Last week, I was so fascinated by the accusations about the federal budget mess that I didn’t get a chance to congratulate the University of Connecticut and their lovable coach Jim Calhoun on their victory in the NCAA men’s basketball championship. (Quick note on the budget: if the number of people who now say they knew we were headed for trouble had done something about it at some point, we’d be in significantly better shape today, but that’s politicians…always more intelligent in reverse than in real time, but I digress…)
The crowning of this Connecticut team, which beat its rudimentary opponent in the diminutive Butler, is fitting for the lucrative sports of the 2010-11 seasons. See, the Huskies are in trouble with the NCAA for “major recruiting violations” surrounding a player named Nate Miles and some other major college stuff in general that you’d find on any show if you were poking around.
Like the treatment of Ohio State in football, where four starters and head coach Jim Tressel were found to have violated the rules … but didn’t have to serve any punishment until next year, so as not to interfere with a lucrative game of bowling. – Initial punishments for Connecticut don’t begin until next year, when Calhoun is suspended for the first three games of the Big East schedule. Calhoun is the same person who attacked a reporter who dared to ask why a state institution, in a state with budget problems, should pay its basketball coach more than $1 million a year. The school’s idiot answer to the question? They raised Calhoun’s salary to more than $2 million.
During the NCAA tournament, HBO’s “Real Sports” ran a feature featuring four former Auburn players alleging they were paid reinforcements during their college careers and received payments from other schools while recruiting them out of high school. Auburn, of course, was the champion of the flawed College Football Championship Series earlier this year. The Tigers ended the football season surrounded by accusations that star quarterback Cam Newton had told promoters at Mississippi State that he would pick Auburn because they offered more money.
The only real problem with all of this is the mistaken assumption that the NCAA will be able to fix it. They will not. The organization is a relic of a bygone era — one that didn’t include billion-dollar TV deals and conferences running their own cable channels. There has been talk of the major football conferences wanting to break away from the NCAA and form their own organization. Instead of fighting this idea, it should be encouraged. Just as a professional sports commissioner doesn’t really have the ability to force billionaire owners to do something they don’t want to do, the NCAA doesn’t have the ability to force the institutions and conferences that bring in the most money to do what they want. they want. wants. Let’s stop pretending they can.
The best strategy to combat NCAA recruiting violations is to either dissolve the NCAA or allow it jurisdiction over smaller institutions…those that generally comply with NCAA edicts as is. Then let the larger conferences and institutions form a new organization, with rules they all agree to work under…and if that means allowing boosters to pay players, then that’s what it means. There would be some teething problems with TV contracts, and probably some lawsuits from mid-tier colleges, but that’s what lawyers are for.
As with budget issues, let’s stop arguing about who did what wrong and start looking for something that actually addresses the issues at hand. Believe me when I say that in both cases there is more than enough blame to go around.
