Confessions of a college hoops 'slimeball'

Tim Sullivan | Louisville Courier Journal

YORK, Pa. – Looking back, Al Hmiel can see that he was a "slimeball." A liar. A cheat. A University of Cincinnati basketball coach committed to landing recruits and keeping them eligible through any available means.

He looks back with loathing.

"I questioned my integrity, where my life was going, 'cause I was living a lie," Hmiel said. "I felt like I was a pimp or prostitute myself, selling myself for the University of Cincinnati to bring players in, and looking at moms and dads and flat-out lying. And lying to kids. And lying to their coaches, to their girlfriends or whoever was their key adviser, saying the right things that they wanted to hear.

"The truth sometimes hurts, so you didn't tell the truth as a recruiter. You lied. 'Trust me, I'm lying,' was almost my motto."

For most of his life, and in some cases for 40 years, Hmiel carried a guilty conscience and a stash of secrets arguably more damning than the infractions that earned Cincinnati a two-year NCAA probation in 1978. He admits to taking tests for prized players to keep them eligible, to steering players who were no longer wanted to hard classes in the hope they'd flunk out, to plying high school recruits with alcohol and cash, to faking Julius Erving's signature on recruiting correspondence, to placing late-night collect calls to recruits in the name of rival coaches, to behaving, by his own admission, like a "slimeball," a "low-life crumb," "a snake in the grass."

Al Hmiel confessions on basketball recruiting: 'Trust me, I'm lying' Al Hmiel confessions on basketball recruiting: 'Trust me, I'm lying'

How low did he go? Once, while teaching a basketball class at Cincinnati, Hmiel says he assigned an athlete in another sport a D grade for B-quality work to accommodate a coach eager to free up a scholarship. Another time, as the basketball team's academic adviser, Hmiel deliberately overscheduled a player until he became academically ineligible and transferred.

Now 63, Hmiel says he was finally moved to admit his many ethical lapses out of empathy for Andre McGee, the former University of Louisville director of basketball operations, and from the concern that McGee may be scapegoated in the U of L sex scandal being investigated by the NCAA. Recently retired after nearly 30 years at Procter & Gamble and far removed from college basketball, Hmiel says he has never met McGee, but he is intimately familiar with the plight of a young coach on the bottom rung of the career ladder.

"He's a go-fer," Hmiel said of McGee. "He's a janitor in an office building of a major corporation. He's keeping the floors clean. He's keeping the windows nice and shiny. ... He's a part of it, but he's not mainstream. He's trying to be a mainstream-type guy, but he's a peon."

This, at least, was Hmiel's basic job description at Cincinnati. Once an all-state basketball player in Pennsylvania, a member of Beaver Falls High School's 1970 state championship team, Hmiel played sparingly in two varsity seasons at Cincinnati, but made a lasting mark as a recruiting specialist under men's basketball coaches Gale Catlett and Ed Badger, first as a student assistant, later as an assistant coach.

Though he quit coaching nearly a decade before Andre McGee was born, Hmiel can identify with an entry-level coach facing career-threatening scrutiny. Encountering then-Tennessee coach Don DeVoe en route to a 1978 hearing with the NCAA infractions committee, he remembers being told, "You're in serious trouble. And if you're implicated, your career is probably done. ... Because you're marked."

"I saw that McGee thing and I thought, 'This ain't right,'" Hmiel said. "This kid is going to be laid out. His job was to make kids happy and go to U of L and someone gave him the money to do it and now no one's helping him. This kid might never get a job again in coaching."

McGee's attorney, Scott Cox, has said his client "never supplied a prostitute or escort to a player or recruit at the University of Louisville," contrary to the claims of Katina Powell, the escort/author of "Breaking Cardinal Rules." Previously an assistant coach at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, McGee was placed on administrative leave in October and subsequently resigned, saying he could not perform his duties as a full-time assistant "while the false allegations against me are being investigated."

