LETTERS: SHUMATE HAD TOP RECORD AT SEMO

To the editor:

I call this "Mishow Miscues," because that is just what sportswriter Marty Mishow did in his April 12 and April 19 columns. He had an opportunity to inform Southeast Missouri State University basketball fans, old and new, about Ron Shumate, the winningest basketball coach in Southeast's history and one of the winningest in the nation.

Shumate has been named NCAA Coach of the Year. He has won an NCAA national title and three national runner-up championships. In 1981 he took Southeast from the bottom of the MIAA conference to an NCAA appearance his first year here and to eight NCAA appearances in his first 10 years here. He hosted the NCAA regionals and went to several Final Four and Elite Eight levels, and Mishow says the "NCAA probably never heard of him." Come on. Mishow says he finds it hard to believe the NCAA was out to get Shumate. This is a superfluous statement, and Mishow knows it. It was Ken Dobbins and not the NCAA. Dobbins and the administration, including Dale Nitzschke, got Shumate and got just what they wanted: justification for prematurely firing him. They also got out of paying him the balance of his 1997 salary plus three remaining years left on his contract. What did it cost SEMO? The loss of one scholarship and a huge drop in Booster Club funding. The remaining 12 scholarships are more than enough. The three-year probably is nothing. It just sounds bad when, in effect, it is like a suspended sentence. To call this "serious NCAA violations" is an oxymoron. I find it very unusual for a school to call in the NCAA to check it instead of the reverse. A Cape Girardeau doctor said it well: "The administration killed the deer, gave it to the NCAA and said, `You tag it and get the credit for the kill.'"

If you want to make a comparison, you should maybe make the comparison to what happened at Missouri, which had multiple major violations. Not only did Norm Stewart stay, but the guy who committed most of the violations is still there, only banned from recruiting in Detroit. What is the difference? The difference is the university support. Why was there no support here? The answer is Ken Dobbins, Rich McDuffie and Dale Nitzschke.

Mishow goes on to say, "Nobody will ever know the truth," and the NCAA is the final word. He also says a jury is the final word. Which is it? In this case, it may be a jury, because the allegations are wrong.

It would have been a great opportunity for Mishow to use his column to give Shumate the credit he is due in a respectful way for many new basketball fans and those who have supported Southeast basketball all during the Shumate years and before. Let me do it. Before Shumate, while there was reserved seating (upper level only), you could sit almost anywhere you wanted among the average crowd of under 300 fans in old Houck Field House. Before Shumate's first year was over, games were sold out -- standing room only -- with hundreds turned away at the door. It was that way until the Show Me Center opened in 1988, and without Shumate we probably wouldn't have the Show Me Center today. In 1991, Southeast went up to NCAA Division I, and Shumate told us then it would be hard to win because of the eight-year rule prohibiting participation in any NCAA tournament or OVC tournament. He could not recruit Division I players under rules, and it happened just like he said it would. No coach in America worked harder and hated to lose more than Ron Shumate. He battled through the eight-year rule, and last year he finally recruited some quality Division I players only to leave them for someone else to coach. During this eight-year period, he took several looses because he played several large Division I schools such as Illinois, Arkansas, Cincinnati, Purdue, Mississippi State, Missouri and others for the $25,000 guarantee paid to SEMO. This money helped pay for other SEMO athletic programs such as women's softball, gymnastics and track. Had he not done this to help the university fund these nonrevenue-producing sports, his winning percentage would have been even higher.

Shumate is a quality person. At the 1988 NCAA championship game in Springfield, Mass., Southeast played for the national championship. Dick Vitale said Shumate was a premier collegiate coach in America and had put Southeast Missouri State University and Cape Girardeau on the map. Shumate certainly did not deserve the very unprofessional treatment given him by Southeast's new administrators.

Mishow has seen Shumate pull out a lot of wins late in the game or in overtime. Lots of fans are pulling for him to do it again. So final closure may still be a couple of years away. We can wait.

JAMES E. McDONALD

Cape Girardeau