Basketball star Ronnie Fields escaped the worst in a rental-car crash Monday morning, which left him in a neck-and-skull brace. But public school officials can’t escape ethical questions about why prized high school athletes receive the kind of favoritism that put Fields in the driver’s seat.
“It has opened a can of worms for us,” Frank Valadez, assistant administrator at Farragut Academy, said of the crash.
Fields, a Farragut senior, was in a car rented to someone else and loaned to Fields as a 19th-birthday gift by his assistant coach, despite a contract stipulation the car wouldn’t be driven by anyone younger than 25.
Paul Vallas, chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools, said the incident reinforces concerns that star athletes get preferential treatment over other high school students. He said correcting such abuses will be the focus of a get-tough ethics policy that will be presented to the school board Wednesday, aimed for passage by month’s end.
In part, the policy will spell out what coaches and teachers cannot do in terms of personal assistance to students.
“Teachers and coaches should not be giving students, especially star athletes, things such as money, rental cars or tickets to a Bulls game,” Vallas said.
Asked if such favoritism has been found, he said, “Yes, it’s based on history. We’ve seen the abuses. We’re not saying they are widespread. And we certainly don’t think they’re unique to Chicago.”
Cases of preferential treatment for athletes, including transfers for athletic purposes, seldom have surfaced with the blunt impact of Fields’ accident and the recent controversial transfer of basketball player Larry Jackson from Oak Park to Farragut, where he has been declared ineligible.
As Farragut has become the very visible tip of an unquantified iceberg, a microcosm of the issue targeted by the new ethics policy, assistant administrator Valadez insisted the school “was not aware” cars had been rented for players until he heard assistant basketball coach Ron Eskridge say so.
“And they’re treating this like a toy, passing it around from one person to another,” he said of the car Fields drove. “It’s definitely questionable practice, and I don’t condone it.
“I don’t think this is a common practice. If someone does this again, they’re asking for trouble.”
The rental company, Budget Rent-a-Car, said it was holding Gage Park High School teacher Tommy Miller responsible for the auto’s extensive damage. Miller signed the agreement, including a provision that no one younger than 25 would drive the car.
Valadez said he would support a police investigation of the circumstances. He was not sure what penalties the school could impose, but expected the new ethics policy to offer guidelines.
At Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where Fields began walking and eating solid food Thursday, his celebrity status again has been confirmed: A local TV station on Wednesday beamed a private telecast of his team’s first playoff game to his room before interviewing him for the news. Rev. Jesse Jackson and sportscaster Bob Costas visited Fields in his hospital room Thursday night.
High school officials and coaches, citing the disadvantages that Fields and many other Public League peers have endured–growing up in single-parent households in tough city neighborhoods laced with gang members and drug dealers–are reluctant to blame Fields for wanting material rewards, or to condemn Eskridge for wanting to provide them.
Some of those coaches admit privately they have rented cars for players on special occasions such as proms. Many have, or know coaches who have, had players stay at their homes at times. It can be justified readily as a way to provide temporary haven from gangs, drugs and unofficial “street agents” who want a piece of the action and payback in brokering top prospects’ talents.
Off-court involvement with players is a question of degree and frequency; there are Chicago high school coaches who overstep both.
“Traditionally, a coach wears a lot of hats . . . teacher, parent, confessor . . . but there are still lines you have to draw. It certainly sounds like this coach (Eskridge) went one step beyond,” said J.W. Smith, director of athletics for the Chicago Board of Education.
In that capacity, Smith investigates charges of impropriety and works with Vallas to implement policy reform.
“The biggest problem we’ve faced so far is indiscriminate transfers, for athletic purposes only,” Smith said. “We’ve demonstrated and sent the message that transfers will be examined before eligibility is granted. That will give everyone reason to think twice.”
Without referring specifically to the Fields incident, he said, “We don’t want a kid transferring because, `The coach will give me a car when I want it.’ “
Bill Donlon was basketball coach at Prosser High School in Chicago for a year before taking that job at Lake Forest High School this season. He is sympathetic to the rigors of coaching in the city, but nonetheless adamant about the need for discipline.
“I know city coaches deal with street agents, lack of facilities, and a lot of kids are from broken homes and rough neighborhoods,” he said. “But if you show favoritism to players, they are going to come to expect it.
“If you don’t nip that in the bud at the high school level, players are going to carry those unrealistic expectations for the rest of their lives.”
Donlon drops players from his team if they do not go to class and maintain a “C” average. His explanation:
“A minuscule percentage of players will be able to make basketball their career at the highest level. Three, five or 10 years from now, the rest of them will face an employer who’s not going to look at how many points they scored in high school. Instead, they will ask, `Are you educated? Can you do the job?’
“If a student doesn’t get an education in high school, they certainly won’t get it in college.”
Vince Carter is executive director of Project Education Plus. Based in Cabrini-Green public housing complex, the academics-and-athletics program strives to groom inner-city students for college.
Carter says top basketball players in the program go to a number of different high schools, and need to score well on tests to attend Von Steuben High School, where he is an assistant coach.
“If all the kids I had in my Cabrini-Green program were at Von Steuben, we’d be city champs,” he quipped.
But he said he always has enjoyed coaching good students, even in losing games.
“Even after kids leave my program for another school with better equipment,” Carter said, “I still have enough to work with, and they put out for you if you demand responsibility and don’t give preferential treatment.”
“Good coaches take care of all their players, not just the stars, and there are a lot of good coaches in the Chicago Public League,” said Dave Kaplan, a WGN sportscaster. From 1982 to 1986, as an assistant basketball coach at Northern Illinois, he recruited Chicago high school players.
He echoed the sentiments of others, acknowledging that some coaches “want to hook onto big-name players for future considerations,” but he paid homage to the turf in which city coaches work.
“Kids in the suburbs go from basketball practice to nice homes. Kids in the city have been shot and killed on the way home,” he said, citing the shooting deaths of city high school players such as Simeon’s Ben Wilson, 17, in 1984; Westinghouse’s Gerome Allen, 16, in 1994; and Flower Vocational’s Reggie Nunnery, 16, last year.
But just as surely as their neighborhood routine arbitrarily put them in death’s path; the vehicle that was supposed to be an escape for Ronnie Fields also ended up putting him at risk.
“He knows he is blessed to be alive,” said Jackson, after his brief visit with Fields, who should be able to leave the hospital in a few days.
The dream of athletic success always has been pure, innocent and focused–the childlike aspiration, even for one shining moment, to make the shot, hit the ball or elude the tackle that wins the game.
Not confined to youths, this pristine reverie often is enhanced with images of adoring, cheering fans witnessing the moment.
But in this, it is never necessary for the heroics to be rewarded with material gain. That is a different dream and when it intrudes on the first, purity is tainted and innocence lost.
“This is a defining moment for our system, a golden opportunity to drive home that we are about education,” said Vallas. “We need to send a message that our mission is to educate children. Athletics should complement that.”
Thus this week, a crash that reminded a relieved and grateful public of the frailty and simplicity of youth also may have been a wakeup call to a high school athletic system where the material dream appears to be on a collision course with the best sport has to offer.
