The same old "same old"...
The NCAA is rotten to the core, rotten by plain old greed, as is most "amateur" college sports at most big-time universities.
College sports: the perfect "mirror" for our times of Trumpism... Utterly corrupt, utterly lacking in the slightest tinge of integrity or honesty, and utterly resistant to anything but fig-leaf pretenses of reform...
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The NCAA is a sewer. Imagine putting a school on probation for giving their "student-athletes" money for books (!) but not putting a school on probation (UNC) for offering non-existent classes (!!) and A's for those classes (!!!)
Maybe we need to identify those schools (if any) who do things correctly and reward them with the television money that NCAA makes.
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@Rich
I hope that readers don’t think the NCAA keeps rights fees for the basketball tournament as if they are personal gambling winnings from Vegas. The member schools have absolute authority over the NCAA office in Indianapolis. Believe it or not, there is no hidden vault full of gold coins the NCAA keeps to pay for its next space mission. At least that is what my neighbor tells me. He is an NCAA employee.
Articles about college basketball are hilarious. In the real world, what passes for college basketball is antithetical to the very notion of college and academics. Almost all of the basketball players are functionally illiterate, have no cognitive aptitude for higher eduction. At best, they would be well served learning a useful trade in trade school. These people are athletic. They are not academic. Everyone knows this. Why do people continue living a pretend life in a pretend world? And people wonder why college is becoming irrelevant?
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@Screenwritethis
Probably because the media stories about college athletics are not accurate. For example, the NCAA has no authority over college admissions or curriculum. That’s just for starters.
As this year's March Madness hurtled toward the final four, it was mostly the cheaters who were left dancing. Kentucky, Duke, Auburn, Houston, LSU, Carolina, Tennessee - these are all one and done, big sneaker money schools. The most disappointing is Coach K at Duke. He has sold his soul to the money and sullied what was once the flagship of college hoops.
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Creighton's Assistant Coach, Preston Murphy has been suspended, he has not been fired.
The Bush Administration prosecuted the Abu Ghraib defendants calling them bad apples when they were just ordinary people caught up in a horrendously rotten system. Hardly any officers were punished and of course the real culprits, most evil of all Richard Bruce Cheney, have never been called to account. Our justice system, corrupted by money and influence, is just another rigged institution.
@Chuck Burton
The Bush Administration complaint room is down the hallway.
This is a smear on Sean Miller, a coach whose players and their parents unequivocally support. Arizona's Board and President thoroughly investigated the charges and determined that the accusations were without merit. They stood by a coach who has not, in fact, delivered the goods by UA standards: getting to final fours. This would have been an easy chance to push him out and hire any of a number of excellent coaches at good but historically inferior programs such as Colorado, Utah, Georgia Tech, etc.
The fact that Sean is still there leads one to conclude that he's observed the letter of the law and ncaa regulations. ESPN has mercilessly pushed the Miller scandal and yet talented kids and their parents have continued to choose Miller's program and leadership style at Arizona.
As someone who's watched him for 10 years, I sure wish he'd get over the hump and get us back to the final four. I've never observed him do anything that merits being put mentioned in the same article as Pitino and Tarkanian.
@C. Hammer
What manner of dream world do you live in, sir?
The last paragraph says it all. SLO must be Tark's 2019 version of Cal State Northridge. Which by the way has a bigger presence in athletics then it did when Tarkanian was complaining about Wooden's players getting paid.
CSU-Northridge was called San Fernando Valley State College until 1972, when it reverted to being under the umbrella of the CSU system. They jumped to Division I in basketball in 1990. The most recent and current head coaches of the team are fairly big name hires considering the conference they play in. Reggie Theus, an NBA All-Star with NBA head coaching experience, followed by Mark Gottfried, former head coach at North Carolina State and Alabama. Interestingly Reggie Theus was one of Tark's first big time players at UNLV. The football team has had a similar upwards trajectory as the university tries to ascend in importance with their athletic programs.
Part of this is the population growth of California. Is this a good thing though? We're the only country on the planet where big-time sports are enmeshed with our colleges. And for all but the biggest programs, athletic departments lose money and are subsidized by all the regular students who don't have the hyphenated suffix "athlete" describing what they're doing enrolled on campus.
Much of what this article describes was highlighted in the 1990's book "Undo Process - - the NCAA's Injustice for All"
by Yeager.
It's time for the Feds (particularly the IRS) to go to Indianapolis and check into the NCAA.
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College sports, at least the revenue producing ones, football and men's basketball, are a multi-billion business. No story there. Most, if not all, of the more prominent "programs" cheat. Routinely. They are enabled by the multi-million apparel business that floods the system with money and virtually owns the coaches whose salary is paid by these companies. The television sports industry, again, reaps billions. Everybody knows this. It's been thoroughly documented in books and articles since at least the 1990's. And now the federal government comes along to send a message: "if you're a small fry engaging in routine activities endemic to the college sports industry WATCH OUT! We have you in our sights."
This isn't about the "path of least resistance." It's about the corruption of the federal prosecutor's office and the massive illegality of college sports. Any serious prosecution of its principals would destroy the industry and cost some very powerful people enormous sums of money.
On the other hand, we can all sleep soundly now that we know that Mr. Code and Mr. Dawkins and some nameless assistant coaches, will be behind bars, their lives and careers ruined. In the meantime, Nike, Adidas and Under Armour will continue to pay vast sums to telegenic head coaches to allow a system that employs unpaid teenagers to flourish. One more episode in the continuing erosion of public trust in our legal and educational institutions.