Al Hmiel on Andre McGee: 'He's a flunky for Rick Pitino' Al Hmiel on Andre McGee: 'He's a flunky for Rick Pitino'

Assistant coaches do the bulk of the recruiting in college basketball and they have often absorbed the bulk of the blame when rules have been broken or players don't pan out. For many of them, advancement hinges less on technical know-how than the quality of players they are able to sign. In that realm, by his own estimate, Hmiel excelled.

"I was the best recruiter in the country," he said. "I could get anybody until it came down to the money part of it. I could get UC in the door with any kid in America."

Closing the deal, though, often involved more cash than Hmiel carried. He says a booster loaned him $850 to help sign a player who wanted some stereo equipment. Elite players, however, required deeper pockets.

Hmiel says the late Bill Dally, a trucking executive who became close to several Bearcat coaches, told him he had offered Moses Malone a suitcase containing $150,000, "and that we were third that day."

Malone, a Hall of Fame center who died in September, ultimately chose to skip college and became the first high school player to go directly to the pros. But Cincinnati had been so serious about signing him, Hmiel said, that Catlett was willing to hold open a scholarship by pretending Steve Collier, Indiana's co-Mr. Basketball in 1974, had been recruited to play football.

Contacted through his brother, David, Collier declined comment. Retired since 2002 after 24 seasons as the head men's basketball coach at West Virginia University, Catlett did not respond to requests for an interview, but provided a statement after a list of questions was submitted to him via e-mail:

"I have reviewed the statement that Al Himel made and I have no knowledge of any of these events he described except he was a graduate assistant at UC on my staff over 40 years ago. Therefore, I have no reason to have any further discussion about this."

The passage of time and the death of several figures central to Hmiel's confessions have made some of his assertions difficult to verify. Some incidents Hmiel recounts in precise detail are not as clear in others' memories and, at least in some cases, perhaps too incriminating to be readily acknowledged.

Yet former Cincinnati players confirmed salient parts of Hmiel's story and volunteered additional details consistent with the former coach's depiction of a basketball program with little regard for NCAA rules or academic integrity. Greg Johnson, the player whom Hmiel says Catlett eventually instructed him to "flunk out," says Dally paid him a $10,000 signing bonus, plus $500 a month in cash, provided him with new suits monthly from a private tailor and arranged for a free Chevrolet Malibu Classic for his grandparents' use.

Even so, Hmiel says, the Bearcats were often outbid.

"I used to get so upset," he said. "I would do the best job of recruiting a kid in America and one of the other schools would come in ... and just buy them at the end without doing all the legwork.

"I always said, if I'm going to cheat, I want to be the best cheater in the country. If I'm going to cheat, by God, give me the tools. I can get any kid in the country to come to Cincinnati, but give me the tools and the money then, so that I can cheat the best. Don't get me three bullets in my gun. Give me six chambers and an extra shell. I don't want to come out at the end and lose a kid because we weren't cheating good enough."

Once committed to corrupt practices, Hmiel saw no percentage in half-measures.

"Why rob a drive-thru market," he said, "when you can rob a bank?"

Hmiel's most significant signing was Robert Miller, the star of Louisville Central's 1974 state championship team. While still an undergraduate at Cincinnati, Hmiel made numerous trips to Louisville to forge a relationship with the 6-foot-10 center. Their first encounter was at Freedom Hall, where Hmiel treated Miller and his friends at a concession stand.

Miller was generally quiet but often hungry, and Hmiel was able to develop a rapport through dining. He regularly paid for Miller's meals at Louisville restaurants, and readily responded to his whims. When Miller showed an interest in Cadillacs, Hmiel borrowed one from Catlett. Hmiel was so willing to go the extra mile – both literally and figuratively – that Miller asked him to serve as a chauffeur for his high school prom.

"I said something like that," Miller confirmed. "(But) I was only joking."

After a month of intense courting, Hmiel made his conquest. He remembers Miller telling him, "I'm sick of looking at you," and then announcing he was ready to sign a letter-of-intent to play for Cincinnati.

