It’s the SEC, peeps. If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.
… Mississippi State is being placed on NCAA probation for academic misconduct by student-athletes in two sports: football and men’s basketball. This penalty results from rules violations self-reported by Mississppi State, where a part-time student tutor is alleged to have completed some on-line coursework for student-athletes in those sports.
MSU is getting slapped pretty good, but managed to avoid postseason bans in either sport, unlike what Mizzou is facing. The difference?
While the cases have some similarities, the Missouri case involved a University staffer. This case at Mississippi State centered around a student tutor as part of a work study program.
Hairsplitting, for the win.
Get The Picture 
Ok so now we know how to game the system, just make sure the tutor isn’t a staffer. Thanks NCAA for these great pointers.
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What’s wrong with the other teams in the SEC pressing Emmert through Sankey for an even playing field for Mizzou? That may seem naïve (and it is on the face of it), but appealing to the “but for the grace of God go us” nerve at each school (the ADs) can at least move the needle before we all are hairsplit to FCS level.
This is not a level playing field for punishment or portal equity for the players that suffer nor for any school that can be sapped from underneath by sanctions that can lead to convincing their players to go elsewhere and not being able to play in a bowl game.
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Hair splitting is the NCAA’s only competency.
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Sorry but the lawyer in me is coming out here. Why self report? Why tell the NCAA anything? Why cooperate with the bastards at all? Follow the Auburn playbook. Stonewall, threaten litigation and the NCAA will fold like the pup tent it is and slink away into the darkness to count its ill gotten gains.
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Auburn showed the world how to cheat and get away with it with Scam. You are exactly correct, never self report, never cooperate, deny, deny, deny and make the NCAA prove their case without your help. As dawgtired says below; if you cheat, win big. The NCAA will not do anything to damage its brand and coming down hard on its champions is something the NCAA will not do. They can’t strip an FBS football program of its championship because the NCAA does not award a championship in football at the FBS level.
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If your football and basketball teams are taking online classes, it’s much easier to game the eligibility and APR requirements.
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https://collegefootballnews.com/2019/05/ncaa-apr-academic-progress-rate-football-bowl-eligibility-rankings-no-1-130
Here are the latest APR scores by football program. You can draw your own conclusions on who is gaming the system.
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My suspicion has always been that the programs who bend over backwards to cooperate are the programs with University Presidents or Chancellors who aspire to one day sit at the NCAA Administrator’s table in Indianapolis, whereas those schools who tell them to kick rocks are run by people with scruples enough to cheat but not enough to want to later in life associate themselves with the Michael Adams and Mark Emmerts of the world.
It’s an untested hypothesis but I’ll alert the readership when the study is fit to print.
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Some kids are on the Honor Council in school… other kids give the Honor Council kids wedgies in the gym locker room.
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If your gonna cheat AND get caught, you dang sure better be winning championships! You have to give them something to take from you.
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Academic integrity flew out the window a long time ago, but the UNC fiasco sealed the deal forever.
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This one was easy for the NCAA to find. Just find the only student on campus that can read, and there’s your culprit.
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That’s some serious hairsplitting; I believe in either case they’re still considered to be an employee of the University (regardless of how they came to be employed, hence the MSU student tutor in this case has been hit with a show cause same as any other employee of a University accused of wrongdoing by the NCAA).
The ultimate difference between the two cases (and thus the punishments) is that the NCAA still had some players it could punish at MSU (10 football players missing 8 games apiece) whereas Mizzou had nobody left around to take the brunt of the beating so everyone gets to share in the misery, involvement be damned.
I can certainly see why the NCAA wouldn’t want to explicitly state the reason I’ve pointed out, as it confirms that they are an organization willing to punish the innocent for the sake of portraying some semblance of discipline and control.
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Perhaps this is a preview of the NCAA walking back the postseason ban on Mizzou. Of course that would mean the NCAA is a rational actor, which is laughable.
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To your point, Nicole Auerbach who writes for the athletic posted on Twitter way back during the Missouri scandal: “On the NCAA/Mizzou call with David Roberts, the chief hearing officer for the panel, I asked if schools are now being encouraged not to cooperate or tell the truth. Roberts replied: “You can certainly make that argument.”
The context being the no seeming difference or clemency for Mizzou’s self-reporting vs North Carolina’s refusal to report it’s Level 1 violations.
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