By Eddy Landreth
Staff Writer
Officials who reside at the home office of the NCAA in Indianapolis, those figures perched atop the basket of snakes known as the collegiate sports bureaucracy, have suddenly decided, or so they say, to get tough with cheaters.
But how are we to interpret this announcement from an organization that allowed Cam Newton to guide Auburn to an NCAA football championship and collect the Heisman Trophy along the way? All the while, we could guess with strong probability that Newton, and possibly a number of his teammates, was bought.
Auburn did its best to deflect any serious investigation, and now it’s the national champion.
How are we to understand the NCAA’s sudden desire to embrace the rules when it allowed a portion of Ohio State’s football team to barter for tattoos, cars and god knows what else, and to watch in horror as their coach knowingly lied to the NCAA when questioned in order to keep his guys eligible for their bowl game? Naturally, he wanted to defeat an SEC team, a league that obviously has received far more speed for its money than the Big Ten through the years and used it to whip Ohio State in bowl game after bowl game.
Now switch to Carolina.
The Tar Heels have had their own issues in the past year. The folks who root for anyone other than Carolina wish for the NCAA to apply the death penalty to UNC, but let’s examine the case and compare it to what is happening elsewhere in the country, particularly in the influential SEC.
First off, unlike Auburn’s approach, UNC groveled before the NCAA, which did not create a positive atmosphere for Carolina.
Three members of UNC’s 2010 team eventually conceded they took improper benefits (read: cash, trips and jewelry) from agents or their representatives. The school was not proven to have known of this activity until the admission of guilt from the players. From the outset, all the players questioned said school officials and coaches urged them to be truthful in answering the questions. Every player with any possible connection was brought in and grilled. Their cell phones were seized and their text messages searched.
Along the way, officials discovered possible academic fraud. A precedent-setting news conference was called, in which the chancellor and director of athletics fell on their swords and plead guilty, for all intents and purposes, before an investigation took place. The chancellor even went so far as to apologize to everyone who has ever been connected with UNC.
Players were suspended for games if there was any chance they had done something wrong. This applied especially to the once-in-a-lifetime chance to play LSU at the Georgia Dome in the season-opener on national television.
In the end, few players were found to have accepted improper help (a chancy definition when one hears what the NCAA called improper; who among us has never had a parent, friend or roommate read a paper for typos?). Nonetheless, some players missed games before they were found to be innocent. So they were pronounced guilty before being found innocent, losing games they can never recover.
Just remember too that football is a sport requiring virtually 12 months of work for a 12- to 13-game schedule, depending on whether the team is successful enough to play in the postseason.
By implying a major cheating scandal had occurred, when in fact it was confined to a rather small number of players, a disservice was done to the players found to be innocent, to their teammates who had to play without them, to the program itself and, most of all, to everyone with a degree that reads “the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.â€
Those degrees were diminished, at least briefly, by this overreaction. The NCAA gladly piled on and speared the stack of bodies, innocent or guilty.
Finally, there was John Blake, the assistant coach whose actions appeared to make it all worse. There is no doubt that Blake should not have had an ongoing association with a sports agent. He definitely should not have been recruiting players around the country for that agent, and taking money from that agent was, at the very least, a stupid thing to do.
But stop and think about Blake and his role. So far, nothing has been said or implied indicating that he paid any Carolina players. No evidence has been revealed that he was a party to paying the three players who lost their eligibility. And while taking money from an agent was not smart, there is nothing illegal or in violation of NCAA rules when a coach accepts money. He’s already being paid handsomely to coach football.
In the end, Blake’s actions were distasteful and reflected poorly on Carolina, but no evidence has been presented to this point that he broke any NCAA regulations. The biggest negative to Blake is the blind trust shown by his mentor, head coach Butch Davis.
Davis knew Blake had a sketchy reputation before he hired him, and Davis had to know how important following the rules and maintaining a spotless image is at Carolina.
Nevertheless, if the NCAA hammers UNC with sanctions it will once again reveal how mismanaged and inconsistent the so-called leaders of collegiate sports are.