The Scapegoat

It’s time for the NCAA and take some responsibility.

Once again, we are looking at a huge investigation on a football program that has just taken home the national title. Yahoo!Sports broke the article about a week ago and already we have lost focus on the actual investigation and have begun to focus on an issue that shouldn’t be an issue.

Paul Dee. The hypocrite. The infractions judge and jury. The man with the clever lines and high morals regarding accountability of athletic departments when it comes to program and player violations.

Instead of focusing on the infractions at University of Miami, we are now talking about former Athletic Director Paul Dee and some of the famous judgments he has handed down with tag lines like “You have to put in place the kind of institutional control we have at Miami" and "At least at the time of the football violations, there was relatively little effective monitoring of, among others, football locker rooms and sidelines, and there existed a general post game locker room environment that made compliance efforts difficult. This case strikes at the heart of the principles of amateurism.”

“It’s your job to know,” is one of his more eloquent scoldings, given to USC for violations veeery similar to the ones being investigated at the University of Miami now for a time frame when Dee was the sitting AD. Now, when asked about Nevin Shapiro, he is says "We didn't have any suspicion that he was doing anything like this. He didn't do anything to cause concern." Um, wasn’t it your job to know a booster that you had the police escort around to the sidelines and the practices was buying your players hookers, diamonds and abortions (oh my!)?

So, I too stopped thinking about the investigation itself and got wrapped up in this sidebar. In fact, I started writing a post about it, about the hypocrisy and the injustice…blah blah...but I kept getting stuck on one thing: Dee was the Athletic Director at the University of Miami in 1995 – when it was uncovered that the football program used fraudulent applications to secure over $200,000 in federal Pell Grants, and also gave out over $400,000 in improper benefits to the players.

...yes, the injustice. It really got me thinking that it’s time for the NCAA to step up like a big boy and take some responsibility.

Why has the NCAA has allowed a former Athletic Director - who was active at the time of a major violation at his university - to be so highly involved in a committee that he is actually handing down judgment and punishment to other programs?  Had Paul Dee not been the one scolding these programs for violations, we might actually be focusing on the actual investigation happening right now at Miami, not the fact that this particular former AD is a hypocrite.

I think Paul Dee and any other board member with a direct affiliation to confirmed major violations need to be removed immediately from their positions.  I believe the NCAA needs to apologize to the programs Paul Dee publicly shamed with his 'integrity speeches'. 

I think they also need to clean up their organization and focus on prevention.  The only way to prevent schools, coaches, administrators, agents, parents, boosters and athletes from continuing to violate the rules is to hand down harsher punishments that reach outside of college: 

Coaches at dirty programs shouldn't be allowed to go coach in the pro leagues, at least for some kind of  probationary period.   

Parents on the take need to go jail and the kids need to incur penalties - maybe the kid didn't know, and that's tough luck for the kid, but the only way to stop the parents is to set the precedent that the kid's future earnings will be compromised. 

Athletes shouldn't be able to leave their school in the wake of a scandal to compete at the pro level. 

Schools that get busted on infractions need to have penalties that include both the seasons in violation and future games. 

Adults who give inappropriate benefits (you know, the grown ups that know better) should be fined or spend time in jail.

The NCAA needs to fix this from the inside out - stop using scapegoats and excusing violating universities who 'didn't know' what was going on.  I agree with Paul Dee, if you'll believe it:  it's your job to know and if you don't, then a penalty may be just what your organization needs to get to a point that they do know what's going on.  These universities make enough money off their athletic departments to be able to hire lots of people to keep track of that little stuff.  Otherwise, where does it end?

But if we have any hope that the system will change, the NCAA needs to put their big boy pants on and deal with it. Until they do, college programs and the people associated with them will continue to push the limits until they reach a breaking point.  And when the system finally breaks, it will be impossible to repair.

I'd rather settle things on the field than in arbitration.