Ncaa Looks Away, Makes Hurricanes’ Day
Good news for Hurricanes fans! Luther Campbell is back in bidness! He not only can return to the sidelines, but he can start passing out money to players again!
This is one of many positive statements the NCAA delivered Friday to the University of Miami despite its football program’s “significant lack of institutional control,” according to NCAA Committee of Infractions chairman David Swank.
Earth to the NCAA: This is how you treat “significant” offenders? By ignoring the issues? By forging the facts? By swallowing everything Miami athletic director Paul Dee argues and believing in yet another of president Tad Foote’s promises of “integrity?”
I mean, who prosecuted the NCAA case, Marcia Clark?
The problem isn’t with the sanctions the NCAA gave Miami, the most prominent of which limits football scholarships to 12 and 14 the next two years, respectively. This will prove tougher to overcome than most fans realize and places the burden for recovery directly on UM’s white knight, football coach Butch Davis.
No, the problem is with the answers the NCAA gave in announcing these sanctions. Its reasoning was confused, its logic flawed. It had a chance to address problems in a nationally prominent program, but showed by the answers that it didn’t even understand these problems.
On Friday, Swank, Foote and Dee made it sound as though UM was on the straight and narrow after a series of documented violations, starting with the Pell Grant scandal engineered by former academic department aide and current federal prisoner Tony Russell.
There’s just a few problems in buying Miami as Reform U. One is that Anna Price, who was Russell’s boss, who was singled out for her role with Russell in the NCAA’s report and who received a letter of reprimand from the university, isn’t just still on the job.
She has been promoted!
Yes, in the past year, while this case was being investigated, Price was mysteriously advanced from head of the athletic’s academic program to university provost. Talk about sending a message!
Then again, there’s no reason Price shouldn’t be moving up if Foote and Dee can remain in such good stead. Foote has talked for so many years about cleaning up the athletic department it’s a standing joke. The question today is whether Foote even believes his words anymore or just repeats them from memory.
Dee oversaw the drug-policy mess that allowed three players, including Warren Sapp, to keep on playing. The old policy was suspended. The checks and balances, thrown out. The chain-of-command of drug test, aborted.
All this was by Dee’s decision so that then-coach Dennis Erickson could keep playing his players. But give Dee some points: He convinced the NCAA this problem wasn’t intentional but a problem of “miscommunication.”
Right, and Hurricane Andrew was a problem with the tidal charts.
In a telling remark of how it did business with UM, Swank said the NCAA didn’t investigate this drug policy. “We relied on what the university told us,” he said.
This also explains how the NCAA could rule that Campbell - despite being given sideline passes by UM officials - wasn’t even mentioned in the NCAA report for giving money to players. Swank said Campbell wasn’t a booster and therefore couldn’t be controlled. So let the money roll again, Luke!
Erickson, too, walked away without even a wrist-slap on his resume. He can return to college coaching with no sanctions, despite Swank’s admission that most of these violations happened during his watch. How depressing.
But listen: If the NCAA doesn’t care about integrity, why should anyone?
Davis remains the lone beacon of hope at UM, and it now falls to him to be impossibly perfect these next two recruiting classes so UM doesn’t dip off the map in coming years.
“Glad that it’s over,” was Davis’ comment on the situation, and everyone had to agree. If nothing else, Dee, Foote and the NCAA underscored what it’s all about in college athletics:
Winning. Money. And evading any straight answer.