Neuheisel needed a noogie, too

Another day, another justification for vaporizing the NCAA and starting over with a body more judicious and rational to govern collegiate sports. Like, say, a third-grade slumber party on a sugar high.

Ready for this?

Rick Neuheisel has been declared ethical.

We’ll pause briefly while you brush the cornflakes off the newspaper and clear the milk out of your nose.

This may strike you as an absurdity of the magnitude of, oh, creamed corn being declared meat loaf, or O.J. being declared innocent. But there it is, in the NCAA summary of the most recent – but surely not the last – University of Washington infractions case:

“However, the committee finds under these unique and unusual circumstances that the (gambling) violation was, as to the former head coach, not a violation of NCAA ethical conduct legislation.”

Ergo, Rick ethical.

It’s hard to know which was more tortured – the syntax or the logic – but the upshot is that Teflon Rick received no personal sanctions in the noogies the NCAA handed out to the Huskies on Wednesday, and thus future collegiate suitors need not jump through any “show cause” hoops should they want to hire the King of the Bracketville Calcutta.

They may have to show cause why the alumni shouldn’t burn down the ad building rather than allow such a thing, but that’s beyond the NCAA’s purview.

As is just about everything else.

Let’s see – the NCAA membership has shown itself over the years to be incapable of curbing profligate spending (see Oregon’s locker room or Coach K’s salary), protecting athlete rights (Byzantine and arbitrary eligibility decisions via its Clearinghouse, restrictive transfer rules, more on request), preserving minor sports (wrestling, R.I.P.), tracking a relevant graduation/retention rate, determining a national football champion and practicing general fairness (the Jeremy Bloom case, among others). It has, however, managed to scam itself some palatial, yet cheap, digs in Indianapolis, and lots of lobster at endless committee retreats at various four-star resorts.

Now add to its failures an inability to defend what passes for its own standards of ethics.

The Huskies got off Wednesday with an extension of their probation to 2007 – although it would have saved everyone time if the NCAA had just made it indefinite – and an add-on year to its already self-imposed sanctions limiting football recruiting visits and use of watercraft during those visits. Not sure what happens if a recruit swims out in the middle of Lake Washington and starts to yell for a rescue boat, but those clever Dawgs surely will think of something.

These were hardly unreasonable sanctions and the Huskies were eager to waive appeal and refocus on happier matters, like the 1-5 football squad. Fact is, virtually all the characters involved in this particular bedroom farce – president, clueless athletic director, faculty rep, compliance dolt and head football coach – have long since checked out or been cashiered. One thing the NCAA is becoming more sensitive to is unduly punishing those not party to the wrongdoing.

So an attaboy there, though how the school managed to plead down the dreaded “lack of institutional control” to “failure to monitor” might make for an entire seminar at UW Law.

The real drama was what to do with Neuheisel, whose participation – and $11,219 in winnings – in an NCAA basketball tournament “auction” put the investigation into motion, and contributed to his firing. Complicating the NCAA’s task was the get-out-of-jail-free card he received in the form of two department-wide memos sent out by former UW compliance officer Dana Richardson affirming – incorrectly – that office pools and the like did not violate the NCAA’s gambling policy.

This is Neuheisel’s alibi, and the heart of his lawsuits against both UW and the NCAA.

Never mind that in none of the three grillings he got from NCAA gumshoes on June 4, 2003, did he ever cite those memos as a rationale for participating in what was obviously a gambling function.

Think about it. The IRS hauls you in for a chat about your return. It challenges deduction X. You either point to page Y in the 1040 instructions to explain how you interpreted the deduction in question, or turn to your accountant and say, “But you said …”

Not Rick. The first two times, he simply lied that he participated (“I was just there watching”), and then finally ‘fessed up, sort of.

“I did not consider it gambling on collegiate sports,” he said, in a particularly Clintonian leap of logic.

Anyway, the Richardson memos managed to completely hamstring the NCAA which, as the report said, “was unable to find that the former head coach did not rely on the emails when he took part in the auctions” and noted that reliance on those memos “would substantially mitigate the nature of the violation.

“The committee,” the summary went on, “finds that a violation of the (gambling) Bylaw 10.3 occurred” – but that it was not a violation of the NCAA ethical conduct legislation.

Neuheisel, true to lawyerly form, immediately crowed that, “I’m pleased that the NCAA has finally come to the conclusion that I didn’t violate any of their rules.”

Rick, what part of “a violation occurred” didn’t apply to you, exactly? That wasn’t Dana Richardson at the auction, hmm?

And what about the lying?

Well, it seems the NCAA enforcement staff “has a general policy,” the summary said, “in which individuals will not be charged with unethical conduct if they ultimately provide truthful information the same day they provided the false information.”

And rather than just tell the investigators, “Well, that’s a stupid policy,” and dropping a boulder on Wile E. Neuheisel, the infractions committee shrugged and said merely that it was “troubled.”

The enforcement chair, Thomas Yeager, tried to explain this away with the NCAA’s usual mewling that it lacks the tools of law enforcement, as if you’d want to set these boobs loose with wiretaps. What he forgets is that the NCAA is also free to make any determination without the restraints of the law within the context of its ethical guidelines.

Neuheisel lied, and it was up to the NCAA to hold him accountable for those lies. The school already has. And now the NCAA has undermined its member’s case in court.

Another day, another justification.