that would be to discriminate, and that we do not do.''

The average annual income of the Seal Street building inhabitants is about $10,000. Only a dozen tenants moved in last year compared with the high turnover at housing closer to the Minnesota campus.

If a single student applied today and passed a credit and background check, he or she could get an apartment in one of the agency's buildings in three to four months, Hester said.

Vento said about a decade ago, he wrote - and Congress passed - a measure that banned visiting foreign students from "living for practically nothing'' in federally subsidized housing. Based partly on that, he was puzzled that a student could qualify to live in federally subsidized housing.

"I don't see how someone who's a full-time student, I don't see how they can get away with that,'' he said. "I think if you're a student you're not eligible.''

Vento said he was concerned the student-athletes were taking up space during a low-income housing shortage. But Hester said that of the approximately 3,700 names on the waiting list, most are waiting for family-style apartments, not those used by Cockerham and Wyrick.

Hester said if student-athletes were living in public housing, it would be an "image'' concern. "That is not the way some people think public housing should be used,'' he said.

Vento said he strongly supports helping students, but "I don't think we ought to do it at the expense of low-income families who need the housing.''

"It's ridiculous with the type of housing crunch we have for students on athletic scholarships'' to be living in federally subsidized housing, he said.

And it is equally ridiculous, according to Sack and others, for universities to generate millions of dollars off athletes while players are unable to claim a share of those funds.

Renfro said athletes are getting a return on their investment.

"If you take this whole thing away, if college athletics doesn't exist, what have you done?'' Renfro said. "You have taken away an educational opportunity for over 300,000 students. And there is no value in doing that.''

Staff writers Brian Hamilton in El Paso, Texas, and Tom Webb in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.