The NCAA does it again!!!!

Hello once again to everyone.


Since my last posting, the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, decided to make Oklahoma forfeit all of its wins from the 2005 season for having illegal players on its team. Now, I know all of you are out there, saying "But wait a second, didn't Oklahoma dismiss both players once the news had come out about their actions?" Well, sure they did. In fact, Oklahoma went so far as to impose a probation on its own program, in an effort to gain some sort on leniency from the usually heavy handed NCAA. Let's look at the whole story in a nutshell. Two players (QB Rhett Bomar and OL J.D. Quinn) were supposedly working at a car dealership in Oklahoma City. The problem here is that not only were they not working, they were getting paid for not working. A third player, walk-on Jermaine Hardison, was also dismissed from the team in all of this. Now, if you're a walk-on, why can't you have a job? The NCAA isn't paying your way through school, so who really cares? But, I get off track here. The three players were dismissed from the team, and the NCAA said that being paid for not working was flat out wrong. Yeah, and I saw the NCAA react swiftly in the wake of former OU player Brian Bosworth's tell-all book about being paid to watch an oil well, while sitting on the hood of a brand new Corvette.
My problem with all of this has many angles. First, OU opened that season by losing, at home, to mighty TCU. How much worse does it have to get for a BCS team to lose what basically amounts to a revenue game for TCU, and in their own home stadium? Second, during OU's national title run of a few seasons ago, when OU was making boatloads of cash for the NCAA, the Sooners could have come right out on national TV and said they were paying players, and the NCAA would have turned a blind eye to everything except the bank account. All that mattered then was that OU was making them money. Third, and here's a real kicker here, the interim chairman of the NCAA Division 1 committee on Infractions is none other than Paul Dee. You all remember him, right? He's the Athletic Director at good old Miami, the school well-known for its penchant for flaunting the rulebook. In other words, Paul Dee is the proverbial pot, and OU is the proverbial kettle in this scenario. Dee's committee cited OU for "failing to monitor" the players of its program. Want to know how much Dee and his staff "monitored" his players at Miami? Talk to a friend of mine about officiating the Cotton Bowl game between Miami and Texas in Jan. 1992. He'll be more than happy to tell you about how Miami "strictly" monitored its players. Fourth, and I will always refer to this incident in some way when bashing the NCAA, where were they when Kimberly Dunbar stole money from Notre Dame's athletic fund, and planned a trip for her and a Notre Dame football player? Or, where were they when it came out that Notre Dame football players were living in an off-campus condo being paid for by a Notre Dame booster? I'll tell you where they were. They were out squashing the smaller programs, like Utah's basketball program. You all remember that one incident, where former coach Rick Majerus bought a player a deli sandwich. This was right after he had to tell the kid his father had passed away, and slightly before he had to put him on a plane to go home. Or, when Majerus bought a kid a bagel when the kid had found out that his brother had recently attempted suicide. Places like Utah are where the REAL criminals are. Not in Los Angeles, where it has since been revealed that former USC tailback Reggie Bush and his family had a house paid for by a potential agent in San Diego, all while Bush was still a member of the Trojans. Did anything happen? No, because USC is still making the NCAA a pile of money, and why kill the golden goose? Not in Columbus, Ohio, where former QB Troy Smith admitted that he accepted $500, and all he had to do was sit out two games, probably against the likes of Northeast South Dakota State and Saint Mary's School for Girls. Don't give me Maurice Clarett in this case, either. He was a head case waiting to happen, and he lived up to expectations, probably the only time he will ever accomplish that feat. But even in his case, the NCAA didn't step in and lay down any penalty. All of it was done by the school itself.
Which brings me back to the OU situation. If they had already self-imposed penalties on them, why did the NCAA feel the need to pile on even more? I mean, if this is how they are going to act, where's the incentive for programs that are found to be less than legal, to impose penalties on themselves? By saying this, in no way, shape, or form should it be construed that Iam an OU fan. I'm not. In fact, my school, Clemson, sent OU legend Barry Switzer into retirement. Well, that and his QB showing up on the cover of Sports Illustrated in prison orange. Again, I digress. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there's no clean program in this country. No program can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it follows the NCAA rulebook to the letter. Show me a program that can say that, and I'll show you a program that has never won a game. What this action does, at the end of the day, is help out the Big 12 conference, as a whole. It means that Dennis Franchione in College Station, Bill Callahan in Lincoln, and Mark Mangino in Lawrence can all now say that they beat OU in 2005, and add one more win to their resume. And let's face it, if that's the only way you can lay claim to a win, I'd be embarrassed to show up at the post-game press conference. While OU plans to appeal this decision, it sounds to me like the NCAA has already made its mind up. All that an appeal can do at this point is drag out the possibility that the NCAA might change its mind, which we all know won't happen any time soon. NCAA President Myles Brand and his cronies will spend a few days patting each other on the back, congratulating themselves on another job well done. All the while, they'll still maintain that the NCAA football player can't endure two more weeks added to the football season for a playoff, but the basketball player can be sent to all parts of the country, because CBS is paying the NCAA a billion dollars to let that happen. He who has the gold, makes the rules.



Till next time..............


Patrick