I blame Reggie Bush! RT @espn: Arizona placed on two years’ probation, must vacate 19 wins from 2007-08 season – http://es.pn/cDHFlU
I blame Reggie Bush! RT @espn: Arizona placed on two years’ probation, must vacate 19 wins from 2007-08 season – http://es.pn/cDHFlU
Is there anyway to get your money back if you made bets on these games and lost? It would only seem fair that if it was determined that the winning team cheated, that you would be entitled to repayment of your losses.
This whole vacating wins based on ineligible players thing is getting ridiculous.
If you didn’t know at the time that the player was ineligible, why should you be punished for it retroactively? Thats like deciding the speed limit on a posted road was wrong for 5 years, and issuing anyone who went that fast tickets.
Bad analogy, David. The standard of eligibility wasn’t “wrong” or changed – the ineligible players simply weren’t caught at the time.
To use a better analogy, this is like finding out that someone committed a murder 5 years ago and jailing them because the law hasn’t changed.
Now, if new eligibility rules had been passed this year and players were retroactively held to that standard, THEN you would have a problem.
If players or schools aren’t punished for breaking the rules, then the message is clear: you should absolutely cheat if you can get away with it at the time, because even if you get caught later, it won’t matter and there will be no consequences.
David will say that analogy sucks too, because in this case we aren’t talking about punishing the murderer, we’re talking about punishing his unwitting accomplises, who didn’t even know what he was up to. To keep it within the world of sports, it’s sort of like saying that the San Francisco Giants should have to forfeit all their wins from the era when Bonds was on steroids. Or, to step outside sports, it’s like saying that all of the laws President Obama signed should be ruled invalid when Orly Taitz finally proves that he was actually born in Kenya. Of course, Orly would undoubtedly contend precisely that, but I digress.
How about this: a lawyer is discovered to have been practicing law without a license for a decade. During that time, the lawyer gave a bunch of lectures, for which attendees got CLE credit. The local Bar Association has a rule that says you’ve gotta be a licensed attorney to give lectures for CLE credit. So, once the attorney is found out, do all the CLE attendees retroactively lose the credits they earned?
But now, David, let me attack your position for a moment. There are really four possible ways (that I can think of) to deal with situations where an ineligible player competed illegally and then later gets caught. Note that these aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. But these are the basic options:
1) Retroactive penalties: Wins vacated, championships taken away, etc. The obvious purpose of this is to have a deterrent effect: if teams know this can happen, then theoretically, they’ll be more vigilant. The main objection is the one you and I always make, that it’s absurd to re-write history, Orwellian, blah blah.
2) Present-day penalties: Scholarship losses, bowl bans, etc. Again, this is supposed to have a deterrent effect. Unfortunately, it primarily impacts present players, not the rulebreaking former ones, and often doesn’t even impact the right coaching staff or administration. That’s the main objection to this form of punishment.
3) Make the school disgorge the profits from the time period in question: This never happens, and the NCAA almost certainly doesn’t have the power to make it happen, but I’ve seen you and others propose it, and it has a certain appeal on the surface. Unfortunately, in reality, aside from the probably prohibitive legal obstacles, it would have the effect of affecting present-day players/coaches/etc even more thna #2, and across all sports (and maybe even academic departments!) rather than just on the team in question. I mean, think about it: what would USC do if the NCAA said, “Reggie Bush was ineligible; you owe us X million dollars”? Probably cut some minor sports programs, cut back on scholarships, etc. This is even more true if we’re talking about penalties at a smaller school than USC, say one of Kyle Whelliston’s “below the Red Line” institutions. And what happens when the player is more of a minor player than Reggie Bush? Is it really fair to take away the profits because some benchwarming offensive linesman cheated on an algebra test, or took $300 from a booster or agent to buy an iPhone, or whatever? If not, where do you draw the line? And I’m just scratching the surface of the problems with this idea. This is a superficially appealing, but totally unworkable and undesirable option.
4) Do nothing. If you get away with it until you’re out of college, you get off scot-free. The End. Obvious objection: no deterrent effect whatsoever. Cheating will run rampant.
As you can see, the only real options are #1, #2 and #4. But you object to #1 because it’s Orwellian and ridiculous, and #2 because it penalizes the wrong people. So do you support #4? Of course not. But then what’s the answer?
Actually no, my analogy was that the POSTED speed limit was wrong, not that it was changed.
And I didn’t say there shouldn’t be punishment for breaking the rules. I just said that THIS type of punishment is stupid and ridiculous.
Lets say after four years of mediocrity, Brian Kelly is fired and i’m the next coach of Notre Dame. I do nothing wrong. I play my best players, who to the best of my knowledge are eligible to play (the NCAA hasn’t told me they aren’t, etc.) and in 2016 I coach the Irish to a National Championship. All is well with the world. A few years down the road, say 2019 evidence comes to light that a couple of players may have been working with an agent that year. Well, there goes the national championship and all the wins.
