The Ever-Evolving Morality of College Sports

There is no debating that college sports is a big money industry these days. And with every new opportunity to make a dollar, it's landscape grows more complex. Since the NCAA was founded, and maybe even before then, we have held college athletes to a different standard than pro athletes. Should we? This is what I'm going to examine today when I take a look at the moral quandaries of today's collegiate athletics. And just like a stud linebacker tackles a running back, so will I tackle these controversies. Let's get it on...

A Thanksgiving trip back to Los Angeles last year opened the floodgates and sent opposing sides scurrying for the moral high ground on this issue. It stemmed from the debacle that was the final minute of USC’s 28-7 win over UCLA. With 50 seconds remaining and in clear position to run out the clock by kneeling with a 14 point lead, USC decided to instead uncork a 48-yard strike from Matt Barkley to Damian Williams to tack on an extra touchdown with 44 seconds left. This led to a near melee as USC started celebrating giddily and UCLA players started to meander across the field for a throwdown. The players were herded back to their respective sidelines and the game continued but the O’Brien household was all set to be a house divided.

Upon entering the house I was immediately asked by my father what I thought of the last minute touchdown. I said to my family’s temporary approval that I thought it was very hypocritical because Pete Carroll had complained vehemently two weeks earlier that Stanford was trying to embarrass them when they ran a 2-point conversion when up by 24. Then I proceeded to put myself squarely in the doghouse when I said that barring that I have no problem with running up the score, but rather whole-heartedly approve of it. I was told that if this was the way I thought about things then I was probably going to hell. Keep in mind…this is my own family. But “Why?” What is so wrong about running up the score on an opponent. They knew what they signed up for when they came to play. Nobody was forcing them to be there. Could I be as heartless as my family had implied? Sometimes when you’re at a moral impasse such as this one you need to step into Imelda Marcos’ Closet and try on some other people’s shoes. With that said…I would like to psychologically examine a blow-out from the perspectives of all those involved.  

Point of View #1 - Myself

This really isn't that difficult of shoes to wear. I know what my feelings are and I've been on both sides of a blow out. I am arrogant enough to believe that my thoughts on competition are the same as that of every other truly competitive person, and that is that we don't care if we lose by 1 point or by 100 points: Losing is losing. If you don't have that mindset then I'm not sure I consider you to be a true competitor. I hate to lose because I hate anyone thinking that they are better than me. However, I embarrass myself all the time so that is never an issue. I don't think Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali or Lance Armstrong ever cared how badly they beat or were beaten by an opponent. All that mattered to them was winning and losing. Sure I was always more dismayed after losing badly but only because it meant that I was that much further from being the best and that my defeat had not been a fluke, not because I felt ashamed or because I resented the other team or competitor for playing their hardest from start to finish. 
 
The only time when I was ever truly shamed by a loss was when the "Mercy Rule" was put into effect. The "Mercy Rule" is meant to spare the feelings of children by stepping in when the score gets our of hand and ensuring that they don't lose by a certain ridiculous amount. However, whenever the "Mercy Rule" gets invoked, the competitive children on the losing team just hear you telling them that they are good enough or worthy enough to be allowed to finish. It is referred to by competitors as the "Slaughter Rule". My stance is that in competition there is no reason to take your foot off of the gas. Though in team sports, I totally agree with letting the bench play. But don't make them throttle down. Your bench has earned the right to "play". So let them throw downfield, jack 3-pointers, or swing for the fences. 

Point of View #2 - The Winning Players, Coach, and Fans

Point of View #1 was easy, because it's my point of view. And while I think my point of view as a losing player might vary greatly from that of other losers...I don't think my opinion as a winner is very different from that of other winners. Winning big is about street cred and if a blowout is going to be avoided, then that responsibility lies squarely with the coach. This is because, from personal experience, there is not a modicum of guilt in college students when it comes to a beat down. Athletic events are like Pac Man or Donkey Kong and we are just trying to set the high score. A win that big is also about street cred. If you beat somebody by a respectable margin...life goes on. However, if you crush somebody under your steely boot in front of numerous spectators and send a message that you are a force to be reckoned with, then people start to talk. Talk is good. Talk will get you places. And if the NCAA wants these blood baths to stop (NOTE: They don't.), then they should implement a playoff system in football. 

In basketball, baseball, volleyball, and soccer teams don't need to blow out other teams on the collegiate level. And because of this they often don't. However, in football it is requisite for your team's survival that you make your wins look as impressive as possible. Let's take this seasons most notable example. Wisconsin dropped 83 points on Indiana. Indiana and several other high and pompous groups claimed that this was despicable and a clear-cut example of bullying the little guy. However, when Wisconsin finished in a 3-way tie for the Big Ten title, they were the ones who received the nod for the conference's Rose Bowl win. Even though Michigan State beat Wisconsin and didn't lose to the other nominee, Ohio State. This might be due to the fact that Michigan State didn't get to play Indiana, and when they did play out-matched opponents like Western Michigan or Minnesota they beat by respectable scores like 31-8. Let that be a lesson to you Spartans...make like your namesakes and show no mercy. The BCS system rewards blowouts so it would be foolish not to give the system what it wants. And do you know who else loves blowouts? Potential recruits do. If you smack down your crosstown rival by 42 then there's a very good chance that all of the top recruits that you are both competing for will want to avoid that potential embarrassment the next year and will come join your squad. Kids are front-runners and that's the way most of their minds work. As a time trying to provide for your fans and your university...it is your responsibility to embarrass other teams. You have too much to lose through naive acts of mercy. 

