"If we had had a school jet, he could have been there for a 7 p.m. workout on a Tuesday night right after our practice," former UCLA assistant Mark Gottfried said of the recruitment of Henderson when Harrick was the Bruins' head coach. "That would have been a tremendous advantage."

Instead, Harrick and Gottfried had to wait until a later date to make the nearly 90-minute drive from Westwood to Bakersfield. As ironic it may sound for a school as centrally located as UCLA, that's the reality of a program in a major city that doesn't use chartered or university-owned aircraft for recruiting.

	Quin Snyder and Missouri self-reported their potential NCAA violation.

"In L.A., there's not a lot of need for one," said Gottfried, now the head coach at Alabama. "You can get from LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) to anywhere commercially. It's less convenient for places like Tuscaloosa (Ala.), Auburn (Ala.) or Starkville (Miss.)."

Add Manhattan, Kan., Fayetteville, Ark., Columbia, Mo., and, even at times, Lexington, Ky., to that list. But should it be allowed? Coaches at high-profile schools in college towns without a major airport are scoffing at the idea that the privilege should be taken away because of the recent events involving Missouri.

Last week, Missouri self-reported itself to the NCAA for allowing the mothers of Detroit-area recruits Rickey Paulding and Arthur Johnson to join their sons -- for the price of a commercial ticket estimated at $200 to $300 each -- on their recruiting visit Sept. 17-19. The two potential top-50 recruits committed to Missouri on the trip.

The problem is Missouri broke NCAA bylaw 13.6.2.3.3, which forbids parents from traveling on recruiting visits by noncommercial aircraft. While it doesn't state in that section that parents aren't allowed to be on the trip, it does in bylaw 13.6.2.3.2, which details recruits using a university-owned airplane. Missouri misinterpreted the rule and self-reported the violation.

Earlier this week, the NCAA ruled that the 6-foot-4 Paulding (Detroit Renaissance High) and the 6-9 Johnson (Detroit Pershing) could still attend Missouri. The worst penalty in a case like this would be for the players to be forbidden from attending the school where the violation occurred. Instead, Missouri may get a later, lesser penalty that is unrelated to these two recruits. The mistake in judgment by the staff at Missouri raises the question about the use of chartered airplanes, whether they be university-owned or not.

Is it an advantage for one school to use a chartered plane while another has to wait for a recruit to come through on a small commuter aircraft? The fact that despite the costs, a number of schools that are hard to get to via commercial aircraft regularly use chartered planes shows that it is.

"We have our own plane at Alabama and, yes, it's a tremendous advantage," Gottfried said. "We think it's worth it. If a guy can take you to the Final Four, where it can help your school earn money, yes it's cost-effective. We use it within the state, too. We don't have a major airport near us."

"We had a need for that in Pullman," said former Washington State coach Kelvin Sampson, who is now at Oklahoma. "But we had to make a choice to have a kid fly through Seattle or Spokane and then take a commuter plane here. That's the realities of tough jobs. Having a plane is an advantage that a lot of kids would pay attention to. It evokes a sense of power at certain schools. If you fly a high school kid on a Lear jet, you're going to make a tremendous impression."

But does it make financial sense to fly in one recruit? The cost could run as much as $15,000 or more to charter one flight.

"It's expensive and you've got to have a budget to do it, but it's common practice," Kansas State coach Tom Asbury said. "We can go anywhere to get a kid."

Not exactly. Asbury limits the range of Kansas State's plane. For example, he won't send it west of Denver. A recruit from California has to fly commercially to Denver and then be picked up by the private jet for the trip to Manhattan, Kan.

"It's not cost-effective but it's convenient," Asbury said.

If Kansas State is recruiting a player in Dallas, he could practice with his high school team on Friday, be at Kansas State by dinner Friday night and be back at a reasonable hour on Sunday to complete the allowed 48-hour visit. But it would take the recruit two to three times as much travel time if he had to fly commercially to Kansas City and then on a commuter aircraft to Manhattan.

"You only get 12 (recruits) to bring in anyway," Asbury said. "You're bringing in the kids you really want. If men's basketball had 50 campus visits, we wouldn't use it that many times. But the rules need to be enforced, not curtailed. I don't think they can touch that rule."

The rule allowing the use of a noncommercial or institution's plane hasn't been altered since 1990. If the NCAA truly wants equality among its members, it should get rid of the privilege. If it doesn't care, then the imbalances, which at times become abuses and misinterpretations, will continue.

Regardless, the NCAA seems to be getting softer in the enforcement of its rules. The once-feared enforcement arm handed out a one-scholarship reduction to Virginia after it was determined that a 1996 prospect was provided benefits totaling $14,000. The Cavaliers also had their visits reduced from 12 to nine. Jeff Jones (now a Rhode Island assistant) was the head coach at the time, but current coach Pete Gillen is who has to deal with the penalty. The NCAA clearly has gotten weaker because of a slew of lawsuits. It has never been this vulnerable and the fear factor seems to have faded.

The test cases should be Michigan (alleged payments of $50,000 by a booster to a player) and Minnesota (alleged academic fraud) over the next year. If neither program is hit hard then it might be time to reexamine the NCAA's enforcement criteria.

Expansion fever
Conference USA will decide on expansion Monday in New York. The bottom line is the majority of basketball coaches and athletics directors don't want to become a 14-team league, but they have no say with the school presidents. It's foolish to predict what the presidents will do when they're together in a room.

The options facing the presidents:

1) Add South Florida as a football member;
2) Add East Carolina in all sports (the Pirates already participate in football);
3) Add Texas Christian and Southern Methodist in all sports;
4) Take different combinations of the four schools;
5) Take all of them;
6) Do nothing.

The odds are that South Florida, TCU and SMU will be invited and East Carolina will have to wait its turn. But don't be surprised to see all of them taken to make it a 12-team football conference and 15-team basketball league. If Conference USA does anything to increase the league beyond 12 for either sport, it should be vilified. The WAC proved that a league larger than 12 doesn't work.

Meanwhile, the WAC has called an emergency meeting of its presidents on Oct. 17 to discuss replacing TCU and SMU, if they leave. Regardless, the WAC will look at adding Boise State. If TCU and SMU leave, Utah State and New Mexico State will receive serious consideration. But there are plenty of road blocks. UTEP wants no part of being in a league with its nonconference rival New Mexico State, and Fresno State isn't enamored with adding any more schools from the Big West (which the Bulldogs left in 1992).

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