More Strippers and More Recruits

According to thebootleg.com, a Stanford fans Web site that tracks recruiting, the school hosted 28 players on the weekends of Jan. 10-11 and 17-18. Twenty of those players ended up at Stanford. That’s a pretty high percentage.

Sure the academics at Stanford are of the highest quality but apparently so is the entertainment. The 2003 recruits were treated to a night of carousing at a local strip club and the best part is that the University paid for it.

According to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, the information about the trips to the strip club surfaced in a lawsuit filed by an athletic-department employee against the university and senior associate athletic director Debra Gore-Mann.

The school issued a statement Tuesday stating it "regrets the actions of the student athletes who accompanied recruits in 2003 to adult entertainment venues." Even though NCAA rules were not violated, the statement said the school's "standards of conduct preclude such entertainment as any part of recruitment activity."

Per NCAA rules, each host player receives $30 per day to entertain a recruit. The lawsuit alleges the Stanford athletes filed "numerous, handwritten 'receipts' for $20 each for expenditures" at the New Century Theater, a Larkin Street club whose Web site advertises "Lap Dancers," "Video Booths," and "VIP Lounges."

Stanford Senior Counsel Patrick Dunkley acknowledged the "receipts" were filed by an administrator in the football department and then flagged by Kanzaki. Dunkley also admitted that, as Kanzaki alleged, the handwritten receipts later were replaced by lost-receipt memos to account for the money spent at the club.

"Everybody on the football team was interviewed," said a source, who requested anonymity because of the pending lawsuit. "There were some players who said they knew nothing about it. But there were others who said, 'It was a tradition, it happened to me when I was recruited.' "

According to information provided to The Chronicle, the trips to the New Century involved at least 10 player hosts and their recruits, with more than $300 spent at the club. Dunkley, the school's counsel, said recruits were taken there on two separate weekends in January 2003.

In connection with the recruiting visits, Stanford did report a minor NCAA violation -- but not for players visiting the strip club. The university informed the Pac-10 in 2003 that players had exceeded the amount they were allowed to spend while entertaining a recruit, according to Ron Barker, an assistant commissioner for governance and enforcement at the conference office.

At the time, Barker said, taking a recruit to a strip club was not an NCAA violation.