Within hours, Catlett had prepared the papers and hurried to Louisville along with Dally. After some preliminary conversation at Miller's home, Hmiel says, the coaches took their leave to allow Dally to negotiate and to maintain their own plausible deniability.

"I kind of knew what was going on," Hmiel said. "For an hour or so, Gale and I drove around, walked around, stood outside the house. Eventually, Dally came out and we went in and signed Bob Miller.

"A couple of days later, I went down to see Miller and I saw people unloading a refrigerator, washers and dryers. So the next day on campus, I told Catlett that somebody had sent Bob Miller all these appliances. And he said, 'You didn't see nothing.' I said, 'No, I saw it with my own eyes.' He said, 'No, you didn't.' He said it never happened."

What Hmiel says he witnessed at Miller's house, however, was verified at least in part by the former player. Miller said Dally provided his mother with a color television and a freezer full of meat.

"We tried to recruit him," former University of Louisville coach Denny Crum said of Miller. "But I don't know anything about (extra benefits). He wouldn't even get a black-and-white (TV) out of me."

Miller said there was no specific talk about money with Cincinnati coaches or boosters, "but it was insinuated." He said his decision "wasn't about dollars and cents. It was about my family being able to see me play."

In his 1995 autobiography, "Pressed for Success," former Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins credits Dally for connecting him "with a number of people in town who were willing to help us out any way they could within NCAA guidelines." Yet while more than eager to help, Dally was less than vigilant about recruiting restrictions.

According to Hmiel, Dally undermined Cincinnati's pursuit of Plymouth (Mich.) forward Jim Ellinghausen when the player's father took offense to an offer the booster made that was in conflict with NCAA rules. Ellinghausen, who played at Ohio State and is now a vice president with PulteGroup, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

"He was Catlett's right-hand man," Johnson said of Dally. "He was his guy. When Catlett wanted something, Dally went and got it."

When the NCAA began making inquiries about possible infractions in the Cincinnati basketball program, Johnson says Dally instructed him to reveal nothing or that he would face consequences.

"Dally told me verbatim this came from Catlett," Johnson said. "That there would be repercussions for your career."

Hmiel said Pat Cummings, another prominent Cincinnati player of the Catlett era, told him years later that Dally had provided his parents with a blue Ford automobile. The relationship between the player and the booster became so close that Cummings became a director of Dally's charitable foundation. When Dally died in 2007 as a widower with no children, the only survivor mentioned in his Cincinnati Enquirer obituary was "a very special friend, Patrick Cummings." Cummings died in 2012.

Tax documents show the William R. Dally Foundation donated $70,000 to the University of Cincinnati Foundation between 2010 and 2013.

"He certainly was a fan of the University of Cincinnati, I know that," said attorney William Kirkham, the executor of Dally's estate. "But what he did and what he didn't do, recruiting-wise, I don't know who would know."

When the NCAA announced its sanctions against Cincinnati on Dec. 28, 1978, the most serious violations cited involved improper payments from "representatives of the university's athletic interests" (boosters) to several scholarship athletes, recruits and the mother of one recruit. While the direct culpability of the coaches was largely confined to payments for meals and transportation, the cumulative damage of the investigation and its anticipated penalties helped persuade Catlett to leave Cincinnati for West Virginia University during the 1978 Final Four.

As a matter of policy, the NCAA does not identify individuals by name in its public documents concerning infractions cases. The violation most easily pinned to Hmiel involved "a former student assistant basketball coach" driving a recruit to Dayton, Ohio, and providing him with free admission for a high school all-star basketball game.

In retrospect, Hmiel believes the full extent of Cincinnati's wrongdoing warranted stiffer sanctions, but that much of its rule-breaking went undetected. Since the NCAA generally observes a four-year statute of limitations on infractions, new disclosures in a case closed 37 years ago are viewed more as a curiosity than a hot tip. At this point, Hmiel's admissions serve mainly to provide context about the culture of college basketball recruiting, which ESPN analyst Dick Vitale has likened to a "cesspool," and insight into the moral compromises young coaches make to advance their careers.

