Sunday, February 24, 2002
UK athletic department helped solicit money for gift
Enquirer staff and news services
LEXINGTON, Ky. — To wish retiring Athletics Director C.M. Newton well, top University of Kentucky sports officials coordinated an effort with some of the program's biggest boosters to gather a goodbye gift: about $130,000 for a vacation house in the Bahamas.
After a series of conversations with a core of donors, UK athletics fund-raising director Kathy DeBoer and current Athletics Director Larry Ivy quietly solicited big-dollar supporters during the summer of 2000 to contribute on Newton's behalf, according to a report published Saturday by the Lexington Herald-Leader.
DeBoer said she felt hesitant at first about mixing university business with a retirement gift campaign. “I was squeamish about it,” DeBoer said. “I didn't want the message to be any different than it was — that we were raising dollars for the university.”
Her squeamishness, DeBoer said, subsided after she received positive reactions from several boosters.
While there aren't any apparent UK or NCAA rules forbidding such a campaign, university President Lee Todd said he's concerned.
“That is one topic we're looking into to see if we need a written policy that clearly delineates what can be done,” Todd said.
The athletics program was recently punished after a football scandal resulted in dozens of NCAA violations.
According to Newton, the approximately $130,000 went toward a four-bedroom, three-bath condominium he bought in July 2000 on the Bahamian island of Abaco. Newton said he had hoped to enjoy the property with his wife, Evelyn, who died of leukemia in March 2000.
The money, Newton said, came from 13 or 14 people and organizations, some of which were out of state and had connections to Newton from his time coaching at the University of Alabama and Vanderbilt University.
The requests for money, DeBoer said, were included in conversations about a package of UK athletics fund-raising projects, some billed in letters as Newton's “favorite projects”: new turf for the football stadium, establishing a C.M. Newton Professorship in the sports medicine graduate program, an athletics archive at the school library and an Evelyn Davis Newton Diving Endowment.
“If you turn back the clock to January of 2000, we had just come off two consecutive bowl games ... it looked like we were on the upswing,” DeBoer said. “Coach Newton was at the height of his popularity and that's a good time to try and raise money on somebody's behalf.”
And tagged on to that goodwill, in some instances, was a request for money to help Newton with his Caribbean dream.
“When I was out visiting with particular people, and they were very particular people, I asked them if they wanted to contribute to this,” DeBoer said.
Among those who gave:
—The Committee of 101, a UK booster group. President Van Florence acknowledged that the organization gave $10,000, as reported in its filings with the school's athletics department.
—Bob and Kenneth Nutter, the sons of the late Ervin Nutter, for whom UK's Nutter Field House and E.J. Nutter Football Training Facility are named.
—Jim Host, founder and CEO of Host Communications Inc., one of the nation's most powerful college sports marketing companies.
The $130,000 would have made up more than 80 percent of the $152,000 purchase price shown on Bahamian property records for Newton's condo.
The seller was John Rich, a member of Vanderbilt University's athletics board who befriended Newton when he coached at the school during the 1980s. Through that relationship, both men said, Newton began using the condo at least once a year.
The money, Host said, was “like when Coach (Adolph) Rupp had his 500th win. Everybody pitched in and got him a Cadillac.”
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UK athletic department helped solicit money for gift
