Thank God for the NCAA
We are approaching a time of year that I have often called the abyss of sports. It’s a time where if you aren’t a diehard follower of baseball, your life as a sports fan is miserable.
The good news, though, if you can call it that – is that the other sports find their way into our minds due to the rash of lockout situations at the professional level.
Yep, there’s nothing like rich people arguing over money to keep a hungry sports appetite sated.
And, of course, there are the various doomsday scenarios at the collegiate level involving Ohio State most recently, but have also involved North Carolina, USC of course, and if you believe the rumors, Auburn may find itself under the heel of the NCAA sometime soon.
What’s that old saying about no news being good news?
Here is what is funny about the college stuff. Well, funny to me. And this is hardly a revelation. You could say I am stating the obvious.
But let’s look at the list of recent targets by the NCAA:
USC – Perennial contender for a national title as well as the unquestioned Pac-10 leader for most of Pete Carroll’s tenure as Head Coach.
Ohio State – Has dominated the Big Ten for years now, including boasting a very non-rival like record against Michigan (they have lost only once) during the tenure of now-former Buckeye Head Coach, Jim Tressel. Oh, and there’s a national title in there somewhere, too.
North Carolina - were it not for the literal dismantling of that NFL-caliber defense prior to the season last year, the Tarheels might have very well played for a national title. But losing over half of your starters due to NCAA penalties can have an effect on a teams’ potential.
Auburn – Defending national champ
Oregon – Has taken over as the dominant team in the Pac-10, now officially the Pac-12. Played Auburn for the national title this last season, and is one of the favorites for achieving the BCS title this year.
Outside of USC and perhaps Ohio State, these programs have found themselves in the crosshairs seemingly at the height of their popularity, which can with most be paralleled to their success as well. USC didn’t find itself really under the knife until Reggie Bush and the national titles were a memory. Ohio State is kind of a sketchy exception, because they did indeed draw a lot of the wrong attention with former Buckeye Maurice Clarrett not long after OSU finished as the top team in the country. But it goes without saying that the “stuff” didn’t hit the proverbial fan until recently.
Everyone loves a winner?
Not the NCAA, apparently.
It’s gotten so bad that University of Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne has reported his own program to the NCAA for an apparent violation involving the purchasing of certain books with a scholarship which weren’t permissible under current guidelines.
He even went so far as to put his own program on probation for the period of two years.
Curious, but admirable I suppose.
And maybe he’s getting ahead of the curve.
After all, it’s not like Nebraska is a household name nowadays. They are better than they have been in awhile, but they certainly aren’t Nebraska of the mid to late-90s. That kind of success might never be seen again, here in Lincoln or anywhere else for that matter. But this is Nebraska, and like most traditions of this caliber, it’s usually just a matter of time before this amorous dance with a national title becomes a tangible tango.
When that time comes, maybe Dr. Tom’s proactive approach will serve his program well.
I don’t blame him. He’s seen firsthand how negative publicity can overwhelm a program. He got all of that and then some following the 1995 national title that saw his team come together in historic fashion on the field and fall apart at the seams off it.
There may not have been any over-inflated NCAA investigation to deal with, but the national media as a whole vilified a man who just a year prior they were lauding for how he won without cutting corners.
‘He did it the right way’ was replaced with ‘he did it his way.’
Success, it would seem, has its price.
The laughable thing has been, at least up until this last year, is the NCAA’s typical answer:
‘We’re going to take games away.’
Oh, that will show them. Take games away. Take wins away. Take titles away.
Did it show Bobby Bowden, the former Head Coach and icon of Florida State, who was at one point tied with Penn State Head Coach Joe Paterno in regard to all-time wins? Yes, the NCAA penalty handed down to his program certainly took him out of the running for that honor. But Bowden got a far bigger curve ball thrown to him by his own school when they unceremoniously ousted him from a job he had held for over 30 years.
Did it show Pete Carroll? He was out the door off to one of the highest paying Head Coaching gigs in the NFL before the hammer really came down on the program he guided to multiple national titles, including the one the NCAA now says they didn’t win.
50-19 over Oklahoma. That’s right, isn’t it?
That didn’t happen?
Whatever.
Does USC have to give all the money back they earned from all those big-time BCS appearances? Do they have to give back the seemingly countless number of five star prospects they got due to their nationally renowned success? Do the players from that national title team that wasn’t, now have to trade in their BCS bowl gifts for some arcade coupons they might have gotten from being in one of the dot.com bowl games? Does ESPN have to go into their archives and erase their seemingly endless sycophantic blathering on behalf of the Trojans during that now-tarnished era?
On a somewhat related note, the NCAA went so far as to scold the University of Kentucky when they had the audacity to celebrate the 500th victory of their second-year men’s basketball Head Coach, John Calipari. Why, you ask? Well, because Calipari got nailed by the NCAA and stripped of over 40 of those victories, stemming from some improprieties at Memphis while Calipari was their Head Coach.
I wonder, if I got super drunk at that celebration of half a thousand wins, and then went on a rampage of flipping up dresses of unwary women, will the NCAA tell the local police who arrested me, fingerprinted me and gave me a cavity search with the jaws of life and a spotlight, that didn’t happen either?
My posterior thanks you.
