Shocking Story
If there was ever a gimmie pounder bet, it would have been that USC football would be suffering some NCAA sanctions. This is a true tragedy ONLY in the sense that Pete Carroll will not suffer any consequences from his misbehavior. I heard talk this morning that we should feel for the current student-athletes at USC because they are absorbing the penalty from former athletes/coaches, but that is such a lame argument. First, it is likely that some if not all of the current team participated in the violations, and second, after the Reggie Bush scandel, it was quite clear that the potential for probation existed. Carroll should be fired from his NFL job immediately, and be forced to pay back some of his salary from USC. If the University is going to forfeit $$ from BCS appearances, then the coach who caused the situation, and benefited from it should also participate in the penalty…
June 10th, 2010 at 9:53 am
You’re preaching to the choir. Coaches are the biggest beneficiaries of the NCAA’s dysfunctional economic model; they should feel the pain first and most when they violate the rules, or look the other way while fall guys, er, I mean, assistant coaches violate them on their behalf while preserving plausible deniability.
June 10th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Puh-leeze… the schools get *no* benefit from this - even after factoring in the penalty? The coach (and staff) are responsible for the actions of their student-athletes, but the school has *zero* responsibility for the actions of its student-athletes? Spare me. The school (in this case USC, though they’re far from alone in the NCAA landscape) is only too happy to cash all the checks that come in thanks to some “renegade coach”, and then feign surprise and disgust when the “renegade coach” went outside the rules to… well, get those big checks into the school’s coffers. The *schools* are the biggest beneficiaries of the NCAA”s dysfunctional economic model… or else they wouldn’t employ those coaches and enroll those student-athletes.
Why does John Calipari keep getting hired? Cuz schools do the cost/benefit analysis and determine the immediate gains more than outweight the eventual (and inevitable) scandals and penalties.
Before we insist the coach needs to give back money, let’s start with the schools returning monies. When *that* happens, *then* we can talk about coaches.
As an analogy, if I choose to pay Milton Bradley to play baseball for my team, I cannot then be surprised or upset when he has a meltdown that (a) embarasses the team/organization, (b) costs him playing time (in the form of suspension and/or personal time taken), and/or (c) costs the team games.
If USC was so concerned with whether or not Pete Carroll was fully complying with the rules, then they should’ve done a better job of ensuring compliance along the way.
On a related note, when Lane Kiffin inevitably jumps ship to the next school with the bigger contract and/or better situation, USC can spare me the mock horror that he would have the audacity to leave (just ask Tennessee).
As for the players currently on the team, Danny’s absolutely right. They truly had *no* clue that the NCAA was going to hand down some punishment in the near future? Well, then… good lesson in “open your damn eyes and pay attention”… and after all, college is *supposed* to be about lessons above everything else, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah… I realize that sounds adorable and naive, but I’m also sick of hearing about “poor, disadvantaged student-athletes”. We should all have it “so bad”.
Did I leave anyone out? I don’t think so. So, okay… I’m done now.