College football's scandals have coaches on the edge

TAMPA - That supposed bastion of amateur athletic purity, the Olympics, finally stopped swimming against the tide and consented to the use of professional athletes following the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea. That decision opened the door for the greatest assemblage of hoops talent ever, the United States' "Dream Team," to run roughshod over the competition in men's basketball at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

There are those who would throw in with the International Olympic Committee and end the hypocrisy - some of it, anyway - and acknowledge certain realities in the increasingly sordid realm of big-time college football.

With television-rights money now in the billions, why not just concede that players at BCS schools are pros-in-training and pay them accordingly? Just give those with NFL potential a specified number of years of eligibility and don't bother making them do mundane tasks, like attending class and maintaining a minimum grade-point average.

If and when that day comes, it will drive Penn State's very traditional coach, Joe Paterno, out of the profession faster than it takes Devon Smith to run a fly pattern. The game's shifting priorities are such that even a highly successful and relatively young coach, Florida's Urban Meyer, felt it necessary to step away rather than strive to maintain a receding standard that is as much on the endangered-species list as whooping cranes and giant pandas.

As an official of the Outback Bowl, which on Jan. 1 pairs Meyer's Gators and Paterno's Nittany Lions in an otherwise meaningless meeting of 7-5 teams, sat by nervously, yesterday's joint news conference with the two head coaches largely dealt with issues that are driving out ethical coaches, and are nudging others into tacit or outright acceptance of the sort of rules-bending the NCAA's small enforcement staff will penalize if those transgressions come to light.