NCAA Trials And Tribulations: Lawyers And Cats And Bears, Oh MY!

If you look closely enough at anything or anyone, you will find fault with them and who they are or what they do, it is inevitable. No one is perfect. So as a rule, people tend to allow for some slips and falls along life’s pathway without seeming too judgemental because everyone is usually given the benefit of the doubt at least once. And then we have the NCAA.

The wheels are coming off the wagon, folks. Someone let the cat out of the bag. The jig is up. It’s about time.

The NCAA is facing an assault from all sides these days. Their inability or unwillingness to change as times have changed have led them to become just like so many of those people who are honored for their lifetime contributions to collegiate athletics, but have become either too set in their ways, or no longer have the fire inside that makes them competitive. And in the case of the NCAA, it is both. And a whole lot of it. Ed O’Bannon, former student-athlete at UCLA, along with a host of others, is slowly but surely working towards forcing the NCAA to openly and publicly admit what most of us have known for a very long time. They have been stealing from the very people they were formed to protect, the student-athletes themselves’.

The issue of whether or not the NCAA must compensate student-athletes for the use of their likenesses is going to see a courtroom. That is unless the NCAA just wants to admit it’s mistake now and start making things right. There is going to have to be compensation paid to thousands of parties, and the NCAA itself, along with it’s antiquated ways of doing business, is going to be forever changed. And it is going to take a court of law to do it because the NCAA is just that stubborn. And when you combine this with all of the other ways that the NCAA is sorely lacking in their administration of collegiate athletics, the point being made by some very knowledgeable people becomes clearer by the moment. The NCAA has become that ten ton pink elephant in the room that no one seems to want to discuss. But now they are going to have to. It is time that the student-athletes were represented by someone other than the NCAA. It is time that the NCAA had a President, or Commissioner, or whatever, who had some control over the agency itself. And it is time that the power that rests in the hands of so many under qualified and supposedly over worked people was placed in the care of others.

Am I beating a dead horse? No, but not for the reasons that some might think. The Cats have alumni involved in this lawsuit too, with Thad Jaracz and Bob Tallent being two named members of UK teams involved in the suit. The NCAA makes the Federal Government look like a Warren Buffett owned business entity. The Congress is a PTA meeting compared to some of the wrongs and even possibly criminal activity being touted by the NCAA as in the “best interests of the student-athletes and schools we service”. And without using too much of my Shakespeare abilities, I can tell you that they all think they are “honorable men”, serving in an honest capacity. And that is exactly where the fault lies. This has been going on so long that they now believe it is not only legal, but just behavior as well.

My daughter is reading “To Kill A Mockingbird” for her AP College English class, and after asking me about the story, it reminded me of the dilemma faced by Atticus Finch in his defense of an African-American falsely accused of the crime of rape. The man was actually set up by other parties to take the fall, and was convicted by an all-white jury of his “peers”. How is this applicable you ask? Well, the answer is quite simple really. In Mockingbird, the jury simply assumes the man is guilty, and convicts him in spite of evidence to the contrary that he was not. The NCAA is working from the same premise. They assume that they are right, in spite of evidence to the contrary that anyone with two eyes wide open can see. Now, I know justice is supposed to be blind and only pays attention to the evidence presented, but the NCAA has gone one step further. They just ignore the evidence and go one as if things were just great.

We have the Fiesta Bowl being reviewed by the same people in the NCAA that the Fiesta Bowl has been wining and dining to get to where they are. We have honest kids who tell the truth and try to do the right thing being left out of the picture while known cheaters and persons trying to take advantage of the system go on without a care in the world. We have no one willing to step up and do the right thing with the NCAA, because we have the foxes guarding the hen house. It is simply more and more of the same ole, same ole.

So do not be surprised at the amount of time the NCAA spends in court for the inevitable future. The sleeper has awakened. But the NCAA probably doesn’t get too worried. God Knows, they can afford the lawyers.

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