You say it's bad, I want it to be worse

With so much news about college sports going around, it is hard not to write about it, so ultimately I will. But, it is going to be really hard after just finding this really nifty article about bizarre state laws that are still on the books. So much more interesting that college sports, but I have to write college sports for an important reason that I will get back to shortly. Right now, I just want to touch on this article about outdated laws. They have picked some interesting ones from all fifty states, but because I don’t care about any other state than Texas (except maybe South Dakota because the bulk of my extended family lives there) I focused on the one they had put in the article from here. Apparently, at one point in Texas history there was an issue with shooting buffalo from the second story of hotels, because there is a law that specifically prohibits that. Funny that the bizarre law from our state has to do with firing weapons indoors, but if you’re going to have an edge on the buffalo, it better not be elevation (like rifles and telescopic scopes don’t give you an edge already). It is nice that law makers decided that the recklessness of excessive buffalo hunting needed to be impeded somehow, but this was the best that they could do? Regardless of the fact that there is an overwhelming absence of significant amounts of buffalo in this state currently, why has this law not been removed/retired. Not that I’m calling for it to be done, because we need to keep protecting the buffalo at all costs (even the cost of convenience from shooting them out of a second story window). Alright, on to what I really was going to write about, the serious lack of balls the NCAA has when dealing with pay-for-play scenarios (and you thought I wanted to write about conference realignment).

Background of the situation is as follows…the NCAA has ruled that the University of Southern California athletic department exhibited a lack of institutional control from 2004 to 2009 for a wide array of rules violations committed in its football, men’s basketball and women’s tennis programs. USC officials said in a statement they planned to appeal the decision. As a result of the violations, which mainly centered on Heisman Trophy-winning running back Reggie Bush (noted NFL bust, in my opinion) and basketball star O.J. Mayo (who?), the NCAA’s probe resulted in USC being hit with multiple penalties. Among them: A postseason ban in football following the 2010 and 2011 seasons; A loss of 30 total football scholarships over the 2011, 2012 and 2013 seasons; A vacation of all football victories starting in December 2004 and running through the 2005 season. This includes the national championship win over Oklahoma on Jan. 4, 2005; All statistics vacated for Bush, Mayo and an unnamed women’s tennis athlete in the games which the NCAA deemed them ineligible due to rules violations; Bush and Mayo must be disassociated from USC athletics; An acceptance of USC’s self-imposed penalties on its basketball program, which included a forfeiture of all wins in 2007-2008 and a one-year postseason ban; All titles won during ineligible games must be vacated and trophies and banners must be removed; A vacation of wins in the women’s tennis program from May 2006 to May 2009, for long distance telephone violations committed by a student-athlete; A reduction of recruiting days for the men’s basketball program in 2010-2011; Four years of probation.

The investigation was split into four primary parts: Bush and the football program, Mayo and the basketball program, an unnamed tennis player and the women’s tennis program, and finally, the failure of the athletic department’s infrastructure when it came to overseeing and policing its programs and athletes. Absorbed in its entirety, the report called the USC investigation “a window onto a landscape of elite college athletes and certain individuals close to them who, in the course of their relationships, disregard NCAA rules and regulations.” The NCAA’s findings were largely built around Bush, Mayo, and USC’s oversight of the pair, with investigators determining the athletes disregarded NCAA rules with a full awareness of their indiscretions. The report indicates the Bush and Mayo were able to engage in rule-breaking at least in part because of USC’s negligence, which included lack of staffing in the area of compliance, lax regulation on the sidelines and in the locker room, and, in at least one instance, a rebuke of running backs coach Todd McNair, who the NCAA cited for lying during the investigation.

After reading about all this (most of which I already expected, because hey, doesn’t every major college program do this?) I found the NCAA’s punishment just a tad limp-wristed. Sure, it will put a hitch in the getty-up of a program that has been literally on a roll for almost a decade, it won’t completely crush them for doing something that is clearly wrong, they knew was wrong, and tried to cover up. After all, this is the worst punishment a major university has been handed since another major program was given the “death penalty” (that’s right, here’s where my passion for this issue comes in, that school was my alma mater, SMU). It’s taken SMU twenty-five years to show significant signs of recovery from that ruling by the NCAA so many years ago, which completely shut down the football program at SMU and made them an example to other schools about the dangers of doing this kind of thing. No one will argue that the “death penalty” was the right way to go with SMU because they were pretty much the first nationally recognized football powerhouse to be accused of such dealings. But, after the lessons learned by that whole debacle, why would any school consider doing anything like that again?

That’s why I have a beef with the NCAA’s decision not to shut down this school’s programs for a year so the full brunt of justice for their indiscretions can be had. Everyone familiar with college football and the NCAA as a governing body knows the story of the SMU scandal. So, the gaul that it took for USC to do these things knowing full well what the punishment could be is appalling. With that being said, they should be punished to the full extent of the NCAA’s power. I am not belittling the punishment that the NCAA came up with, which like I said, will have a lasting impact on USC’s athletic programs for years to come (a potential conference powerhouse that was being formed with schools from the Big 12 and the Pac 10 has seemingly come to a halt after this announcement) as well as on the athletes themselves that were investigated (there is talk that Bush will lose his Heisman Trophy). I am saying that why was an example made of SMU (that many NCAA officials agree was too rough) that is not being used with the next major college program found guilty of pay-to-play. No one has an answer, except to say that the hatred for SMU back then was much greater than any ill will toward USC now. Does my position on this issue have something to do with my dislike of USC…yes, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that USC came off lighter than I would have expected. So everyone in the USC administrative and athletic departments should be thanking their lucky stars they are not where SMU was twenty-five years ago.