Is the NCAA insuring its own demise?

The NCAA has been picking fights, justifiably or not, with some of the nation's top athletic schools, and could be insuring their own demise.  The NCAA is not mandatory.  It is a voluntary association formed back in the early days of football to prevent Congress from stepping in to regulate that new and dangerous sport following several deaths of players.  Since then it has grown into a behemoth unchecked by anyone else, a kingdom unto itself. 

Certainly schools have stood up to the NCAA's dictatorial decrees in the past and won.  For example, a few years ago the NCAA attempted to outlaw the use of Native American mascots (at least in the post season), but Florida State and Utah successfully appealed and were allowed to keep their mascots primarily based on support by the tribes themselves.  

Recently the NCAA has targeted some of the biggest athletic programs in the country, Texas, USC, Florida State, Tennessee and Maryland.  Two of the five have won football national championships in the last decade.  Three of the five have played for national championships in the last decade.  Four of the five have won national championships in the last twelve years.  Four of the five are among the top 20 grossing athletic schools in the country, and all five are among the top 40 grossing athletic programs in the country (it should be obvious to everyone here that Maryland is the outlier in the above categories).  

While USC and Tennessee are being investigated for institutional NCAA violations the problems with Texas, Florida State and Maryland are not so clear cut.    Texas and Maryland are simply getting screwed with a new NCAA rule that prevents their coaches in waiting (essentially very high paid ASSISTANTS) from recruiting as assistants but allows them the limited recruiting of head coaches.  These are the only two teams in the country affected by this ridiculous rule (though if it were instituted last year Florida State and Kentucky would have also been affected).  Basically this rule singles out two schools for a complete and total non-issue. 

Florida State is also being treated unfairly, though admittedly violations were committed and therefore they are not getting the total and complete screwing facing Texas and Maryland.  Florida State has been forced to vacate a large number of its wins from every athletic program including 14 wins achieved by Bobby Bowden, the legendary college football coach who won two national titles, and 13 ACC titles  before retiring last month.  These wins are being vacated because a large number of student athletes cheat on a music history exam, of all things.  But the cheating was not institutional, in other words the neither the university, nor the coaches had anything to do with it.  Plus the students were punished internally.  This is very important because, unfortunately students, whether athletes or not, sometimes cheat on tests.  They should and were punished by the university for this.  However, for the NCAA to punish the university, coaches and other athletes for something the university, coaches, and other athletes had nothing to do with is absurd.  It is the equivalent of vacating the wins of a school if one of their players was caught drinking underage at a private party unbeknownst to the school or the coaches.

That brings us to USC and Tennessee.  Both have been accused of institutional violations, meaning either the university or the coaches were involved in the violation.  In USC's case, the violation was Reggie Bush being paid by aspiring sports marketers, a violation of rules because that would make him a professional athlete.  If the coaches or school knew about this, and it is unclear that they did, then this would be an institutional violation that could vacate several wins including a  national title as well as a Heisman Trophy.  If the violation was not institutional, meaning none of the coaches, nor the university knew of this, then see my argument regarding FSU above.  Tennessee is being investigated for using hot co-eds to try and lure recruits to play at Tennessee.  The worst part for Tennessee, is that the coaches accused of doing this all now work for USC. 

But even if USC and Tennessee did commit institutional violations, has the NCAA still moved well beyond it's intended purpose?  The purpose, as I stated above, was to preempt Congress from regulating football when had become so dangerous that players were getting killed during the game.  Now the NCAA's reach extends well beyond protecting players lives, to telling schools how many recruiting trips an assistant coach can take, to forbidding players from making any money at all (or even driving a guy's Hummer) even from people completely unaffiliated with the school, preventing the school from using pretty girls from selling the school to possible recruits, and punishing schools and teams for things neither their administration, coaches, or boosters even knew was happening.

So what if these schools decided to just leave the NCAA instead of putting up with it?  Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas News recently asked that question about Texas, the nations top grossing athletic program.  And Andy Staples at Sports Illustrated  recently proposed that the top 64 grossing athletic programs bail of the NCAA and form their own less troublesome association he seriocomically calls the Collegiate Athletic Select Hegemony (CASH).  Staples proposes four 16 team conferences, the SEC, ACC, Big-16 and Pac-16.  This he claims would have the added benefit  of preventing the BCS from being investigated for anti-trust violations as well as keeping the Big-16 and Pac-16 winners playing in the Rose Bowl.  Though he doesn't mention it in the article, it could also give us a much  desired playoff.  The first round would be the conference championships.  The second round could be the Pac-16 winner vs. the Big-16 winner in the Rose Bowl and the SEC winner vs. the ACC winner in the Sugar Bowl, with another bowl hosting the winners of those two games for the National Title.  The other 60 teams could all play in one of the 31 bowls (with one bowl being left out entirely, probably the one at Boise since Boise will not make the CASH anyway).  Meanwhile all of the other teams can stay at the NCAA creating two competing associations and therefore eliminating any anti-trust issues. 

Will this happen?  Probably not, but if the NCAA keep pushing some of the top programs who knows.  As Sherrington opined, "It’d only take a few select schools to bolt before others, fearing they’d be left behind in the new order, would follow."  I think that heavy hitters like Texas, USC, FSU, Tennessee, and even Maryland would qualify for the "select schools" that would make that possible.  So keep pushing NCAA, because even when your sanctions, rules and orders are justified, you could be insuring your own demise.

Posted by BarontheDog at 2/19/2010 12:56 PM
Categories: Tennessee Vols, USC Torjans, football, Florida State Seminoles, NCAA, Maryland Terps, Texas Longhorns
Tags: sec Tennessee muschamp Reggie Bush big 12 Big 10 coah in waiting Longhorns FSU seminoles vacate trojans SI USC Heisman NCAA Staples football sixteen Texas Bush conference violations tribe Seminoles terps vols cash Maryland acc pac 10
 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
Trackback specific URL for this post
  • No trackbacks exist for this post.
Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Leave a comment

 Name

 Email (will not be published)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.