Osborne's trip was among more than 4,800 taken by members of Congress between January 2000 and June 2004 paid for by private companies and organizations. An analysis of congressional trip records by Medill News Service in partnership with American Public Media's Marketplace program and American found such trips totaled $14.5 million over the four-year period.

"It wasn't like I went to the Bahamas or something," Osborne said. "I went down there and went back. I was there for two or three hours and participated in the seminar."

"It was the only way I could do it and maintain my voting schedule in Congress, as I recall," he added. "It would have been a lot easier for me to say 'no I don't want to go.' It wasn't like I was looking to go down there to make a speech. It wasn't any recreational opportunity to me. It was simply to honor a commitment I made to Dean Smith and James Moeser. It would have been easier for me to just say forget it, but they said they'd bring a plane."

The athletic department does not often bring in speakers, said spokesman Steve Kirschner, and does not use any state funds. The department's $40 million annual budget, he added, is generated primarily through ticket sales, Atlantic Coast Conference bowl games, NCAA tournament revenues, television deals and a Nike sponsorship.

Athletic department funds cover salaries, travel, recruiting, the operation of 28 varsity sports and the funding of more than 400 scholarships.

But analysts point out that the cost is still significant.

"Some of these guys will say, 'I have a family and I have congressional obligations. You're going to have to get me a plane so I can meet all my obligations," said Don Carrington of the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation. "That's done sometimes."

"If [department officials] think he's in that kind of league where his time is that valuable, that's what they've got to do," Carrington said. "They can do that."

Kirschner and Osborne spokeswoman Erin Hegge agree the charter plane was offered by the university without a request from the congressman's office.

"The university offered to do that because [Osborne] had a very strict time schedule," Hegge said, "because he only had a certain amount of time to do that. The university offered to do what they could do to get [him] to speak at that symposium."

Hegge said the invitation was extended in the fall of 2000, prior to the start of the former coach's first congressional term.

"I'm sure it was somewhat of a convenience for him," Kirschner said. "He was nice enough to come down, not charge us an honorarium. To bring in someone of his stature, if we had to pay him an honorarium… $10,000 is a bargain."

According to ethics rules, congressmen cannot accept honoraria, but they can accept travel expenses.

Almost all members of Congress - Republicans and Democrats alike - make use of a code that allows them to travel for educational purposes on an outside party's dime. Some trips are long, and some are short. Some boast international destinations and some involve no more than a quick cab ride.

North Carolina Rep. and Senate hopeful Richard Burr received attention in 2003, when it was discovered that a trip he'd taken, sponsored by the National Association of Broadcasters, included a spa treatment and a couple of drinks at the poolside bar.

Burr quickly reimbursed the organization, attributing the charge to a mistake made by the hotel desk, where he said he left a personal credit card to cover those charges.

Between January 2001 and June 2004, Burr took eight trips, and ringing up a total bill of $45,871.40. That's an average of more than $5,700 per trip The Nuclear Energy Institute, Corning, Inc. and tobacco groups sponsored two trips apiece.

His most expensive of the trips were NEI trips to France and Spain, costing around $18,000 and $17,000 respectively.

In the case of the NEI trips on which members visited foreign nuclear plants and spent fuel reprocessing centers, Burr said, "You can't get that education over here because we don't do it."

He said those trips were necessary in connection with his position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He attended the broadcasters' function, he said, as part of a commitment to local North Carolina broadcasters.

But Burr is by no means the only politician partaking in outside party-sponsored travel.

Rep. David Price, with $105,047.18 in trips, ranked first out of the North Carolina delegation and among the top 20 in the House. He took 15 trips, fewer than the 17 taken by Rep. Mel Watt or the 16 taken by Republican Rep. Howard Coble, but his tended to be longer and more expensive. Price's average trip cost was just over $7,000.

Eleven of Price's trips were with the Aspen Institute or the Center for Middle East Peace, think tanks that he describes in great detail in his 1992 book, The Congressional Experience. Nine of those trips were to international destinations.

