Occidental College, a Division III school near Los Angeles, received a charge of failure to monitor among other major violations. The violations arose out of impermissible benefits and recruiting by the women’s volleyball program and impermissible recruiting by the head football coach.
The head volleyball coach arranged for three of his athletes to work with him as assistant coaches for the youth team he coached at a tournament in Las Vegas. The father of a fourth student-athlete flew them to Las Vegas on a private jet, paid for their lodging, some food, and some entertainment while in Las Vegas. In addition to the extra benefits, one of the athletes scouted players for future recruitment. Student-athletes are not permissible off-campus recruiters, creating another violation.
The one Vegas trip was not an isolated incident. The coach allowed one of the athletes to use a rented Porsche for her birthday. On two other occasions, the coach brought athletes to Vegas for tournaments with the youth team, provided them with expenses, and had them evaluate prospects, all additional extra benefit and recruiting violations. Other inducement and practice violations also contributed to the findings of a failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance for the coach and failure to monitor for the institution.
As for the football violations, in Spring 2012, the head football coach composed a mass email to over 1600 athletes from previous recruiting cycles. He deleted names of athletes he knew were on a team, and directed those already on a team to ignore it. Everyone else was invited to transfer to Occidental. Eventually it was determined that 467 of the recipients were on teams, and had been contacted without permission.
As a result, the NCAA imposed severe penalties, including:
- A two-year prohibition on off-campus recruiting in all sports that ends December 31, 2013.
- A postseason ban for the volleyball program in 2013.
- A two-year show-cause order for the former head volleyball coach, during which time he may not recruit off-campus; and
- A show-cause order for the former head football coach (now at another school) prohibiting him from off-campus recruiting until December 31, 2013.
Occidental also vacated records and self-imposed the loss of off-season practice opportunities and one date of competition last season.
Hmm. A failure to monitor charge where two head coaches were found to be involved. Again, this brings into question the USC case, where the relationship with the university was tenuous at best and likely, as Judge Shaller put it, “an over the top” attempt to implicate the school and assistant coach where no wrongdoing existed.
Couple this with the extent of the penalties against USC – what, John, you like to refer to as an “outlier,” and I think we really need to question the integrity of the NCAA and its use (or abuse) of its enforcement power. “Connected schools” seem to skate by without much in terms of penalties, and then the unconnected schools (or the “outliers”) seem to get unjustly hammered. And the NCAA knowing full well what it’s doing publicly announces that precedent does not matter when doling out penalties to the “outlier” schools, but then the appeals committee coveniently looks to precedent when reviewing penalties (see Boise State).
The failure to use precedent as a guide, as suggested by the NCAA, is in and of itself an admission of no due process and freedom for the COI to arbitrarily and haphazardly enforce its rules. An “in school,” like Ohio State, loses 3 schollies where the head coach was involved in a coverup. And “outlier,” like USC, loses 30 schollies where there is barely any culpability on the part of the school. Remember, it’s the culpability of the school that is at issue – not the question of whether there was a violation.
So this brings me to a prior topic of yours. You cite to rule books as proof the NCAA is needed. While I agree that there is a need for a governing body surrounding college sports to enforce rules, just as there is in the NFL, the NCAA is not the right body. It has proven itself inept and, almost certainly, corrupt. The reputation of the NCAA is so tarnished in the eyes of anyone who is an objective observer that it just can no longer carry the mantle for regulating anything. Emmert, among others, have failed miserably.
As convenient as it may seem to refer to the USC incident as an “outlier,” it really does not address the real issue. The real issue is why is USC the “outlier”? What happened during the process to cause this? Because with USC, there are two troubling the points. First is the process followed in “convicting” USC, which is based on “over the top” tenuous evidence. This fact doesn’t even get at your “outlier” point, which is in respect to the magnitude of the penalties. Thus, there is a good chance that USC was not really guilty of any wrong doing, other than no having a vigilant enough compliance program. Sure, this is justification for some penalties, but not having a vigilant enough compliance program is a far cry from a head coach lying to the NCAA to coverup wrongdoings so his star players could play in the bowl game.
The second issue is the magnitude of the penalties. Even accepting that SC “should have known” of Reggie Bush’s wrongdoings, the penalties, equating to 30 lost scholarships for one ineligible player is unheard of. Absolutely unheard of. Without precedent. While Paul Dees’ (the Chair of COI) University of Miami was engaged in widespread Pell Grant Fraud during the 1990′s involving multiple athletes, his school received less in penalties. Yet, Paul Dee’s transgressions did not stop there. No, he then went on to oversee almost a decade of improper benefits being given by one of Miami’s biggest athletic donors. His excuse….Miami had no idea. The lack of vigilance in a compliance program that he hammered USC for is the very execuse he used to defend his own program.
Clearly, the NCAA is broken if someone like Paul Dee can chair its enforcement. And clearly it is time to get rid of the NCAA. It’s reputation is too tarnished to salvage. It has had multiple opportunities to put into place real procedures to ensure fairness, and instead, it chose to let one of the most corrupt individuals head its enforcement committee. The time has come to move on. We can no longer tolerate any more “outliers” whether it is for a too soft of penalty or too harsh. Precedent must be followed.