Corruption nothing new in prep sports

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The sensational ramifications of the Derrick Rose story are sure to dominate the media for the unforeseeable future. It is the stuff that fuels controversy: big-time college basketball program, big-time college coach, professional basketball star with Chicago ties. This is better than Blago and Burris.

Of course, Rose denies it ever happened. So does everybody else close to the situation. You didn’t think they would admit it, did you? Former Memphis coach John Calipari points out, quite rightly, that his name isn’t mentioned in the NCAA indictment. The intriguing question in all of this is: Where did the NCAA get its information, from Memphis or Simeon? And if it isn’t true, how did Kevin Johnson become a player in this scandal?

The first thing that happened after Sun-Times reporter Michael O'Brien’s story implicating Rose broke is that everybody shut up. That’s too bad. This is the kind of story that needs to be confirmed.

It has happened before. Rose wouldn’t be the first star athlete who had somebody take his SAT exam for him, thus allowing him to qualify for a college scholarship. It is the kind of corruption in high school and college sports that needs to be cleaned up.

This is what happens when sport becomes bigger than life. Kids go to school to learn how to dribble and shoot jump shots, not how to read and write and prepare for life after basketball. For every Derrick Rose who somehow manages to achieve his dream, there are thousands who will never see their clip on SportsCenter.

All too often, people are eager to complain about cheating that they claim is going on at a particular school. But they are unwilling to put their names on the line when it comes to verifying the facts. It takes people with guts and conviction and integrity who believe that everybody ought to compete on a level playing field.

Grade-changing isn’t new, either. The practice has been going on at the high school level ever since someone discovered that the school’s star athlete needed a C instead of a D to qualify for a college scholarship.

According to a report by the Chicago Board of Education’s inspector general, someone at Simeon changed the grades on the senior transcripts of Rose and some of his teammates to put smiles on the faces of college admission officers.

That’s what happened in 1982, when King basketball star Efrem Winters was widely acclaimed as one of the best players in the country. There were widespread rumors that Winters’ grades had been changed to allow him to qualify for a scholarship to Illinois.

But there was no proof of any skullduggery — until a still-unknown do-gooder at King mailed Winters’ transcript to me.

Anonymous sources claimed the grades had been changed. But it wasn’t enough to satisfy Sun-Times editors. They wanted confirmation from the teachers whose original grades had been changed. Without it, the story couldn’t be published.

Finally, after much soul-searching, five teachers showed up at the Sun-Times office. They confirmed that their grades had been changed. In fact, the transcript had been altered to the point that the teachers’ names had been forged. Two of them had even been misspelled. It was a slam dunk.

Later, after the article was published, the Board of Education questioned its authenticity. The board wanted to conduct its own investigation into the matter. They wanted to see the smoking gun, the original transcript.

After reviewing the evidence, the board agreed with the Sun-Times' findings. They temporarily demoted the King principal and ruled that Winters had to take an art class in summer school to fulfill his graduation requirements. It seemed like mere slaps on the wrist at the time.

But you didn’t really think they would make Winters repeat his senior year, did you?

And there isn’t anything that anybody can do about Derrick Rose, either.

He’ll just have to live with his conscience.