brendanloy

Brendan Loy · @brendanloy

20th Dec 2011 from Twitlonger

What Pat Haden should say:

Good afternoon. Today, the NCAA announced that it is imposing a 1-year bowl ban, and a reduction of 9 scholarships over 3 years, on Ohio State's football program. These penalties resulted from an investigation which found that five football players had sacrificed their amateur status, sold merchandise illicitly, and taken illegal benefits from boosters within the Columbus community, and that head coach Jim Tressel knew about this, lied about it to the NCAA, and covered up his role, in large part so that the ineligible athletes could continue to compete for Ohio State, including in the 2010 Sugar Bowl.

As you know, USC is presently serving a 2-year bowl ban, and is about to suffer a reduction of 30 scholarships over 3 years, as a result of the NCAA's findings that a single football player took illegal benefits, in San Diego, from a would-be agent. The NCAA found that USC had not adequately monitored this athlete's activities or those of the agent, and had lacked institutional control in that the university "should have known" what was occurring, because "high-profile athletes require high-profile monitoring." Crucially, however, the NCAA found no proof of actual knowledge by the school, still less of coaches or other university employees lying to the NCAA or engaging in a coverup.

We are gratified that, by imposing lesser penalties on Ohio State for what are indisputably more serious infractions that those committed in the USC case, the NCAA has tacitly acknowledged that its penalties against USC were far too harsh. It is unfortunate that the NCAA did not come to this realization sooner, such as when we appealed for a reduction in the penalties. However, the NCAA has obviously, if belatedly, realized its mistake, and for that we are grateful. All of college athletics is better off when the punishment for a given infraction fits the crime, as in the Ohio State case, rather than being grossly excessive, as in the USC case.

In light of these developments, we look forward to receiving an explicit statement of acknowledgement and apology from the NCAA. We also believe, although our appeals process has been exhausted, that a discretionary decision by the NCAA to reduce our scholarship penalties would be appropriate. But in any case, we are grateful that the mistakes made by the NCAA in our case will not be repeated going forward, and other schools will not suffer similarly unreasonable penalties to the ones we were given.

Thank you for your time.

Reply · Report Post