Gettin’ while the gettin’s good

Two things about this report that Oregon and the NCAA are in agreement that the Ducks have committed a bunch of major violations.  First, the obvious:  no wonder Chip Kelly was ready to take his act to the NFL. 

Finding 6 – Did the school promote an atmosphere of compliance?

This section is difficult to decipher because of redactions, but centers on an NCAA bylaw that says the head coach much promote an “atmosphere of compliance.”

In the report, the school and NCAA agree a violation happened, although the NCAA cautions that the report does not include a finding that [redacted] failed “to promote an atmosphere of compliance.” It does not state if that person is Chip Kelly.

Hmm… maybe there was a Coach Redacted on the Oregon staff.

Second, the surprising.  Somehow the NCAA has managed to look at a program that (1) let Will Lyles run amok with recruits; (2) paid money to Lyles for services that were questionable; (3) allowed somebody to make hundreds of impermissible phone calls over a four-year period; (4) exceeded the limit on the number of coaches allowed to recruit, again over a multi-year period; (5) was essentially left to do as it pleased with regard to “…the use of recruiting and scouting services, giving out school apparel and telephone calls between high school athletes and coaches” and reached this rather startling conclusion:

“There were underlying major violations coupled with failure to monitor violations involving the head coach (2009 through 2011) and the athletics department (2008-2011),” NCAA enforcement staff wrote in the report. “While the violations were not intentional in nature, coaches and administrators of a sports program at an NCAA member institution have an obligation to ensure that the activities being engaged in comply with NCAA legislation.”

The report also outlines two crucial points for the Ducks. First, NCAA enforcement staff said they had “no finding of lack of institutional control and no finding of unethical conduct.”

Can anybody explain how the first sentence and the last sentence there have any logical consistency?  Or should I just skip straight to conspiracy theory and wonder if the NCAA is being deferential to Nike?

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Musical palate cleanser: Your number or your name

Good read on the O’Bannon case from the perspective of a gamer here.  I particularly like this shot of righteous indignation:

But today, even if you believe that a full-ride scholarship is compensation enough for a major college athlete, it is impossible to fully express the contempt that Adidas and the University of Louisville deserve for monetizing the gruesome injury that Kevin Ware suffered in the regional final of this year’s NCAA Tournament. Those … fuckers … sold a $25 t-shirt off of it. It goes without saying not a dime went to Ware or to his medical bills, because of the NCAA rules being challenged by Keller and O’Bannon.

I hope their attorneys bought one of these shirts. It should be entered into the record alongside EA’s study. Kevin Ware is a reserve, the definition of the 75 percent that are supposedly just anonymous enough to not be identified by number alone. But the existence of this shirt puts the lie to EA’s 25 percent claim.

The shirt read “Ri5e to the occasion.” That is an unmistakable reference to Ware by his uniform numeral. That slogan—and good job, good effort to Adidas’ well compensated, collar-popping marketers, coining a phrase I saw in my high school’s weight room in 1988—covers its shame with the same-sized fig leaf that Electronic Arts has used for two decades. That shirt is bought because people see a Louisville No. 5 and understand it is Kevin Ware. Similarly, no intelligent person who plays these video games can look at NCAA 13‘s roster and say “Well, QB#2 at Texas A&M is not actually Johnny Manziel.”

NCAA, this one from The Knack goes out to you.  From 1979, it’s their “Your Number Or Your Name”.

Look out, Miami – now it’s personal.

After hearing Mark Emmert take umbrage at Dennis Dodd for Dodd’s criticism of Emmert’s job performance, I’m not surprised by the professional tack the NCAA’s enforcement staff has taken in response to Miami’s claims in trying to get the Nevin Shapiro matter dismissed.

The NCAA’s enforcement staff responded to Miami’s claims and harsh criticisms of the NCAA by lashing back, claiming that UM is “grasping at straws” in an attempt to disqualify members of the enforcement team and that it is “offended” by Miami’s insinuations in regards to the case.

Those comments were made in a 42-page document that Jonathan Duncan, the Interim Vice President of Enforcement, sent to Britton Banowsky, the chairman of the Committee on Infractions in regards to the Nevin Shapiro scandal at Miami.

