A (rambling) Treatise on the NCAA

[milohimself]

(continued from the Duke thread re: Penn State) The NCAA spells out exactly what it means by institutional control, and the Penn State case did not fit that. It was a criminal matter that should have been and was handled by the justice system. It was 100% PR in the face of a public that rightly sees the NCAA as gutless and unprincipled.

It goes beyond the major cases that get away, Miami, Oregon, Duke, etc. Cheating and benefits are beyond pervasive. I would wager my bottom dollar that every single D-I school in the country (FCS and FBS for football) has at least dozens of athletes across numerous sports that receive impermissible benefits every single year.

There's absolutely no way to police it, yet both spectators of college athletics and the NCAA itself are so hellbent on maintaining the facade of amateurism that we wind up with the NCAA going out of its way to make up and over-enforce rules on the spot.

I get the overall point of the discussion we're having: protecting the athlete. Ninety nine times out of one hundred, if a kid starts monetizing his or her athletic ability while they're a teenager, it's going to end badly. Amateurism in and of itself is a fine idea to try and create some level of protection; ensuring that competition exists solely on its own merits. That works, until you introduce it to real world conditions. Slipping a kid a few hundred or a few grand after a double double or a couple RBI's can have some very serious long term consequences.

Rather than just going ostrich to 95% of what actually goes on and ape**** on the remaining 5%, we need to recognize the situation for what it is: That our culture (and I'll be frank, largely in the south) idolizes and creates spectacles of teenagers, largely from poorer and underprivileged backgrounds. One hundred thousand seat stadiums and websites like VolNation are manifestations of this.

They leave home, get dropped on a college campus and get told little beyond what constitutes an impermissible benefit. Hundreds, if not thousands of instances of those rules being broken on a regular basis is a fact of life. Widespread lack of recognition and failure to deal with this reality in conjunction with the ideal of the amateur student-athlete creates not only a massive farce, but is most harmful to the people this whole thing is set up for.

I'm not sure what should be done about this. There is still some sort of capacity for the NCAA. Solutions would be a whole other post, probably for a later day. But for right now, I'm really having a hard time caring about college athletics.

 

[ukvols]

"The NCAA spells out exactly what it means by institutional control, and the Penn State case did not fit that."

That's your opinion, and you're not alone, but I disagree.

The only aspect of lack of institutional control that is in question here is whether or not there was an underlying NCAA violation, because if there was, then PSU obviously lacked control over it.

I have no problem with an NCAA violation being found in the coverup. The coverup was done because they thought the football program would be better off if they covered it up. That's the only motivation that makes a shred of sense. So, they attempted to gain an advantage by avoiding a disadvantage by covering up criminal acts. The NCAA violation wasn't what Sandusky did; it was the coverup.

When a university's administration protects the criminal conduct of someone associated with an athletics program for the purpose of protecting that athletics program, I have no problem with the NCAA getting involved.

 

[McCat]

Excellent exposition here. You've hit it on the head.

Rather than just going ostrich to 95% of what actually goes on and ape**** on the remaining 5%, we need to recognize the situation for what it is: That our culture (and I'll be frank, largely in the south) idolizes and creates spectacles of teenagers, largely from poorer and underprivileged backgrounds. One hundred thousand seat stadiums and websites like VolNation are manifestations of this.

They leave home, get dropped on a college campus and get told little beyond what constitutes an impermissible benefit. Hundreds, if not thousands of instances of those rules being broken on a regular basis is a fact of life. Widespread lack of recognition and failure to deal with this reality in conjunction with the ideal of the amateur student-athlete creates not only a massive farce, but is most harmful to the people this whole thing is set up for.

 

[milohimself]

We went over this for days on end and thousands of posts while it was happening, and I was repeatedly reading the NCAA rules and bylaws while it was happening. I heard a few salient reasons why the NCAA should have taken action but not one time did anyone explain how it was within the NCAAs authority to do so.

Not only were sanduskys actions crimes outside of the purview of the NCAA but so were all the actions to cover it up. It's not my opinion, it's a fact that the NCAA made up guidelines for enforcement on the spot. What is my opinion is that they did so in reaction to public pressure, because when its a crime against kids, then many people become idiots.

That said, that was in response to the discussion at hand but my larger point is that the NCAA has irrevocably failed in its mission and needs to be drastically scaled back or possibly eliminated and I can't help but view the amateur aspect of college athletics as a farce until that happens.

 

[hog88]

That said, that was in response to the discussion at hand but my larger point is that the NCAA has irrevocably failed in its mission and needs to be drastically scaled back or possibly eliminated and I can't help but view the amateur aspect of college athletics as a farce until that happens.

In this we agree.