SMALL-TIME COACHES CAN BE VULNERABLE.

Byline: Kansas City Star

Salah Yousif battled the NCAA's legal system for two years.

He lost his job coaching soccer at Alabama A&M for violations he swears he never committed. He racked up more than $5,000 in legal bills.

And now the NCAA says it made a mistake.

``This committee now finds that there is not sufficient credible evidence to conclude that the former head men's soccer coach was involved in major violations of NCAA legislation,'' the NCAA Committee on Infractions wrote this summer.

In August, the college finally reinstated Yousif, more than 30 months after he lost his coaching job.

``I'm never going to forget this,'' Yousif says. ``I have really gone through a lot of hardship.''

Yousif's crime, more than anything else, may have been that he wasn't a big-name coach who could afford big-time lawyers. NCAA enforcement falls hard on college coaches, especially assistant coaches or coaches at small schools.

Granted, some coaches cheat and deserve their punishment. But Division I-A head coaches are more likely to keep their jobs in enforcement cases than are other head coaches, a Kansas City Star computer analysis shows.

NCAA enforcement head David Berst said it's possible colleges may give their head coaches a break, but that's not an NCAA issue. ``I think that's the world we live in,'' he said.

Yousif's case shows how vulnerable coaches can be.

Alabama A&M was the subject of an NCAA investigation centering on track and field programs when it self-reported additional violations in men's soccer. Yousif, who already had been fired from his $15,000-a-year coaching job, didn't receive a copy of the soccer allegations until seven days before an NCAA hearing.

Yousif, an economics professor, told the infractions committee that the school had no reliable evidence he had provided improper food and housing to athletes. The NCAA's enforcement staff acknowledged it ``accepted the self-report of the institution on the soccer program kind of by the seat of our pants.'' But last year the committee found Yousif contributed to the school's lack of institutional control.

A spokesman for Alabama A&M said Yousif unfortunately got caught in ``administrative turmoil'' at the university.

Berst acknowledged that investigators might have moved too quickly but that justice ultimately prevailed.

Critics trace many problems with enforcement to a 1988 Supreme Court ruling in the NCAA's battle with Fresno State basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, who at the time was coach at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Justices ruled that, because the NCAA is a private organization, it doesn't have to follow legal procedures protecting the rights of alleged miscreants.

``All the power, so to speak, in the investigative process is in the NCAA's hands,'' said Lonny Rose, vice dean for the University of Miami law school who has represented colleges in NCAA investigations.

And in the hands of the universities, which are quick to hang coaches to save their image, critics say.

Mark Coffman, an assistant basketball coach, thinks Weber State offered him up as a sacrificial lamb in an NCAA investigation last year, although Athletic Director Dutch Belnap contends Coffman was treated fairly.

Coffman, making $29,000 a year, couldn't afford an attorney through most of the process. Ron Abegglen, who remains head coach, was able to hire an attorney early in the case.

``There is no way, going into the process, that you can survive it without having an attorney - a knowledgeable attorney,'' Abegglen said.