SWEET RIDE
The NCAA prohibits colleges athletes from using their status to gain 'extra benefits' -- such as the use of a car or jobs for family members -- but it's not always easy to determine what the rules allow
Thursday April 03, 2003
By Josh Peter
Staff writer
When he's driving the black 2000 Nissan Altima across campus, Duke point guard Chris Duhon is easy to spot. A dead giveaway is the personalized license plate: C DOO 21.
Duhon wears jersey No. 21, and he directs Duke's offense with the same steadiness he showed at Salmen High School in Slidell, but the car might surprise the people from his hometown. After all, in high school Duhon didn't have a car, and had to hitch rides with friends or borrow his mother's 1972 Volkswagen Beetle, a former Salmen teammate said.
But things have changed since 2000, when Duhon enrolled at Duke and his mother, Vivian Harper, moved to Durham, N.C., to be close to her oldest son. Harper, who got a job at a company run by a Duke basketball supporter, now owns a 1993 Jeep Cherokee. She also owns the Altima, according to North Carolina motor vehicle records.
More conspicuous than Duhon's Altima is the black 1998 Mercedes SUV with gray trim being driven by Brandon Bass, a high school All-American from Baton Rouge who has committed to play basketball at LSU. Then there's the white 2002 Cadillac Escalade being driven by Anthony Johnson, a senior guard at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.
While the recent academic scandals at Georgia, Fresno State and St. Bonaventure constitute alleged NCAA rules violations, less clear are examples such as those involving Duhon, Bass and Johnson. NCAA rules prohibit college athletes from using their athletic status or future earning potential to receive 'extra benefits,' defined by NCAA rules as 'any special arrangement by an institutional employee or a representative of the institution's athletics interests to provide a student-athlete or the student-athlete's relative or friend a benefit not expressly authorized by the NCAA legislation.'
A three-month investigation by The Times-Picayune found:
-- Duhon's mother, Vivian Harper, landed a job working for a Duke booster; co-workers say the job opening was never posted and that Harper was overpaid and lacked qualifications. When a manager at the company asked why Harper was moving from Louisiana, supervisors informed him that her son, one of the nation's top recruits, had signed to play at Duke.
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Mom in charge
There was no room for advisers in the recruitment of Chris Duhon. From the start, it was clear who was in charge -- his mother.
Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and the dozens of other college coaches recruiting Duhon had to go through Vivian Harper. At the time, she and her two sons were living in a modest house in Slidell. It was a house Harper nearly lost in June 1999, according to court documents.
Trustmark National Bank filed court papers to seize the house after Harper allegedly failed to make mortgage payments for more than six months. Foreclosure never took place. Though court documents offer no details as to how the situation was resolved, Harper remained the owner. Privacy laws prohibit Trustmark from disclosing information about the matter, said Rob Armour, the bank's assistant marketing director.
At the time, family friends said, Harper was running a child-care business out of the home. It was a home Duhon was prepared to leave, but not without his mother.
In September 1999, during a team barbecue in Krzyzewski's back yard held during Duhon's official visit to Duke, Duhon committed to the Blue Devils. He also asked his mother to join him.
The next summer, Harper rented out her house in Slidell and headed for a two-bedroom apartment in Durham, N.C. There she found a job at NCM Capital Management Group, a billion-dollar money management firm owned by Maceo Sloan, who displays in his office the basketball he received as a gift from Duke's 1991 national championship team.
How Harper learned of the NCM job is unclear, because the full-time position she got in its operations department was never posted, according to several former employees. No details were available from Harper, who initially offered to provide her resume to prove her qualifications for the position. When contacted later, she said, 'I'm not interested in talking to you.' Attempts to reach Duhon were unsuccessful.
Robert Sinclair, former manager of operations at the NCM, said Harper was the only candidate for the position. He also said when his supervisors gave him Harper's resume and he questioned her move from Louisiana to Durham, his supervisors explained, 'Her son is going to play at Duke.'
Sinclair said he recalls Harper having some banking experience, but lacking a Series 7 General Securities license, which allows agents to sell stocks, bonds and other investment vehicles.
Sinclair stressed that Harper quickly learned all facets of the accounting job and 'earned her keep,' but also said, 'the (hiring) process may not have been the ideal process for everyone involved.'
