The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions brought its hammer down upon another SEC program last week and hit the Missouri Tigers’ football, baseball and softball programs with a one-year postseason ban, along with crippling recruiting restrictions.
The penalties were dealt in response to a former tutor at the school completing work for 12 student athletes while they were in attendance at the university. According to the NCAA, Missouri took “affirmative steps to expedite final resolution of the matter” and showed exemplary cooperation, and the committee concluded that the tutor acted on her own and not at the bidding of members of the athletic department the infractions committee chose to levy a postseason ban for three of the school’s programs.
What we, as college sports fans, learn from yet another decision handed down by the NCAA is that decisions from the organization’s Committee on Infractions are nearly impossible to predict.
Μore than a year ago, the NCAA investigated claims of academic fraud at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was discovered that the university had created “paper classes” for student athletes, presumably in order to boost their GPAs and help them maintain eligibility. These classes rarely met and were rarely, if ever, overseen by a faculty member.
In essence, these classes were fake, and those who enrolled in them were practically guaranteed an A.
The NCAA stepped in and investigated these claims and concluded that UNC had, in fact, created paper classes that contained mostly student athletes. The COI, however, did not levy penalties against the school. The reason? North Carolina lawyered-up and claimed that non-student athletes, although a minority, took these classes as well, and all students in these courses completed their own work. The NCAA’s hands were tied, as they could not prove that these classes were an unfair advantage to student athletes since they were not the only students enrolled in these courses.
We may look at the North Carolina case in comparison with cases like Ole Miss and Missouri and cry injustice on the part of the NCAA, but therein lies the problem. The NCAA is a flawed and corrupt institution that attempts to bolster a false idea of collegiate sports amateurism with little or no care for the student-athlete whom they claim to serve.
If the NCAA truly cared for student-athletes, they would not levy crippling penalties against entire programs for the actions of those whom they deem to be rogue agents acting on their own and not in conjunction with the school.
What we have also learned is that “exemplary cooperation” from the university in question, although typically listed as a mitigating factor in NCAA cases, really provides zero assurance that the COI will be lenient when dishing out their rulings.
Did Missouri expect penalties from the NCAA because of this case? Absolutely. They had no technical loophole to use like North Carolina did, and academic fraud is a big issue. Did Missouri expect three of their sports programs to be hit with a one-year postseason ban, costing the institution millions of dollars in that span? Probably not.
Missouri’s athletic department —much like that of Ole Miss — cooperated with the NCAA at every turn in hopes of lessening the blow of sanctions like the organization promises. What they did instead was sharpen the axe used to execute them in the end.
Although the NCAA cites that Ole Miss did not exhibit exemplary cooperation in the course of its investigation, the university seemed to disagree with that stance. And although the Missouri and Ole Miss cases are vastly different in scope and nature, this shows that perhaps the best course of action when the NCAA comes knocking is not to cooperate but to lawyer-up and fight.
Don’t take my word for it, however. Take the NCAA’s.
When asked if the penalties levied against Missouri after their cooperation could deter schools in the future from cooperating with NCAA investigations, the Committee on Infractions’ Chief Hearing Officer David Roberts said, “One can certainly make that argument.”
Roberts went on to say that failure to cooperate with investigations would yield harsher penalties for a school, but how can athletic departments believe that when Missouri was hit with multiple postseason bans in spite of their cooperation? The impression now is that the COI practically throws darts blindfolded when levying these penalties with little or no concern for the damage they will cause to innocent people associated with the program.
If the NCAA is going to punish innocent student-athletes who had nothing to do with violations and dish out crippling sanctions after the school cooperates with an investigation, then why are schools still cooperating and not changing the status quo? It’s no question that the NCAA is corrupt, and schools may soon wake up to that realization and fight them instead of helping them.
Until then, schools, and more importantly student-athletes, will continue to suffer.
