The NCAA Cracks Down On Those Cheaters At UCLA. By Jeff Smith WELL YOU'VE COME a long way, Baby, I guess. You've got Virginia Slims to smoke, and lots of world-class sporting events to watch, if you do smoke Virginia Slims, or participate in, if you don't. But I resolved the whole issue of cigarette smoking a week or two ago, so this isn't about smoking. It's about another arena of feminine deportment, also sports-related--and who knows, maybe they'll come up with a tobacco connection by press time. I allude to the recent decision by the NCAA committee on infractions to strip the UCLA softball team of its 1995 national championship, and bar that team from competing in this year's championship tournament. A decision which, incidentally, UCLA quickly and callously disregarded. They did so simply by reading the fine print and slithering through the loophole that yawned, obvious and inviting, therein. A little background is in order: Lots of us, boys and girls together, have become softball fans over the last several years. Softball is played on the college level by young women. The University of Arizona softball team is the most successful varsity sports program at the school, and one of the most powerful dynasties in college sports, regardless of gender. Which, of course, torques the jaws of all and sundry in Westwood, California, where the UCLA Bruins are bruited to be maybe the next best softball franchise on the planet. So in 1995, with the national championship coming down to the short strokes, the UCLA softball powers did what any management team of men in sports would have done in similar straits, if they thought they could get away with it--they cheated like sonsabitches. Or in this instance, just bitches. They shopped the global market for pitchers and came up with the very best: an Australian professional named Tanya Harding. (The American skater spells her name with an o, but otherwise she's the Aussie hurler's no-more-evil twin.) Tanya was flown up from Down Under, given a set of fake papers and curriculum vitae worthy of a KGB hit-woman, enrolled in a minimum course of study, and then flown to the national softball tournament to pitch four games. Which she smoked. In the last of those four games, Harding pitched UCLA to a one-run win over the UA to take the championship. Then she took a powder, jetting back Down Under to hire out to her country's Olympic team which, like most Olympic programs worldwide these days, just loves to parade professional athletes around in the guise of fun-loving amateurs. Was I pissed? I should hope to shout. The whole world was outraged. And amazed. Except for the women at UCLA, who had, as earlier alluded, come a very long way toward making college girls' athletics as cheesy and hypocritically crooked as the boys' games. The men's games. The pros. More so, actually: Pro is short for professional, which signifies they're in it for the money. We naive few were astounded UCLA should have so brazenly brought in a ringer, and that they were seeming to get away with it, despite the fact that Harding was enrolled long after normal students start the semester, that she didn't do her course work, that she flew back to Australia after nine weeks and never finished her alleged classes, never got credit. Nobody was even coy about it. And it only took the NCAA a year and a half to gumshoe around and make an arrest. The UCLA softball program is guilty of robbery. They stole a national championship and they've got to give it back. Sadly, unjustly, unimaginably, the UA is not being given the championship, despite the fact they made the finals without the benefit of cheating. The 1995 championship is simply vacated. Oh, and UCLA isn't allowed to compete for this year's title, and a few other administrative swats--unless they appealed the NCAA ruling, which owing to time constraints could not be considered until after the championship tournament is over. Guess what they did? The UCLA administration and softball faculty piously protested that it wasn't fair to this year's team to penalize the program for something done by a team that's no longer in school. Gee, following that logic you couldn't punish any school for anything done by previous years' teams. So I guess you just say darn. Only it's not the girls on the team who pull this crap, it's the coaches, athletic directors, the grownups. And you've got to pull down their pants and spank them, no matter how long it takes to catch up with them. If UCLA's softball mothers don't want to see this year's girls suffer for the sins committed while 1995's girls were playing ball, then the mothers shouldn't be committing sins. After all, there are no bad children, only bad parents.

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