Regarding Harper's hire, Sinclair said, 'I don't know if anybody pulled strings. How she got wind of the position? For that you're going to have to go higher.'
Sinclair said he got Harper's resume from two supervisors: Ben Blakney, then the company chief operating officer and president, and Debra Lane, who was Sinclair's immediate supervisor. Blakney, no longer with the company, declined comment. Lane, also no longer with the company, said Harper was 'more than qualified to do any job,' but refused further comment.
Justin Beckett, a former Duke football player who represented former Duke basketball stars Christian Laettner and Brian Davis when the players turned pro, was the company's No. 2 executive when Harper was hired. Beckett did not return several phone messages.
Sloan, NCM's multimillionaire owner and past member of the board of directors of Duke's Center for International Studies, did not return phone messages left with his secretary.
Sinclair and two other former employees said Harper started at a higher salary than other account specialists and got a significant raise in her first few months on the job. Sinclair declined to provide details, other than to say, 'She didn't make entry level.'
Kaye Wrenn, a former employee who filed a sexual harassment complaint when she left the company in 2001, claims she saw documents showing Harper got a raise of $10,000 to $14,000 within four months of Harper's arrival that increased her salary to at least $42,000. Wrenn and other former employees said entry-level salary for account specialists was about $28,000 a year.
Cindy Mandel, the company's payroll and benefits administrator when Harper arrived but who no longer is with the company, said, 'I know she was making more than me, and I was making $35,000.'
Some time after joining NCM, Harper upgraded the family transportation. Told about the Jeep Cherokee and Nissan Altima, Wrenn said, 'Moving up in the world, huh?'
But Sinclair said he can't understand why anyone would question the arrangement, which he said happens all the time. He offered another example in former Duke star Carlos Boozer, whose family moved from Alaska to Durham after Boozer's freshman year in 2000.
Three months after moving to Durham, according to Boozer's wife, Renee, Carlos Boozer Sr. was jobless. He finally found one at GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical company then run by Robert Ingram, a close friend of Krzyzewski.
'And I'm proud of it,' Ingram said of his friendship with Duke's coach.
Boozer approached Ingram at a Duke game and asked if he knew of any job openings at GlaxoSmithKline, according to Ingram.
'Bob is a great friend of mine,' Boozer Sr. said. 'We still talk and get along well. . . . Bob loves Duke.'
But Ingram said he simply gave Boozer contact information for the company's human resources department and had no influence on Boozer getting a job in the research and development division.
'I shouldn't do that,' Ingram said, adding that he never discussed the matter with Krzyzewski.
Boozer initially said he worked as a programmer and made $125,000 per year. But when told former co-workers said he was an administrative assistant, Boozer recanted, saying he earned about $40,000 annually doing administrative work. He said he lost the job because the company merged and his division was moved to Philadelphia. His departure came about six months after Carlos Boozer Jr. left Duke for the NBA. In addition, Ingram had retired as GlaxoSmithKline's CEO and president of U.S. operations.
'Duke had nothing to do with me getting that job,' said Boozer, who works as a car salesman at Michael Jordan Nissan in Durham.
Ingram said Boozer was a 'valued employee. We shouldn't discriminate whether it has to do with race, gender or if someone has a son playing basketball at Duke.'
Krzyzewski on Tuesday left town for a week and was likely unavailable for comment, said John Jackson, Duke's sports information director. He referred questions to Chris Kennedy, Duke's senior associate athletics director in charge of compliance with NCAA rules.
'Of Duke parents, Vivian (Harper) has been the most diligent about checking every little thing with me,' Kennedy said of Duhon's mother. 'She's very, very nervous about NCAA violations.'
Though Kennedy said he thinks Harper and Boozer obtained jobs while complying with NCAA rules, he also said Duke and other schools remain vulnerable to the actions of boosters.
'The same way you're vulnerable with agents,' he said. 'It's impossible to know everything that's going on out there.'
Kennedy acknowledged that Harper and Boozer obtaining jobs in Durham from boosters could create perception problems. But he added, 'If Vivian had come in with a list of companies she was interested in working for, the odds are in this area a high percentage of them are going to be associated with Duke people. . . . I didn't think I could tell Vivian, 'You can't apply for jobs with these companies because Duke people are in charge.' As long as she does the work and she gets paid pretty much what she's supposed to get paid for that job, I don't have a problem with that.'