But under new leadership, the NCAA has proven that yes, it does actually have teeth. USC can attest to that, losing two years worth of post-season opportunities as well as 30 scholarships over multiple seasons.
I wonder, though, if the NCAA knew the kind of outbreak they would have over just the next couple of years in athlete/coach stupidity, do you think they would have set their new bar as high as they did?
Ohio State fans can yell all they want about how they believe Pete Carroll has lied to everyone from the outset. But without a paper trail to prove it, they don’t have anything, nor does the NCAA. But Jim Tressel, a.k.a. Mr. Integrity, apparently left a paper trail Ronnie Milsap could follow with ease.
Not the least of which was an NCAA document that Tressel himself signed, stating that yes, his program was in compliance with all their wonderful rules.
Oh, that cardinal rule. Don’t lie to the NCAA. You can commit all the heinous offenses under the law imaginable, and as long as you don’t violate the NCAA rules you’re fine. But lie to the NCAA, and they are going to have your nuts on a plate.
Figuratively speaking, of course.
So, in theory, what Ohio State should be looking forward to in regard to punishment, should be at least what USC got. So, if we are going on this new apparent theme of the NCAA and how the punishment fits the crime, THE Ohio State should be getting THE treatment, if you catch my meaning.
Would the NCAA do that?
Would they now not hesitate in bringing another nationally prominent program to its knees?
Heck, even Boise State has found itself under the scrutinizing eye of the NCAA in recent months.
It seems that almost in the blink of an eye, the member institutions of the FBS, formerly Division 1-A, have gone from having an absentee landlord to having a governing body move into the apartment across the hall.
But, don’t expect this to continue.
What we have seen and probably will see for perhaps this up-coming season and maybe one after, is the NCAA laying down the law, imposing its so-called will and actually enforcing the preposterously large set of laws and even more ridiculously enormous set of by-laws in order to regain some sense of control.
There is what I would see as at least a two-fold purpose. One is to show people that the NCAA isn’t this hand-slapping entity that has neither the ability nor fortitude to actually enforce its own rules. Second, to stop what seems to be a growing number of almost arrogantly defiant violations.
Did Tressel really think that kids stupid enough to trade memorabilia for tattoos would be wise enough to be able to cover it all up after the fact? It seems pretty obvious to me at least, that at the very least, Terrell Pryor thought he was untouchable – so untouchable that in front of local and national media he drove up to football offices of Ohio State on the day Tressel resigned, driving a Nissan 350z with in-transits – and without a valid driver’s license.
By the way, just as a point of irony, how funny is it that former Florida Head Coach Urban Meyer seems to be the top candidate in many people’s minds as the man who could replace Luke Fickel after his year-long interim stint as OSU Head Coach is over.
That’s great. You go from one coach who seemingly tried to cover up everything to a coach who seemingly couldn’t cover up anything.
Over 30 arrests of football players during Meyer’s tenure at Florida?
Yeah, let’s hire that guy.
If Tressel was Mr. Integrity, what’s Meyer – Dudley Doright?
Either way, back to the NCAA, don’t expect this “cleansing” to last very long, because even the NCAA in the midst of finally enforcing some of its rules, won’t forget just who pays the bills.
Ohio State does. USC does. Auburn does. So does Nebraska, Florida and most any other program with even a grain of sand on this beach we call tradition. These are the stalwarts of college football, holding history firmly in one hand and potential squarely in the other. It’s something that most teams from non-BCS conferences can’t even fathom and even success stories like Boise State and TCU can barely hope to achieve.
When Nebraska stunk not so very long ago, I remember listening to analysts talk about the climactic drop of the Big Red. All those wonderful streaks. All those impressive records. Gone, and people wondering if they would ever get them back. It seemed to a person they chimed in that yes, of course they will be back. And good, because college football needed programs like Nebraska, to maintain some sort of relevance..
I am not sure that’s the case, because I don’t think one team makes or break an entire division, even if it’s a traditional power. But two? three? four? At some point whatever the NCAA would hope to accomplish by dropping the guillotine on these heavyweights, will be countered and then surpassed by how much allure is lost in regard to the college game, because guess what, nobody outside of Boise, Idaho and Fort Worth, Texas, wants to see Boise State versus TCU in the actual BCS title game.
That’s Bea-Arthur sexy.
So, when will the NCAA call off the dogs? When will this wave of discipline of the elite cease?
My guess is that it will end when the NCAA is satisfied that it has made its point. And that will only come when the violations are at least somewhat discrete. Let’s face it, it’s gotten so bad lately, every day seemingly another NCAA infraction committed by another powerhouse program. And some of them are so blatant that if the NCAA didn’t do anything other than slap someone on the wrist, it would appear more powerless and/or toothless than perhaps ever before.
It’s pretty bad when even plausible deniability isn’t a viable curtain to hide behind for the NCAA. They can’t hide behind it, because the violations have seemingly happened in such a public manner that you would have to actually try to avoid it not to see what’s going on.
Once we get back to the good old days of people being able to cover stuff up, work behind the curtain effectively and always make sure that there isn’t a paper trail, perhaps we’ll finally find some real peace.
There’s good and bad to that, of course.
But for now, I’m happy, because baseball just doesn’t do it for me.
