Stanford recruits visited strip club
2003 incidents, revealed in lawsuit, didn't violate rules at time
Ron Kroichick and Mark Fainaru-Wada, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Stanford football players entertained recruits by taking them to a San Francisco strip club on two weekends in January 2003 -- and the outings were paid for with athletic-department money.
The university acknowledged Tuesday the visits took place, but it said no coaches were aware of the trips and the actions did not violate NCAA rules. However, the incidents prompted an athletic-department investigation that resulted in changes to the policies on recruiting visits.
The information about the trips to the strip club surfaced in a lawsuit filed by an athletic-department employee against the university and senior associate athletic director Debra Gore-Mann. Gore-Mann, who oversees the department's finances, is a candidate to replace recently departed athletic director Ted Leland.
The suit was brought by Sheryl Kanzaki, who alleges she was harassed and discriminated against, particularly by Gore-Mann.
Gore-Mann did not return a phone message seeking comment.
The school issued a statement Tuesday stating it "regrets the actions of the student athletes who accompanied recruits in 2003 to adult entertainment venues." Even though NCAA rules were not violated, the statement said the school's "standards of conduct preclude such entertainment as any part of recruitment activity."
Per NCAA rules, each host player receives $30 per day to entertain a recruit. The lawsuit alleges the Stanford athletes filed "numerous, handwritten 'receipts' for $20 each for expenditures" at the New Century Theater, a Larkin Street club whose Web site advertises "Lap Dancers," "Video Booths," and "VIP Lounges."
Stanford Senior Counsel Patrick Dunkley acknowledged the "receipts" were filed by an administrator in the football department and then flagged by Kanzaki. Dunkley also admitted that, as Kanzaki alleged, the handwritten receipts later were replaced by lost-receipt memos to account for the money spent at the club.
Dunkley said he didn't know whether player hosts had taken recruits to strip clubs before the 2003 incidents. However, the athletic department received indications the adult-entertainment excursions weren't uncommon, according to a source familiar with the Stanford football program and its investigation of the incidents.
"Everybody on the football team was interviewed," said the source, who requested anonymity because of the pending lawsuit. "There were some players who said they knew nothing about it. But there were others who said, 'It was a tradition, it happened to me when I was recruited.' "
Buddy Teevens, the school's head football coach at the time, said Tuesday that he was not aware of any previous incidents and that he learned of the trips to the New Century after the fact. Teevens, now Dartmouth's coach, said he was "hazy" about details, but he believed the situation involved "one set of receipts from one individual."
However, according to information provided to The Chronicle, the trips to the New Century involved at least 10 player hosts and their recruits, with more than $300 spent at the club. Dunkley, the school's counsel, said recruits were taken there on two separate weekends in January 2003.
According to thebootleg.com, a Stanford fans Web site that tracks recruiting, the school hosted 28 players on the weekends of Jan. 10-11 and 17-18. Twenty of those players ended up at Stanford.
Teevens said he was "surprised and disappointed" and that "we ripped everybody" involved after learning of the strip-club trips.
"From that point forward, the threat was clear: You would jeopardize your scholarship if you were involved in any activities of that sort," Teevens said in a phone interview.
In connection with the recruiting visits, Stanford did report a minor NCAA violation -- but not for players visiting the strip club. The university informed the Pac-10 in 2003 that players had exceeded the amount they were allowed to spend while entertaining a recruit, according to Ron Barker, an assistant commissioner for governance and enforcement at the conference office.
At the time, Barker said, taking a recruit to a strip club was not an NCAA violation. In August 2004, after a highly publicized scandal at Colorado in which sex and alcohol were used to entice football recruits to attend the school, the NCAA board of directors issued guidelines for recruiting visits that it expected schools to adopt.
Those guidelines include not taking recruits to strip clubs.
Stanford had made similar changes on its own in the wake of the New Century incidents, according to Dunkley. Jon Alston, a linebacker who recently completed his senior season, said he knew nothing about the strip-club visits but recalled the university becoming more diligent about recruiting reimbursements.
"There was a dramatic shift in how the expenses were done shortly after 2003," Alston said. "The administration was very strict about what was appropriate and what was not appropriate. Every dollar was to be accounted for and receipts were always necessary."
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