“Offended”, eh?  Well, there’s more than enough of that going around in this pig of an investigation.

Not that much of that should matter, according to Duncan.  After all, Miami’s already gotten its “sorry, dude”.

“The enforcement staff ‘self-reported’ the [Maria Elena] Perez [attorney for Shapiro who was paid by the NCAA after doing that work, though she contends that she never actually was employed by the association] issue and then cooperated diligently with internal NCAA staff members and the Cadwalader firm to fully identify and disclose information related to the Perez issue. After an external investigation, those individuals found to have had culpability in the matter have been held accountable, and as a united enforcement staff, we deeply regret, have apologized for and are embarrassed by the events and circumstances,” Duncan wrote. “Nevertheless, we will not stand idly by when meritless, personal attacks are launched under the broad brush stroke of ‘enforcement staff misconduct.’

“… Overall, the enforcement staff believes that the institution is again grasping at straws in an attempt to disqualify members of the enforcement team with the most knowledge about the case. Not only are these personal attacks based on no evidence that would support the removal of Barnhart and Hannah from the case, they are also not a basis for dismissal of the case in its entirety.”

See, they’re embarrassed, Miami.  Now take your medicine.

That statement glides by the fact that the staff has had to retreat further in the face of those “meritless, personal attacks”.

The AP first reported Friday that the enforcement staff made one concession that Miami wanted, that being the NCAA’s decision to throw Wright’s testimony out of the notice of allegations.

Miami argued that some things Wright was asked about by investigators in February 2012 stemmed from information the NCAA collected through depositions that Perez conducted under subpoena in Shapiro’s bankruptcy proceeding. The NCAA does not have subpoena power.

So a few mistakes were made here and there.  Broken eggs, omelets, etc., etc.  Besides, the staff isn’t really convinced that the Committee on Infractions has dismissal powers anyway, so what can you do?  Which leads to the topper:

“Based on the foregoing, the enforcement staff believes that the majority of the parties’ assertions in their motions to dismiss are largely based on assumptions, false accusations, misleading statements and meritless claims. However, the enforcement staff would first defer to the judgment of the Committee on Infractions regarding whether it has the authority to act to dismiss a case prior to a hearing. If the Committee on Infractions determines that it has such authority, the enforcement staff believes that the only legitimate argument raised for such action relates to the potential violation of confidentiality involving the public release of Cadwalader report. [Emphasis added.] Nevertheless, even if the Committee on Infractions believes that a violation occurred in that regard, the enforcement staff is uncertain as to any demonstration of harm that would merit dismissal of the case.”

If there had been any harm, I suppose another apology would be in order.

Insourcing

As I like to say, some posts just write themselves.

Who pays to play?

John Infante’s post about paying young basketball players is a useful exercise in trying to climb out of the box the NCAA’s amateurism standard has placed college athletics.  Rather than putting the burden on the schools to change, he’s looked instead for a path to incentive the NBA to abandon the way it does business.  The sooner the pros will pay a kid, the more pressure that takes off the colleges to do so.

Paying college basketball players without fixing the system immediately below it also threatens to simply shift problems downward. To fix basketball, everyone needs to get what they want. The best prospects need the shortest path to a pro career. The NBA needs a system to evaluate players before they are drafted or signed. And the NCAA wants a supply of talented players who are committed to college.

Read the whole thing.  I’m not suggesting it’s a complete panacea.  And I don’t know how much of what he proposes translates neatly to football.  But it’s a good place to start a discussion about how to fix things.

Bob Stoops, company man

This “damn, son, I don’t think I would have said that” observation is making the rounds today:

“I tell my guys all the time,” Stoops says, “you’re not the first one to spend a hungry Sunday without any money.”

Thanks, Coach, for that spoonful of sugar.

And before you get all he’s-got-a-point-there on me, John Infante has your rebuttal.

As a policy matter, Stoops appears to not have considered the counter to his argument. The accusation advanced by groups like the National College Players Association is not that players do not get enough. It is that they are going into the red; that the limits on what a full grant-in-aid can pay for impose a cost on athletes that runs into the tens of thousands of dollars over four or five years. Stipends and full cost-of-attendance scholarships are not about pay-for-play. They are well within the NCAA’s definition of amateurism since they cover actual and necessary expenses of being a student-athlete.

