Updated Jul 19, 2009 5:30 PM ET
Along the path to becoming the first college
basketball coach to win 1,000 games, Three Rivers Community College's Gene Bess often has called his school's booster club instrumental to his success.
"You are the lifeline for many of the extras that (have) allowed us to keep our
basketball program at a high level," he once wrote the club.
But the relationship between the coach and the club are drawing scrutiny after a
Missouri state audit of the school found numerous inappropriate payments for student-athletes made by the club - more than $9,000 in the three years examined - and checks from the club to Bess that didn't have the proper paperwork to support them.
The school did not contest those findings in its May 29 response to the audit, which will be released Monday.
The audit also notes the apparent conflict of interest in overseeing the booster club by Bess, who also serves as the school's athletics director.
"Responsibility for overseeing the activities and expenditures of the Booster Club should be assigned to an individual who is independent and does not have a vested interest in the activities," according to a draft of the report obtained by the Post-Dispatch.
Bess, 74, defended his role and the club and called the audits politically motivated. He said the booster board is made up of some of "the best citizens in the community" and isn't "one of those sleazy operations working behind the scenes."
"We don't think we did anything wrong," said Bess, who has won two national titles at the school. "But if we did, we want to know about it so we won't keep doing it."
The circumstances have triggered an inquiry into the program by the National Junior College Athletic Association, which last fall requested documentation about the booster club and the final copy of the state audit.
The seemingly incompatible dynamic has been in play for years. But the matters literally and figuratively until recently went unchecked in Poplar Bluff, a community of about 20,000 near the
Missouri bootheel.
Contrary to state law, the audit reports, the school has had no written contract with the club despite a decades-long relationship as a "political subdivision" of the school. And until the school commissioned an independent audit by a St. Louis firm in 2006, a source said, the booster club never had been included in its audits.
To Bess, though, two independent audits and perhaps even the state audit - "I'm a little paranoid," he said, laughing - reflect not essential checks and balances but the agenda of a past board of trustees.
"You had kind of an antagonistic group that's been kind of running the show," Bess said. "They're no longer in power, by the way, but they did create some problems for us."
Among booster club purchases that the state audit draft said "may not be appropriate or prudent use of funds" and that also appear to constitute NJCAA rules violations:
- Boosters paid health insurance costs of $3,906 for various student-athletes during the three years ended June 30, 2008.
- The club paid dental costs of $867 for a student-athlete during the two years ended June 30, 2007.
- It paid tuition costs of $1,630 for two student-athletes to attend classes at another institution during the year ended June 30, 2006.
- It spent $1,354 for round-trip airfare for a student-athlete to visit his home overseas in the year ended June 30, 2008.
- The club spent $2,200 during the year ended June 30, 2008, on 20 watches given to players, coaches and others associated with the men's basketball team who attended a national tournament.
Speaking in general terms, Bess said, "We can justify every dime that was spent," and added, "I don't know how the NJCAA is going to look at it, but there are certain things that have to be done.
"If we can't do it the way we did it, then we want to know how to do it, because there is some humanitarian involvement here."
Those examples and others appear to violate NJCAA by-laws concerning grants-in-aid, recruitment and booster clubs.
Student-athletes are not allowed to "receive assistance, in cash or in kind, which is not administered by the institution, or which does not fall within the permissible limits of a grant-in-aid (tuition and fees, room and board, required course-related books and transportation costs one time per academic year)."
The institution, the rules state, is responsible for the "acts of outside individuals or organizations when performed with the knowledge of any member of the administrative or athletic staff of the institution."
Less clear is whether Three Rivers has violated a rule by putting Bess in charge of the club. The by-laws say simply that all transactions of a booster club "must be authorized by the college president or an employee of the president."
Bess does not believe the role is inappropriate, noting he is an administrator of the college and saying he knows "everything that goes on" with the club, which was "founded to be there for me as athletic director."
The club, he said, helps "protect" and "augment" his limited TRCC athletics operating budget of $850,000, about $330,000 of which will go to men's basketball this fiscal year.
"We (the club) don't handle much money," Bess said, adding, "It's always been there to kind of pick up around the edges on stuff that we didn't want to (put on the school's budget)."
Brian Beck, the NJCAA director of compliance, did not respond to telephone and e-mail requests for an interview.
But TRCC, whose men's basketball program was placed on two years' probation in 2004 for booster-related violations, likely will face another round of investigations if the NJCAA follows up on its stated intention of last fall.