Hmiel says he did not hire strippers to entertain recruits, as Andre McGee is alleged to have done, but he did not hesitate to provide alcohol to recruits or to help them find short-term female companionship. That approach is not unique - "What you see at a bachelor or bachelorette party is what happens on a recruiting visit," former Michigan star Jalen Rose said on an October podcast – but neither is it foolproof.

While entertaining Kyle Macy on a recruiting visit, Hmiel remembers that his strategy "totally backfired" with Indiana's Mr. Basketball of 1975.

"This is a Christian kid who didn't drink, and I'm at a bar," Hmiel said. "I don't know if he ever saw a naked woman and I asked him, 'Do you want some (sex)? Do you want a beer, a shot of whiskey, a Long Island Iced Tea?' He said, 'No, I'll just have a Coke. No, I don't want a girl. I want to go play tennis and see the Reds tomorrow.'"

Macy, who became a consensus All-America at Kentucky and starred on the Wildcats' 1978 NCAA championship team, said he could not recall the bar trip Hmiel described. His lingering memory of his recruiting visit to Cincinnati was of being ditched at a dormitory when his guide, Steve Collier, left to visit his girlfriend.

When Macy inquired about transferring during his freshman year at Purdue, the Cincinnati coaches wondered if he was tough enough to fit in after resisting Hmiel's party guy sales pitch.

"As a staff, we decided we didn't want him," Hmiel said. "He goes to Kentucky and becomes one of the great college guards of all time. And we could have had him."

Even then, Hmiel had strong reservations about the role he was playing. He remained on the Cincinnati staff for a year following Catlett's departure, as an assistant to Ed Badger, but expressed some of his misgivings in a 1979 interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer's Bill Ford.

"Basketball is a beautiful game," Hmiel said. "But the college game is dirty. No ethics, no moral code. Nice guys don't win. You've got to scrape, scrap, stab people in the back, make promises you know you can't keep."

Though the NCAA revised its rules in 1973 to define athletic scholarships as one-year agreements subject to renewal, coaches continued to promise recruits a four-year commitment. Inevitably, some recruits failed to develop as projected. Rather than face the fallout of revoking scholarships and reneging on guarantees, coaches have often applied pressure to convince players to leave voluntarily – limiting their playing time, recruiting other players at the same position, etc.

Al Hmiel on academic fraud in basketball: 'I could manipulate the system' Al Hmiel basketball recruiting confessions: Academic fraud

If those tactics failed to persuade a player to leave, coaches might resort to heavier-handed means, as Hmiel says he did with Greg Johnson, Ohio's 1976 Class A Player of the Year.

"He was a great shooter, but he wasn't quick enough," Hmiel said. "Once (he) got to college, kids were blocking his shot. He couldn't adjust. He was a head case. Gale said, 'Let's flunk him out.'"

Among Hmiel's responsibilities with the Cincinnati program was to serve as an academic adviser, a role which essentially meant keeping the right players eligible. Though Hmiel says he probably took half a dozen tests for members of the 1976-77 Cincinnati team that was ranked as high as No. 2 in the nation, Johnson was considered expendable and made to feel unwanted by being placed in what Hmiel called "real hard classes."

When Johnson first learned of efforts to undermine him academically, he barely reacted, referring to the matter as "water under the bridge." But as he reflected on Hmiel's admission over a period of weeks, "it started chewing at my gut."

"I was traveling at the time," he said. "As I thought about it, the more (angry) it made me. I couldn't understand why. It just amazes me at this point in my lifetime. It is mind-boggling to me."

Johnson remembers comparing his course load to that of Pat Cummings and learning that he was taking six classes when his teammates were generally taking three or four.

"I didn't see it at the time because it happened in pieces," he said. "I was taking some advanced economics courses, some advanced math courses I thought I wasn't ready to take yet. ... I was overwhelmed."

Johnson was declared academically ineligible as a sophomore and transferred to Kentucky Business College, thereby opening a scholarship for another player.