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@LCJ
So it’s the federal prosecutors who are corrupt. All of these years I didn’t know that was the problem.
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The NCAA and the US government aren't going to expose the big players, too much money involved. Inside, they will continue to penalize the little guys-the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for $5 violations, when UNC players take fake classes for years and everyone claims not to have known. As someone who previously worked in college athletics, at an ACC school, there is so many staff at big time universities and very little that coaches and other staff don't know about. Everyone just pretends otherwise.
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@Cupcake Runner
The NCAA has a much smaller role than is portrayed in the media. It doesn’t have anything to do with the D1 college football playoff. Nothing to do with conference tv contracts. Nothing to do with college admissions. Nothing to do with any college curriculum. Other organizations decide school accreditation issues.
It can’t compel the production of documents or testimony by subpoena. It can’t sentence anyone to jail. So if you have been sexually assaulted, don’t call the NCAA or any of its member institutions. Call law enforcement.
@Cupcake Runner: just for the record, some UNC basketball players took easy (but not fake) classes, as did other students — not just athletes. Also, for the record, UNC has taken stringent actions to prevent a repeat. Department supervisors have been fired or demoted, the suspect academic program was abolished, and the UNC Chancellor at the time was forced out of the University.
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@PaulB67 Your post reads like a press release. The environment that this paper reported on existed at UNC for something like 18 years (below from NYT is a small example). I wouldn't be surprised if the fake classes that D1 major sport schools accept today have just been outsourced as credit from another institution that give credit for breathing. Some employees at other schools have indicated on this site that is how the game is played now. Not to dwell on UNC; Kentucky under Calipari and UCONN under Calhoun might have been worse.
NY Times Oct. 22, 2014
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — It was November 2009, and alarm was spreading among the academic counselors charged with bolstering the grades of football players at the University of North Carolina. For years the players and others had been receiving A’s and B’s in nonexistent classes in the African studies department, but the administrator who had set up and run the fake classes had just retired, taking all those easy grades with her.
The counselors convened a meeting of the university’s football coaches, using a PowerPoint presentation to drive home the notion that the classes “had played a large role in keeping underprepared and/or unmotivated players eligible to play,” according to a report released by the university on Wednesday. “We put them in classes that met degree requirements in which ... they didn’t go to class ... they didn’t have to take notes, have to stay awake ... The slides indicated that this was stopping
If the real story of money in college athletics (football and basketball) was honestly revealed, collegiate sports as we know it would collapse. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. The truth is, there has been enormous amounts of money paid for top high school recruits for decades and the pile of cash continues to grow. Many, if not most, of the most successful programs in the country know there is big money being paid to their top recruits but have discovered ways to distance themselves from those carrying the money bag. This allows the head coach to sanctimoniously declare their innocence while they hypocritically attack anyone who dares challenge the legitimacy of their program. The most entertaining hypocrisy is watching former players and coaches, who at one time were knee deep in money payoffs, squirm in their seats as they discuss the issue as analyst on tv networks. Money is the key to all of this. It's the reason why we will never see or hear the true story. Too much too lose for too many.
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@Bob
big money to top recruits?
I'd like to see a scale analysis of money to the recruits v coaches. I would be very surprised if the money to the coaches isn't 1000:1 with respect to the kids.
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Division I basketball is a scandal. Renting players for a year, allowing players to "major" in ridiculous made up course of study, paying coaches 20 times the salary of a professor, allowing coaches to make endorsement deals and TV commercials is all a travesty.
The whole of it smells, stinks to high heaven and the biggest names in it are the worst, places like Georgetown, Duke, especially Duke, the very worst because they hold themselves out as great universities.
Great universities do not need, should not need to do this, do not need to wade in the murk and mud that is big time college athletics. That they do it enables others to do it.
The NCAA tournament has about as much to do with higher education as ditch digging.
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@Carl Zeitz Ditch digging has its uses. You need a ditch, it needs digging. Professionalized college athletics puts universities squarely in the high-stakes entertainment racket, and even those universities that need the occcasional ditch don´t need pro ball.
@Carl Zeitz Dead on assessment of the toxic environment. If the NCAA and the schools themselves don't want to drain the swamp, maybe we need laws passed that any school that accepts taxpayer money for use in any department can't use a cent of taxpayer money to fund athletic teams. Any sort of mandatory activities fees that students have to pay that flows to big time athletics should also be prohibited. Schools that fund D1 football can be even worse, besides hoovering up tens of millions of dollars, only a small percentage of them run in the black.
@Carl Zeitz
I suggest a letter to the NBA players association and the NBA to change their eligibility rules. The NCAA can’t make players eligible for the NBA draft.
I was a huge college (and pro) sports fan but the more that comes out about the way the universities use and dispose of players has made me think that it is time to abolish athletic departments and go back to actual students organizing teams and have no athletic scholarships at all. Let the NFL and NBA fund minor leagues for the hot shot athletes who have dreams of a pro sports career, it has worked for decades for MLB.
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@Richard Falice Having the NFL and NBA fund their own minor league teams is established now, sort of. What is necessary is for colleges to find a way to be weaned off the money their big-time sports bring in. In some cases, it will be easier than others. The responsibility lies with the NCAA and the universities to begin the reform.
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@Richard Falice
Good luck selling the public on eliminating college scholarships for women and minorities. Sounds like a winning issue.