College Coaches and The NCAA: The Song Remains The Same

Pat Forde took the NCAA’s sanctioning of Jim Calhoun for three Big East games next year as a clear sign that the Head Coach is no longer the “man behind the curtain” when it comes to NCAA violations in collegiate athletics, and college basketball in particular. He sees it as the NCAA is finally putting their foot down on unethical and illegal activity by coaches and their staffs, by making the head coach responsible for their actions. Heh. If that were the case for real, Jim Calhoun would be looking up golf courses in the Connecticut area right now so he would know where he would be spending his retirement. This is Calhoun’s second run in with the NCAA where he himself was personally found to be in violation of NCAA by-laws and rules. And for that he got a three game Big East suspension. Sounds like lip service to me. This guy is a College Hall of Fame Basketball coach, for crying out loud.

The NCAA is now serving notice to Bruce Pearl of his egregious behavior, however he will not find out his penalties until this summer, so as to allow time for Tennessee to mount a proper defense of Pearl’s actions. Someone please explain this to me. Pearl lied to the NCAA. He admitted to the NCAA that he lied about what happened, and they have photographic and written evidence of same. What is there to defend??? Even Mike Slive knows that the jig is up.

If the NCAA wants to start making headway concerning it’s indefensible behavior in how it handles these things, then now is the time to start. And I don’t just mean Tennessee and Pearl either. Start making people really accountable for their behavior. You want a penalty that really means something? Start suspending coaches immediately. No waiting period, no working while pending appeal, just do it. You had no problems making Enes Kanter sit while you decided his fate. You let him practice, but banned him from game activity. And he didn’t even do anything wrong. Bruce Pearl admits he broke by-laws and lied about it, and you let him sit on the sidelines while he has time to prepare a defense for something he admitted doing?? This is just another blatant example of the NCAA and their hypocrisy when it comes to handling these cases. And no one think that I am singling out Pearl here. He is guilty as homemade sin, but he is not alone.

HBO is premiering a documentary this month on Jerry Tarkanian and the Running Rebels. Tarkanian still holds the distinction of exposing the NCAA for what they truly are, and winning in a court of law to prove that very fact. I would have hoped that the NCAA would have learned their lessons from the past and started making the right choices when they truly know there is a guilty party, instead of just throwing anything and everything at people they have nothing on. Guess that pipe dream was exactly that.

Someone once told me that the definition of stupidity was doing the same thing over and over again the same way every time and expecting a different result. Guess no one has given that little tidbit to the NCAA.

John Calipari’s critics call him “cheater”. They refer to him as “shady” and say that he works in the “grey” areas. And yet for all of the bile flowing from these folks, Calipari has never even been accused of doing anything wrong by the NCAA, and yet he has to live with the labels like these. Just how strange does that seem? Whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? The NCAA cannot even get it right when they have proof of wrongdoing.

And these incidents do not even scratch the surface of what goes on on the athlete’s side of things. Saddle me up with Cam Newton and let me tell you that tale. Just don’t pay any attention to the NCAA officials noses as they explain their actions. They may start to grow on you.

They can claim reform, and claim improvement, and claim anything else they like in their attempt to legitimize their behaviors both past and present, but they still have that cloud of illegitimacy around them. And soft balling issues just like these is never going to make it go away. Sorry Pat, this may be better in your eyes, but to me it is the same old same old.

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