If the NCAA really wants to do something about “maintaining our game’s image and reflecting the ideals of the NCAA overall”, it seems to me a better place to turn its attention than eye black and on the field gestures would be here.
Improper phone calls and text messages to football recruits by two former athletic department staff members led the NCAA on Thursday to place the University of Central Florida football program on two years’ probation, the school and the NCAA jointly announced.
Former UCF recruiting administrator Ed Marynowitz and former director of player personnel Steve Rubio combined to place 209 improper phone calls and about 100 improper text messages to 27 football prospects and their parents, NCAA and UCF investigations found…
The school suffers with a two year-probation penalty. The bad actors? Not so much. They’ve moved on.
… Marynowitz is now the director of player personnel at the University of Alabama, while Rubio was a recruiting intern at the University of Tennessee last season. In the report, they were not named and were identified only by their positions at UCF.
They were not members of the school’s coaching staff and were not allowed to have any phone contact with recruits under NCAA rules. All college coaches were banned from sending text messages to recruits in August 2007…
That’s some system you’ve got there, guys. And while the staff members or the coach who employed them didn’t receive much of a penalty, the players – who, after all, aren’t the ones who supposedly spend money on compliance officers and training sessions – were looking down the barrel at a pretty serious threat of one.
Unauthorized phone calls and text messages by two former University of Central Florida football staff members nearly cost 27 players their eligibility.
UCF automatically deemed 27 football players ineligible when school officials learned that former recruiting administrator Ed Marynowitz and former director of player personnel Steve Rubio combined to place 209 improper phone calls and about 100 improper text messages to the prospects and their parents before they had signed letters of intent…
… The NCAA decided to reinstate the UCF football players contacted by Marynowitz before the start of the 2008 football season and the players contacted by Rubio before the start of the 2009 season, according to UCF documents obtained exclusively by the Orlando Sentinel.
Even the probation doesn’t strike me as much of a deterrent. After all, it’s not exactly like Rubio cleaned up his act when he went to work for Junior. Or that his services don’t continue to be valued.
Get The Picture 
The post-UCF job interviews of Rubio at Tennessee and Marynowitz at Alabama, when each was asked to describe his overall body of work during the recruiting season, probably came off kind of like this 5FDP cover at Best Buy…
LikeLike
Two years? For some phone calls? Looks like USC will get the “death penalty” for all they did. ….haa haaaa couldn’t say it with a straight face. NCAA will probably apologize for daring to question the Trojies.
LikeLike
I concur that the lack of penalty for coaches who escape violations by moving elsewhere is one of the NCAA’s most criminal miscarriages of justice. The situation with sleaze like John Calipari is almost unfathomable.
LikeLike
Hey the NCAA doesn’t want to play hardball with anybody who will sue them. The schools voluntarily agree to abide by the NCAA’s BS. The kids don’t have a clue and are easily scared Notice that the NCAA did back off the players since they knew that would get them some really bad pub and a few law suits. NCAA = Wizard of OZ ain’t much behind the curtain.
LikeLike
There should be some mechanism where at least some of the penalties follow the miscreant. Thus, Alabama and Tennessee could choose to hire these guys but know they must assume the “cost” of hiring cheaters,
LikeLike
I think the way to fix this is the penalize all those pesky coaches-in-waiting. That will make the whole recruiting process sparkly clean. Or better yet, why don’t we pass a rule that recruits cannot use more than 3 hats at the shell-game hat shuffle they do when they publicly announce the university they will sign with.
LikeLike
I think the penalties should follow the coaches as well. Put the school on probation, make it lose scholarships or whatever they decide but then also put the coach on probation, limit how many off campus trips he can make etc so that you aren’t penalizing the entire new program he is at but that there is a risk in hiring guys with a reputation for this type thing.
LikeLike
Meanwhile Southern Cal has had at least two former players paid and nothing comes of it.
LikeLike