NCAA's crusade against prep schools should include due process

Due process, please

What NCAA president Myles Brand is trying to do is good. Let's be clear about that. Over the past few years, one fraudulent prep school after another popped up across the country, and many of them were more irresponsible than that ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11. Something needed to be done. It was time for a crackdown. Far as I'm concerned, the more phony institutions the NCAA exposes, the better.

Along the same lines, if Patterson is a sham it should be shut down, too. Make no mistake, this is not a column vouching for Patterson. Rather, it's a column about due process, and the fact that Patterson should not be left under a cloud of suspicion for months -- well into the semester, now -- without the NCAA making a genuine effort to find out whatever it is it intends to find out.

So far, according to Patterson officials, everything the NCAA has requested has been provided. First, there was a questionnaire. It was filled out and returned. Then months passed with no response before the NCAA suddenly asked for text books. So Stevens overnighted three boxes of text books. Next they asked for yearbooks. So Stevens overnighted four different yearbooks.

The office of Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina has even called the NCAA, pleading on the school's behalf. That has happened three times, Stevens said.

Bobby Maze will play for Oklahoma after attending Patterson. (Provided to SportsLine)

Still, Patterson remains on the list.

"I thought this country carried a similar philosophy to Britain, that you are innocent until proven guilty. But that is obviously not true," Stevens said. "I have no problem with them doing anything they can to make sure everybody is providing our young people with the best standard of education. I welcome it because it makes us stronger and weeds out the bad prep schools. But they need to come see us and take us off that list."

If, and when, the NCAA ever does accept Stevens' offer, what they'll find might be surprising because Patterson is not some fly-by-night factory run by a former AAU coach in a one-room building. Quite the opposite, actually.

The school was founded in 1909. Today, it sits on a campus of 1,438 acres featuring trees, streams and -- no kidding -- a mountain range. There are three dormitories, a state-of-the-art computer lab, a cafeteria with a commercial kitchen, an outdoor pool and 49 acres of pasture where 18 horses graze.

Why horses?

Because Patterson has an equestrian team, too. See, it's not just about basketball at this place. There are some great basketball players. No one is disputing that. But there's also this girl who is a first chair violinist, and these two guys who are taking a math class designed specifically for them because calculus was just too easy.

All 16 teachers at Patterson have bachelor's degrees, Stevens said. He added that two of the coaches have master's degrees. There are students from Mongolia, Vietnam and Croatia. There's a German class. There's an American Sign Language class. I could go on forever, but surely you get the point.

"We even have Saturday school," Chaney said. "Who else has school on Saturday?"

The Breakfast Club? Beyond that, I'm not sure.

Even if you want to disregard all this as an elaborate cover-up, there's still one bit of information that seems to suggest Patterson isn't the "diploma mill" the NCAA claims to be after. Consider that last year there were 15 seniors on Chaney's team, but only nine actually graduated.

That's six non-graduates.

So if Patterson is really a diploma mill, somebody should fix the mill.

"If we were a diploma mill, those players would've been straight A students," Stevens said. "But they didn't walk across the stage, and some of them didn't even make it through the year because they couldn't live up to the Patterson demands. So they left, or at the end of the year they didn't receive their diploma because they didn't fulfill the criteria. End of story."

You'd think so. In reality, this story has no end in sight.

Consequently, Patterson officials are forced to sit and wait and wonder, perhaps even mull a lawsuit and proceed with legal action. But all they really want is something much simpler -- for the NCAA to catch a plane from Indianapolis to Charlotte, ride 80 miles north and give them their so-called day in court.

"We just want them to come here because once they see this place it will be a no-brainer," Chaney said. "They might not even have to get out of the car."