But for Buckingham, now 21, the dream is on hold, Last December the National Collegiate Athletic Association ruled the Clemson athlete ineligible for play for one year, after discovering that he hadn’t met certain academic requirements in high school. Though officials say Buckingham was not directly involved in improper activities, his case has triggered three separate investigations into possible recruitment violations, altered transcripts and misuse of booster-club funds at Southside. Though such scandals have become commonplace at the college level, seldom do high-school sports programs come under such scrutiny. Says one major university recruiting official, “Everyone looks at college athletics and says, ‘Boy, that’s a real problem.’ But there’s at least as big a problem at high schools, especially with the brokering of players. There’s a lot of coaches or boosters giving $1,000, even $10,000.”
Investigators are also asking how Buckingham, who grew up in tiny Bell Buckle, Tenn., got to Southside in the first place. Atlanta school-board officials say that after he finished 10th grade at Cascade High School he transferred abruptly to Southside and moved in with the school’s assistant basketball coach. At Cascade, Buckingham took special-education classes and not enough standard curriculum courses to meet NCAA eligibility requirements. But Clemson officials say the records they received from Southside did not include this information. After requesting a transcript from Cascade, they asked the NCAA to rule on Buckingham’s eligibility.
For years, the Atlanta school board had heard parents of Southside basketball players complain that the basketball program gave unfair perks to certain athletes. Last fall the board appointed an investigative committee and now claims to have evidence that some Southside athletes received credit for courses they didn’t take; that someone altered their grades and transcripts; that players may have been “brokered” to colleges by school officials in return for unspecified compensation; and that public funds and money from the team’s private athletic booster club may have been combined and misused.
The Atlanta school board is so troubled by allegations about Southside that it has given the NCAA access to the academic records of a number of basketball recruits. The board itself has taken action against some Southside staffers. Willie Fussell, Southside’s community school director, who handled money from athletic-department funds, has been suspended without pay. He denies any wrongdoing and is appealing his suspension. Charles Hawk, the school principal, has been transferred. He, too, denies any wrongdoing. Southside basketball coach David Jones has denied to the school board’s investigative committee that there were any improprieties in his program. None of these staffers is talking to the press, but Jones’s lawyer, Harris Jacobs, says he is simply being persecuted. “Here’s a coach who’s had a successful program at an inner-city school,” he says. “In some folks’ minds, that just shouldn’t be.”
Recruiting violations are an open secret in many high schools, but the NCAA has no jurisdiction below the intercollegiate level. And no other authority enforces highschool sports regulations nationwide. “One thing that amazes me is how little high schools do about regulating their process,” says Paul Aaron, Clemson’s director of institutional compliance. “Exploitation is a valid adjective to describe what happens.”
Was Wayne Buckingham exploited? Clearly, his educational problems began long before college. Investigators have not implicated him in any scam, and the NCAA has cleared him to play ball next season. But even if he one day plays for the Atlanta Hawks, will he look back on his school days as one long practice session?
