I posted this piece over at A Sea Of Blue the other day and it generated some interesting responses, so I decided to let our readers here have a crack at this subject. Leave me any comments you deem appropriate.
Dan Wetzel over at Yahoo! Sports has raised some really interesting points in the NCAA’s attempted justification of it’s systems of checks and balances concerning how they handle eligibility and behavior of student athletes.
John Infante over at the NCAA ByLaw Blog has some answers himself concerning those questions. I left John some comments of my own as well as some questions I have.
John’s points start here, but this is only a small part of what he writes:
"The most important consistency is consistency with the rules. Decisionsshould be based on rules and processes. If your options are to have two similardecisions or have two decisions that are based in the rules, the latter isalways better. That means technicalities happen. That means that different rulesproduce different outcomes even from seemingly (but not quite) similarsituations.Take the recently announced Ohio State suspensions, deridedas inconsistent. Say what you will about the decision, but the NCAA followed itsown rules:•The student-athletes were given withholding conditions inline with the reinstatement guidelines;•Some student-athletes were givenadditional withholdings based on a published bylaw;•And the student-athletes met the requirements in a policies and procedures manual to have the withholdings delayed.If you disagree with the process thatproduced that decision, that’s fair. But that doesn’t mean the process should beabandoned in a given case to reach the desired result."
This was John’s explanation of how the NCAA followed the rules in handling the behavior of
Terrell Pryor and some more of the OSU Buckeyes Football team. Seems simple enough and straightforward, right?
Dan Wetzel’s answer was such:
"Ohio State and the NCAA cited an obscure rules interpretation that claimed asuspension could be postponed to preserve a “unique opportunity.” They thendecided a bowl game was such an opportunity. Ohio State further claimed Pryorand the others hadn’t been properly educated on the rules, an excuse that causedlaughter across college athletics.After all, we’ve seen entire NCAAbasketball tournaments stripped from the record books for such acts. And whatabout the “unique opportunity” two seasons of Southern Californiaplayers can’thave because Reggie Bush once took money from agents? Or as Rich Brooks, whospent 25 years as a head coach before retiring from Kentucky last year, tweeted:“You are kidding that players at Ohio State did not know it was illegal to selltheir rings and awards!! Can play in bowl game?? Crazy!!”And while a bumbling compliance staff is always an easy scapegoat, the Ohio State student newspaper, The Lantern, quoted former Buckeye Thaddeus Gibson (2007-09), who claimed players were repeatedly told not to sell items.“Oh yeah, they[OSU athletic director Gene Smith and the coaches] talked about it a lot,”Gibson told the paper.Oops.AD Smith promptly declared that theissue with memorabilia sales and free tattoos was “isolated.” That led to formerBuckeye Antonio Pittman to tweet to the contrary: “cats been getting hookups ontatts since back in 01.”Then SportsByBrooks.com reported the tattooparlor’s owner had pictures of all sorts of Ohio State player memorabilia,including some from Pryor, on his Facebook page. The website also reportedGibson, among nine Buckeyes, got tattoos to the same tattoo parlor.Every OSU fan message board became filled with tales of signed stuffhanging on the walls of area restaurants, bars and car dealerships."
So who is right?
I made the following statement to John, which has not been responded to yet, but it still begs the question? When is the NCAA going to wake up?
"John,You make some valid points in your assessment of the differentcases you describe. And I would love to think that there is a way to legislatemorality, but unfortunately, it has never been proven to be so. However, thequestion of the decisions being made by the NCAA of late are nonetheless valid.Fans are often unable to properly address or assess the goings on in the NCAAbecause of the lack of transparency in the very rulebook itself. I have triedreading the various laws and by-laws and interpreting their intent as writtenand it makes less sense than the US Tax Code.What can, however, be done is this. The NCAA can determine that student-athletes willingness to comply with regulations. And by that I mean that it can be determined if there was intent to violate the rules. Intent of the student-athlete or their representatives must factor into the equation somewhere. The NCAA must also recognize that the fans are trying to educate themselves as well in these processes and in doing so, are finding that their ( the NCAA’s) interpretations of the regulations themselves are more often than not, leading to the behavior of the violators.I cannot cite by-laws nor case history, but I do understand common sense andcommon decency, and these ideals seem at face value to be total non factors inthe NCAA and their handing of current cases.If the NCAA doesn’t want to hear the complaints and gripes of a concerned fanbase, that without which their functions would be a moot point, then they need to understand that the problem does not lie solely with the fans reasoning, but within the fans understanding of what is happening."
So I ask you Big Blue Nation, is light of all that has gone on and all the back and forth between the NCAA and the sports journalism world in general? If the NCAA is right, and the Sports writers are reporting what is right as well, then who is running this deal?
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