"We're prepared to answer everything," Bess said.
The state audit, which examines overall college practices, also cited lax record-keeping by the booster club, including lack of documentation for cash advances made to Bess for team road trips. Those funds were in addition to money the team is allocated by the school for those trips.
For example, the report noted a $2,000 booster payment made to "the men's basketball coach" for team meals and travel in March 2008.
The expenditure initially was recorded as a payment to a local radio station. After further inquiry by the auditor, $800 was returned by an unspecified party to the treasurer of the booster club in July 2008.
Like the first independent audit, the state report also observed that the booster club was making cash payments to referees and other workers at several TRCC basketball tournaments it sponsors.
The state called it a "poor practice" that should be discontinued.
Apparently unrelated to the booster club, the state report also remarks that school presidents and Bess have been provided college vehicles but that the benefit has not been reported on their W-2 forms as income.
"Because procedures have not been established to ensure that IRS regulations are followed," the report states, "the college may be subject to penalties and/or fines for failure to report all taxable benefits."
In its response to the report, the school said it will "review its procedures for ... use of assigned cars to make sure it complies with IRS rules and regulations."
But at least technically it did not commit to changing the arrangement in which Bess is liaison to the club, saying only that it "agrees that it should have a designated college official to work with the Booster Club."
Bess said he had no notion that his role would or should be changed, though he noted there would be an organizational correction to now run "everything (concerning the club) through the college."
It's not the first time the school has been advised to change the arrangement.
The 2007 independent audit stated that "it appears incumbent" upon the school to "appoint an individual to scrutinize the Booster Club activity" and "help ensure the Booster Club and College are not subject to criticism for lack of appropriate stewardship of funds."
In response, then-president John Cooper appointed a vice president of the college to oversee the booster club.
But the job of overseeing the boosters went back to Bess after Cooper was fired in July 2008 and then vice president Joe Rozman was appointed interim president.
To Bess, whose record is 1,084-283 as he enters his 39th season at the school, the state of affairs merely is the latest episode of dwindling administrative support in recent years.
In 2004, after a booster club member used a private plane to fly in recruits against NJCAA rules, the association cited a lack of administrative control and placed the program on two years' probation and stripped it of two scholarships for a year.
In response, the TRCC Board of Trustees also stipulated that all athletics personnel were to study the "NJCAA by-laws in their entirety" and be required to pass a test on them annually.
According to sources, Bess was angry that the trustees didn't appeal the ruling.
The relationship between Bess and the trustees continued to erode in 2007, when the board directed an investigation over an incident in which it said Bess berated a player for leaving after one year to play for an
NCAA Division I program.
That led to a private reprimand of Bess in which his conduct was called "inappropriate and unprofessional."
After boosters obtained a copy of the reprimand, a source said, they made the issue public in an open letter, calling it "an unjust blot on the otherwise impeccable record of a distinguished coach and Christian gentleman."
In turn, the board wrote an open letter, saying Bess "and a tiny minority of his boosters are attempting to make his reprimand a referendum on the men's basketball program."
While noting Bess' "legendary" accomplishments as well as the board's naming of the court in his honor, the letter added, "We reject the premise that (Coach) Bess does not have to play by the rules just because he has won more than 1,000 basketball games or because he is a deacon in his church."
The final line was seen by some as a sarcastic insult of Bess and further kindled a local firestorm over Bess.
That conflict was tangible in the April 2008 election of trustees, when booster club president Don Crandell was listed as treasurer for a group that supported ousting two trustees perceived as anti-Bess.
The two, Thomas R. Turner and John R. Stanard, were replaced by Wilbur Thornton and Randy Winston, whose "Vote for Change" campaign included a plank asking, "Why did the TRCC Trustees try to tarnish Gene Bess?"
Thornton was and continues to be the radio voice of TRCC Raiders men's basketball; Winston was a TRCC baseball player who campaigned on the slogan "Once a Raider, always a Raider."
Their victory knocked out what Bess called "an elitist group" that doesn't "have much appeal to this community."
In the process, he believes, order was restored.
"The other element that I'm talking about, they really came after me and the booster club: Back-to-back audits? Now what does that tell you?" Bess said, adding, "I think we're pretty well past that stuff down here. We think things are looking up. We've got a new president ...
"I've been here 40 years, and I haven't knowingly done anything I thought was out of line, but I think any audit will find little things."