"As a coach, you love your players and treat them like your kid if they're starters and they help you," Hmiel said. "The kids on the end of the bench are like orphans. They're adopted kids. They're the red-headed stepchild. They're the kids with Coke-bottle glasses and braces, the Plain Jane girl at school.

"... If you can play and you score points and you start, you're an asset to the program. If kids come to school and aren't as good, you're not an asset. You're a liability. They don't need you."

Ohio University's David Ridpath is president-elect of the Drake Group, an organization devoted to academic integrity in athletics. He says coaches "should have no involvement academically," but acknowledges their creativity in circumventing restrictions.

When told of Hmiel giving an athlete a D grade for B work to help clear a roster spot, Ridpath said coaches should have to live with their recruiting mistakes. Yet with more schools awarding multi-year scholarships that cannot be revoked for athletic reasons, Ridpath anticipates coaches may look to grade manipulation as an exit strategy.

"As much as I hate to say this," he said, "if you're going to be that unethical, this is the way to do it."

Dr. Joe Luckey, the senior associate athletic director who oversees academics at Cincinnati, said Hmiel's assertions were the first he had heard of a coach trying to hurt an athlete's grades in order to clear roster space, but that safeguards now in place would make doing so more difficult at most Division I schools. Though abuses continue - the still-unsanctioned academic fraud case at the University of North Carolina spanned 18 years - compliance offices have added a buffer between coaches and classwork.

Al Hmiel recruiting adventures: 'You learn how to lie' Hmiel, a former assistant basketball coach at University of Cincinnati, recalls recruiting Robert Miller of Louisville's Central High School, and UK's Kyle Macy.

"Coaches are not in the process of advising a student (on classes)," Luckey said. "So in terms of the academic load of that student, the only impact coaches have is giving us their (game) schedules and practice schedules."

Some of the ethical corners Hmiel cut are almost comical. Having procured some stationary from the (then) New York Nets, Hmiel wrote several recruits recommending that they choose Cincinnati and signed the note as "Dr. J," for Julius Erving. If Cincinnati was competing with Indiana or North Carolina for a recruit, Hmiel might place a collect call to the player's home in the middle of the night and say it was from coach Bobby Knight or Dean Smith. When he wearied of imposing on Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson to contact recruits, Hmiel says he would ask fellow assistant coach Mike Brown to place the calls and impersonate the Bearcats' iconic "Big O."

Brown, later the head coach at Central Connecticut State, laughed when asked about his Robertson imitation in a telephone interview. He then paused for several seconds before responding.

"I coached a long time and was on a lot of basketball (staffs)," Brown said. "There was no bigger character or bigger personality than Al Hmiel. I can't honestly say that I remember calling anyone and saying I was Oscar Robertson. But to his point, we had to be creative.

"We were trying to make our way in the business and impress the head coach. How do young assistants impress the head coach or impress other coaches? It's your ability to recruit."

Hmiel's early recruiting successes can be credited to a gregarious personality and relentless salesmanship. He skipped his roommate's wedding and a reunion of his high school championship team while wooing Robert Miller. Recruiting, he says, became more important than his religion, his friends and his social life, and his pitch grew more polished as he became more comfortable replacing facts with fiction.

"I had a kid in Detroit one time who said he wanted to be a mechanical engineer," Hmiel said. "(But) He had all Ds and Cs. ... I said, 'To be honest with you, I don't think you have the grades to get through Cincinnati's engineering school.' And his sister turned on me and says, 'Typical white guy, holding back the black man.'

"We weren't going to get that kid. I should have lied: 'Come to Cincinnati, You'll be a mechanical engineer.' I learned from that. I never said that again."

Hmiel admired Bobby Knight for his uncompromising candor, but he did not think Cincinnati's circumstances allowed recruiters to be as selective or as forthright as the then-Indiana University coach. He remembers Knight telling the parents of Doug Schloemer that as much as he admired their son personally, Kentucky's 1978 Mr. Basketball was not good enough to play at IU.

"That's news to me," Schloemer said upon hearing Hmiel's story. "I'm not saying it didn't happen. ... Oddly enough, I think I would have played more at Indiana than I played at Cincinnati."