The other problem is the perception of a football coach making $4 million a year telling athletes to suck it up and go hungry. Whenever an institution says their problem is messaging, not what they believe but how they communicate it, the institution is roundly criticized. But it is a serious problem for the NCAA. Many of the people attempting to defend the NCAA’s definition of amateurism and whether it is appropriate in college athletics are doing as much damage as the critics.

Beyond that, don’t forget that one of the reasons schools can afford to pay the likes of Stoops $4 million a year is because they’re paying what they are to the hired help in the name of amateurism.  I guarantee you Stoops hasn’t.

“If you want to compete [in Division I],” he says, “you’ve got to step up.”

The NCAA is still trying to reach a consensus on player stipends.  It’s not going well.  Besides the obvious fault line – there being a lot of schools that either don’t have the money or don’t want to spend the money in that fashion – there’s also a leetle problem with leadership, as nicely understated by Brad Wolverton:

In some ways, the issue has become a referendum on Mr. Emmert, whose attempts to get things done quickly have alienated certain factions.

‘Ya think?

One thing not mentioned in the article that I wonder about is whether some of these schools have begun factoring O’Bannon into the equation.  If that case, either through a settlement or a loss in the courts, results in player compensation from the schools, why toss another $2000 a year their way?

The only thing worse than the NCAA

The man who ostensibly heads the most dysfunctional legislative body in the country thinks his peers are just the folks to take on another dysfunctional bunch.

Tuesday, Mr. Reid raised that case in order to make his point: The NCAA demands more oversight.

“Jerry Tarkanian made it into the basketball hall of fame,” Mr. Reid said, The Hill reported. “Why didn’t he get in earlier? Because this courageous man took on the NCAA, which has absolute control over college athletes. I would hope as the years go by that we, as a Congress, will take a look at that more closely.”

Gosh, that’s bound to end well.

(h/t John Infante)

One man’s meat is another man’s poison.

The NCAA enforcement staff’s response to Miami’s move to dismiss the charges against it in the Nevin Shapiro mess is in.  It’s not impressed.

Portions of the contents of the enforcement department’s 42-page response to the NCAA infractions committee were relayed to CBSSports.com. That response followed Miami’s motion to the infractions committee to drop the case on March 29. Enforcement’s response is signed by interim director Jon Duncan.

The first sentence of the enforcement response reads: “From the enforcement’s staff perspective the motion to dismiss by the institution and involved individuals are attempts to deflect attention from the significant allegations that remain in the case.”

Is Shapiro’s “self-corroboration” (as Miami describes it) an attention deflector or a significant allegation?  Guess it depends on which side of the fence you’re standing.  Which is kind of the essence of the problem here, no?

Mark Emmert is losing it.

If Auburn’s having the worst week, Mark Emmert’s week isn’t far behind.

Yesterday, the press brought out the long knives at the NCAA President’s Final Four presser:

Emmert had to answer questions about an institution that has helplessly watched King Football lay waste to traditional conference allegiances, to the benefit of no one but the most powerful leagues. He had to answer questions about the Final Four presence of Syracuse, which has been under NCAA investigation for ages for a host of issues, as first reported in March 2012 by Yahoo! Sports – just the latest school under investigation or on probation to be on the brink of winning it all. He had to answer questions about self-inflicted wounds within the NCAA’s enforcement department, which have led to a number of staff changes and has compromised the high-profile Miami investigation.

And then things really got feisty.

In response, Emmert broke the first rule of leadership, which is to never let them see you sweat.

To a reporter who had written Emmert should lose his job after the NCAA’s mishandling of the Miami case, “By the way, thanks for the career advice. Kept my job anyway.”

It’s time to start wondering how long that’s gonna last.  Picking a public fight with Dennis Dodd is a remarkably dickish move, one that’s beneath the dignity of the office (which, granted, is declining precipitously under Emmert).  You’ve got to wonder how well idiocy like that is going to sit with people who are still Emmert supporters.

Maybe he’ll just claim his comment was made in jest.  That worked out well for Ed Rush.