Even though I did nothing wrong and followed all the rules, and 98 out of 100 players did nothing wrong and followed all the rules, the whole season is a wash, despite the fact that short of being a psychic and able to see the future or read their minds I couldn’t have known they were breaking the rules.
You really think thats fair and just? You really think that we should punish the players who worked their asses of for those wins during games and in practices? You really think we should punish the fans too? We should re-write history because a players unknown at the time off field activities made him technically ineligible?
Thats not fair, thats not just, and the punishment most certainly does not fit the crime. It’s akin to throwing parents in jail because their son, now an adult, commited some crime years ago and since then left the country and can’t be found.
I find present day penalties less objectionable than retroactive penalties. In the case of present day penalties, for example those at USC, athletes are allowed to transfer and future athletes have the ability to avoid the school altogether.
I also have a problem with punishing a program/school unless it can be found they were seriously negligent or had knowledge of teh situation and did nothing. There is no way for a school to track the lives of their athletes 24/7 nor do I think we would want them too. Beyond a certain point the athlete has to be held accountable for their own actions.
I also think that there is merit to monetary penatlies (if they can be enforced legally) such as penalties for the athlete involved. Make it part of a contract they sign when they attend the school that covers them for say 10 years beyond their graduation or signing date or whatever is appropriate. If they were found to violate the contract they can be held financially liable. Thats just one idea, and as you point out it may not be feasible. But you can also punish the institution financially through limitations in TV revenue, etc. Certainly the conference could hold them accountable that way. For example, if USC were found to be negligent lets say that a portion of their TV revenue from this season is witheld BUT with the stipulation that it must be withheld from football budgets and not those of other sports. The money could be given to the NCAA either to cover costs of the investigation or put to charitable purproses.
Despite what kcatnd seem to think, i’m not against punishment for wrong doing, I just want it to be the RIGHT kind of punishment.
Another interesting aspect would be that if a Coach is found to be involved to a degree, they have to resign/be fired.
David, fair enough. I thought I remembered you objecting more strenuously to the concept of present players being punished for past players’ sins. I must have been thinking of a different commenter.
In theory, I agree with you that “beyond a certain point the athlete has to be held accountable for their own actions.” The problem, of course, is that the NCAA has no way to hold an NFL player accountable, and the NFL has no interest in enforcing the NCAA’s amateurism rules. Your concept of a contract with the player involved is interesting, though I suppose there might be some fear that it’d be like those ubiquitous penalties in pro sports, where David Stern and his compatriots hand out $10,000 penalties like candy to highly paid players and coaches for a variety of misdeeds, seemingly with no deterrent effect because really, when you’re making millions, what do you care about a few grand, or even a few hundred grand? How much would Reggie Bush need to be fined/penalized before it would really matter to him? And how can you set that number when someone is a high-school senior, and their pro potential (and thus their future salary) is purely speculative? You don’t want to end up fining some car mechanic, who didn’t make it in the NFL or NBA or whatever, $250,000 or $500,000 just because you want the Reggie Bushes of the world to really feel the deterrent. Maybe players agree, as liquidated damages, to forfeit up to 25% of their then-current pro contract if the NCAA finds them guilty of cheating? That’s probably unenforceable for about a million reasons, though.
I forgot alternative #5:
End the amateurism charade, at least in football and basketball. Let athletes do what they want, get money from whomever they want — provided it’s not illegal under state or federal law, of course. Maybe even pay them outright. Of course, for the price of ending the hypocrisy, selective enforcement and overall irritation, you hopelessly reinforce a permanent system of have and have-nots that’s the stuff of Kyle Whelliston’s worst nightmares. But hey, at least USC would be on the winning side of that equation. 🙂
Incidentatly I’m not sayign I have the answers to this problem, just that I think the current solution is severly flawed and we should fix it ASAP. I do not particularly care for punishing current players and teams either, but at least its slightly less bad than retroactive punishment. Players in the here and now have a choice.
I also agree that any sort of monetary punishment would need to involve constraints such that a mechanic doesn’t get fined like an NFL star would.
I don’t think it would be a bad idea for the NCAA to approach the NFL and try and work with them to come up with a system. If the David Stern’s of the world balk, the NCAA could always start talking to members of congress, the sports leagues enjoy some pretty nice protection from anti-trust laws so they might be more willing to deal if prominent congress people say “hey, you should do this thing”. Plus it makes them look good from a “we aren’t just in it for the money, we really DO care about young people and values and all that stuff” standpoint.
Another change that would be a good idea would be to create a way for players to meet with agents in a supervised fashion while in school. I don’t think it needs to be thrown open like you suggest, but give these athletes, especially the big ones a way to start working with agents to plan for their post college futures. We encourage students to get mentoring and career advice from professionals, why not do it for athletes too? If students were allowed to meet with agents in an above board fashion it would remove some of the incentives for them to do so under the table, although the monetary benefits like Bush is alleged to have recieved would not necessarilly be detered under this plan.
Thanks for elaborating, David. You’re coming across as far more reasonable than I initially thought!
I blame . . . Bush!