Schloemer, now an attorney in Northern Kentucky, is remembered by Bearcat fans for sinking the winning shot in a record seven-overtime game against Bradley in 1981. His classroom work also helped prop up the basketball program's flimsy academic profile.

"Cincinnati had what they called University College, which was really a two-year junior college," Hmiel said. "We could bring any marginal, questionable kid in.

"We knew that the great athletes (who) were smart probably weren't coming to Cincinnati. We had to take the lesser kid, maybe with almost equal ability, but poor grades, poor background, maybe had some trouble in their life, and we could put them in University College. I had kids in University College for four years. They never got out of the two-year school."

This was before Propositions 48 and 16, which established academic eligibility standards for college athletes; before the NCAA tied post-season participation to a school's Academic Progress Rate (APR); before a range of reforms left coaches less latitude to game the system.

"I tried to put kids in classes with younger professors that wanted to be a teacher or a full professor at the university," Hmiel said. "I knew the athletic department could help certain teachers with letters of recommendation (to) get tenure. I'd tell a young teacher, 'If you help me out and work with me, I'll ask my bosses to put a word in with your department head or the dean of the University College or business administration to get you tenure. 'Cause you're really a good teacher.'"

Typically, a teacher's grading patterns were well enough known that such sweet talk was unnecessary. Like any savvy student, Hmiel knew where to find the easiest A's. He also knew where to go when he needed special favors.

"There came down a couple situations where a kid had to get a B or an A in a class," he said. "I went to a professor I knew really well and he said, 'I'm not going to give the kid a grade, but if there's a test turned in with B or A answers (it would count). I'll give you my textbook. Everything that's on the test is underlined in yellow.'

"I spent many weekends as a 21-, 22-year-old kid with a professor's textbook, taking tests for kids, putting their name on it, turning it in, getting a B or A grade, and that was my life."

Hmiel declines to name the professor he claims was complicit in his academic fraud, but says when he expressed his remorse, Catlett told him, "If you don't do it, I'll have to bring somebody else in that would."

Al Hmiel regrets: he's had a few Hmiel, a former assistant basketball coach at University of Cincinnati, decided to tell the story of his experiences after the Andre McGee / Katina Powell / University of Louisville situation.

Robert Miller said Hmiel's admissions were "a blemish not only to him, but also to the university. I heard stories about players and other students taking tests (for athletes), but I've never heard a story about assistant coaches taking tests."

Hmiel's claims raise questions about the scope and the thoroughness of the NCAA's 1978 investigation. Though the Committee on Infractions identified 16 specific violations by Cincinnati, and said the school's penalties would have been more severe had university officials not shown commitment to "full compliance with NCAA legislation," its report makes no mention of any academic irregularities.

Charles Alan Wright, who chaired the NCAA's Committee on Infractions in 1978, died in 2000. NCAA spokesman Emily James said the organization could not comment on Hmiel's claims, "because they happened so long ago and we don't know all of the facts."

The University of Cincinnati athletic department responded with a prepared statement:

"We take any claims of academic misconduct very seriously. Due to the time which has passed since the alleged incidents occurred, federal privacy laws and unavailable records, we are unable to confirm or deny the allegations."

At a minimum, though, this much would seem indisputable: Al Hmiel lived a lie for six years at Cincinnati, and he has lived with his lies, uneasily, ever since. His stated desire in sharing his story is to provide perspective about the allegations against Andre McGee and to achieve a personal catharsis by coming clean.

"Something needs to be told," he said. "Each kid has the opportunity to be the pilot of his own plane. How high you fly, what turbulence, how you land that plane, each kid makes that decision. Make the wrong decisions in life, you're a bum."

Hmiel says the decisions he made turned him into a "charlatan." As a result, he has steered his son Jason away from coaching college basketball.

"I refuse to let (him) get into that cesspool of slime," Hmiel said. "A college basketball coach could take three showers and put on a new set of clothes and still stink."

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, tsullivan@courier-journal.com or @TimSullivan714 on Twitter.