It’s not that the NCAA doesn’t know what it’s doing; it’s that the NCAA doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be doing By Sally Jenkins In defending its alabaster-pure reputation, the NCAA likes to criminalize others. Recently, it sentenced Georgia running back Todd Gurley to “40 hours of community service” for selling his autograph. But I’ve been leafing through the sheaves of the NCAA rule book, and in a diligent search of its 432 pages, I failed to find a single sentence empowering NCAA President Mark Emmert to put a tin star on his chest and serve up phony lawman imitations. I also can’t find the part where the NCAA is allowed to conduct shakedowns like a crooked sheriff. The need to dissolve the NCAA and put its Indianapolis headquarters into foreclosure has been fully demonstrated in the past weeks. Repeatedly, the NCAA exceeds its authority in petty matters or intrudes in large matters where it has none, while completely failing in its one real responsibility: education. On the heels of the Gurley fiasco came a series of subpoenaed e-mails in a Penn State court case showing that the NCAA “bluffed” the school into forking over a $60 million fine in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child molestation case. NCAA officials acknowledged in the e-mails that they didn’t have the right to levy the fine, but they knew the school was so wounded and embarrassed by Sandusky it could be intimidated into accepting the punishment. Now, this comes perilously close to blackmail. Meanwhile, the NCAA has exhibited total paralysis in the one case truly in its purview: the broad, years-long academic scandal at North Carolina, in which scores of athletes were kept academically eligible with fake “paper” classes and prearranged grades. At this point, the NCAA is limping along on sheer incumbency. The above examples illustrate that among the NCAA’s many problems is a complete lack of understanding of what it even is, or should be. “The magnitude of failure is miserable, and so is its absence of leadership,” said former Texas athletic director Donna Lopiano, who has become a reform activist. washingtonpost/sports/colleges/its-not-that-the-ncaa-doesnt-know-what-its-doing-its-that-the-ncaa-doesnt-know-what-its-supposed-to-be-doing/2014/11/10/ec1aa64e-6905-11e4-b053-65cea7903f2e_story.html
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 10:53:26 +0000
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