Rashidi Wheeler’s name adorns a glass-encased locker at Northwestern, an annual high school award in California and an honorary diploma hanging in a hallway of his mother’s house. But Linda Will has hopes for a much bigger tribute to her son’s memory: a piece of federal legislation.
In her anger over Wheeler’s death — and her fight to ensure that nothing like it happens again — Will wants to take on the NCAA. And she may have found a powerful ally in U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
The Rashidi Wheeler Bill, which Will hopes Boxer will sponsor, would regulate student-athlete safety where Will feels the NCAA has failed.
Wheeler died Aug. 3, 2001, after a football conditioning drill at NU. The NCAA accepted a self-reported, secondary violation by the school for breaking off-season workout rules — the extent of the association’s involvement in the incident.
“The NCAA has demonstrated that it is concerned if someone gets extra groceries,” Will said. “But if it’s something of a serious nature, they want to back away.”
Discussion of the bill is in the early stages, and, given some of its demands and the attitude of Washington, it may struggle to go further.
Boxer’s office did not return The Daily’s phone calls regarding the bill.
The NCAA originally was formed to stem football-related deaths and preempt federal intervention after 18 players died during the 1905 season.
Today, it is best known for regulating competitive fairness and academic integrity, but an NCAA spokeswoman said safety is also a priority.
“It’s a major concern, it’s not just academics,” Laronica Conway said. “There’s a sports-medicine handbook that we ask the trainers to follow, and we ask the administrators to follow it as well. It trickles down, and it’s a responsibility of both the institution and the NCAA.”
Some of Will’s ideas for the bill, such as required safety and medical equipment at all events and grievance procedures for athletes, already fall under the NCAA’s jurisdiction.
But other ideas are more radical and less easily implemented. Will said she is most concerned with the psychological abuse of athletes that often is labeled as motivation. She would like to see coaches screened and licensed to work with players, just as day-care providers are with kids.
The big challenge is to get the ear of a federal government that has traditionally held athletics at arm’s length.
“It’s going to take a scandal to get the federal government involved,” said Paul Haagen, a law professor and co-director of The Center for Sports Law and Policy at Duke University. “And it’s got to be a scandal more than just people at Northwestern making a bad judgment about a hot day.”
The Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, amended in 1998, invests heavy power in private governing bodies like the United States Olympic Committee. The government’s only other involvement has been to require the disclosure of graduation rates and compliance with Title IX — a piece of legislation that never even mentions sports.
But asking Washington to peek into coaches’ resum