Price said it's "hard to paint all [outside party-sponsored] travel with a broad brush." The trips give members of Congress a comprehensive understanding of world issues, he said, without promoting any specific partisan legislation.

"You get a concentrated period of discussion and attention to these programs," Price said of the Aspen Institute trips. "Anyone who knows the Washington scene knows this couldn't take place in Washington with the multiple demands and distractions. The Aspen method involves going to a nice place where cell phones are cut off and the distractions are eliminated. That way undivided attention is paid to this program."

Many of the trips also allow members to experience and understand foreign cultures in a way that would not be possible from home, Price said. One trip to China largely involved meetings with local officials, but congressmen also got to spend a day exploring Nanjing with students at a Chinese-American university diplomacy program.

Sen. John Edwards took six trips totaling $14,311.10, which ranked him 53rd in the Senate. Three were sponsored by trial lawyer associations. His average trip cost almost $2,400.

Edwards also took a three-day trip to California for a forum on current events sponsored by Disney and at the invitation of CEO Michael Eisner.

Edwards spokesman Mike Briggs pointed out that outside party-sponsored travel is separate from travel paid for by Congress itself. Edwards' Senate Intelligence Committee duties have taken him to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey as well as the Middle East and NATO headquarters in recent years.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee reported no trips sponsored by outside parties after July 2002. After Edwards announced he was forming a committee to explore running for the Democratic nomination for president in January 2002, congressional duties and campaign activities kept him busy, Briggs said.

In her first year and a half in office, Senator Elizabeth Dole reported only one trip -- a one-day jaunt from West Virginia to Raleigh, and back, to meet with tobacco groups. Details of that trip were filed in annual financial disclosure forms, which do not require that costs be listed.

Spokesman Brian Nick said Dole's Senate responsibilities haven't left her much time for international travel.

"Becoming a new senator, there is definitely a learning curve as far as just getting up to speed as to how the senate works," Nick said.

Congressmen concede that travel sponsored by outside parties has its advantages. It takes some of the burden off taxpayers to fund necessary research trips, they said, maintaining that the purpose of most trips is strictly educational, and that being treated to travel does not guarantee favorable treatment of sponsors.

But critics dispute the claim of objectivity.

The trips "are often one-sided," said Gary Ruskin, of the Congressional Accountability Project. "Typically these trips help educate members of Congress only about one side of an issue. As such, sometimes they're worse than not traveling at all."

Watchdogs argue that many of these trips give well-funded advocacy groups just one more advantage over the average citizen. They say it's a matter of access, that in sponsoring a trip for a member of Congress, groups secure a loud and clear voice for the duration of that trip.

"Having the long access you get, especially on overseas trips, is a tremendous benefit to the person sitting next to them on the plane," said Danielle Brian, director of the Project on Government Oversight. "It's the people who have the access to set up the meeting and the money to set up the meeting.

"That doesn't necessarily mean that their issue isn't as serious," Brian added. "It's just that not everyone has this type of access to a member of Congress."

Sponsoring trips is "another way that corporate and wealthy special interests get special access with members of Congress which is good as gold when they return home to Washington," Ruskin said.

Groups that don't push specific legislation, like the Aspen Institute, which funded the majority of Price's travel, are better, critics said, and academic institutions that invite commencement speakers are even more benign. But even those organizations fund trips that run into the several thousand-dollar range, trips that Ruskin describes as "cushy."

But watchdogs say the biggest concern is when trips are sponsored by groups that have a direct financial interest in legislation that is pending in Congress. That includes NEI, which in representing the nuclear industry has a large stake in annual energy appropriations and pushed hard for a waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. It includes tobacco groups that have an interest in recent tobacco buyout legislation as well as ongoing issues of FDA regulation. It includes Disney and Corning with corporate interests. And it includes trial lawyers interested in ongoing court reform issues.

Burr defended those trips.

The NEI trips, he said, are "more geared towards the education aspects of it than it is a policy standpoint of any way, shape or form."

NEI spokeswoman Melanie Lyons agreed.

"If we get some votes in our favor, that's great," she said, "but that is by no means the primary purpose of the trip."

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