Point of View #3 - The Losing Players, Coach, and Fans

Alright, now we're down to the people who get hurt by a big loss. I stated earlier from my perspective that if I was in this group, I wouldn't care that the other team was running up the score...I would just go about doing my damndest to stop them. I often make the mistake of assuming that other people think the way that I think. Most of them do not. Many of them are hurt by losses that bring embarrassment with them. We know how they feel about having the score run up on them. The question is: should we care? The answer in the case of the coach is probably "Yes". This is a man's livelihood that we are talking about, and nothing will get a coach canned as quickly as a particularly embarrassing loss when set against the backdrop of a hum-drum tenure. No one big loss ever sunk a coach by itself, but they have often served as the nail in the coffin. 

As far as the other pieces of the University equation go (players, fans, administrations), they might be expected to brush their shoulders off and keep moving forward like sharks. Beating the snot out of opponents isn't the bullying that the bleeding hearts make it out to be. Bullying requires that the victim's torment was unprovoked. If a far superior school beats up on a far inferior school, there is the implication that the inferior school was willing to schedule the game. If they did so, they were most likely compensated quite heavily for their humiliation. If it was a mandatory conference game then this was probably just an unfortunate way of saying that they belong in a weaker conference. College football is a business which necessitates that it's fans be entertained. Holding back athletic talent in the name of allowing somebody to save face is not good for that entertainment. Therefore, it is up to every university and their team to make sure that they are not putting an inferior product on the field, and if they do then it is requisite that they suffer the consequences of this lack of preparation or discipline.It should also be mentioned that runaway losses don't hurt as bad as tragically close one's. I'm already over UCLA's 20-point blowout of Xavier in the 2008 Elite Eight, but Ron Lewis' 3-pointer in the 2007 NCAA Tournament still haunts my nightmares.

But enough about running up the score...Recruiting is a dicey situation in college athletics right now. We are currently in the midst of an awkward Cam Newton "pay for play" scandal. We are only a couple months removed from having Heisman winner Reggie Bush give back his Heisman due to improper benefits that he received. Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl has been suspended for eight games by the SEC for allowing recruits to visit his house against code. At another nearby SEC power, Enes Kanter has been ruled ineligible for receiving unsanctioned tuition money while in Turkey. Recruiting violations are everywhere. They have gotten out of control and I think I need to set the NCAA straight on how to stop them and how to punish those who still do commit them.

There are two factors that are heavily involved in creating an aversion to illegal behavior. The first is the frequency with which offenders are caught and the other is the severity with which they are punished. If you tweak either of these in your favor...cheating will go down. If the NCAA was able to catch every school that cheated, nobody would do it. However, since probably 99% of all violations go unnoticed, there isn't much deterrent from trying to get the upper hand through illegal means. However, the NCAA might be able to get around this issue if they decided to levy the SMU Athletic Death Penalty against any school that got caught committing even minor infractions. If even small rules violations were met with postseason bans, loss of all scholarships, mandatory termination of athletic staff, and possible loss of your school's accreditation within the NCAA...it wouldn't matter if schools thought they were unlikely to get caught. They still wouldn't want to risk it. However, cheating and the system that the NCAA has now to punish it are a lot like speeding on the highway. By that I mean that absolutely everybody is doing it, but the only person who's going to have to pay for it is whoever the NCAA has their radar gun pointed at. And believe me...every single school is committing violations.

What's become more appalling about this system though, is that it is encouraging other programs to try and get that NCAA radar gun pointed at their opposition through whatever means necessary. The current Cam Newton scandal which has threatened his eligibility has been brought to the forefront by sources within Mississippi State University who claim that his father solicited payment for his services. However, these allegations did not rear their heads until Auburn was 7-0 and on the path towards the BCS Title game with Cam Newton already starting to lock up the Heisman Trophy. I'm not going to say that the allegations aren't true. They might be...they might not be. But I will say definitively that the timing of them is way too convenient for my liking. They were announced right in the middle of the season with Auburn on top. They were released when it would cause the most commotion and do the most damage, and you can't help but think that if Auburn had been struggling at 4-3...these allegations would have never come to light. In order for this to surface when it did, somebody at Mississippi State had to hold on to this information for about six months. That has to be considered a major infraction in it's own right and I hope that the NCAA blasts them to hell with sanctions. They need to send a message that you can't just hold on to information to nuke other programs when it is convenient for you. You will report all infractions when they happen, and if you fail to do so you had best not report them at all because your ass will be on the fire next to accused. Trying to take out the people on top is nothing new. Teams are just getting sneakier and more dishonorable about it. The other team in the BCS Title Game, Oregon, has had opponents faking injuries on them this year in order to slow down their fast-tempo style of play. Well, I guess that's one way to do it. Actually working on your conditioning might be a more beneficial strategy...but to each their own.

However, if one was to claim ignorance of all of the NCAA's rules they could hardly be blamed. That rule book is unreadable, unintelligible, and unconstitutional. "Pay for play" might be something that we can't abide by if we are going to keep college athletics pure but some of the other things that recruits are denied borders on the ridiculous. The University of Iowa's basketball program was recently hit with an investigation leading to possible sanctions because a couple of their recruits were introduced to Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore at a Hawkeye football game. Note that this was coach Fran McCafferty's second violation in his thirty years of coaching. The first came when he was a coach at North Carolina-Wilmington when he sent out recruiting flyers with colored ink when only black ink was permissible. Seriously NCAA, that is beyond ridiculous. I don't care what color recruiting flyers are, as long as they aren't green with pictures of dead famous people on them. Telling you that you aren't allowed to meet somebody is preposterously communist. I think it's unconstitutional that they tell released criminals that they can't mingle with other known felons after they are released. What if your dad was a felon? No Thanksgiving for you! To tell kids that they can't meet their idols because they happen to be possible alumni donors is ridiculous. As long as Ashton and Demi aren't giving them stacks of cash or a new Escalade, it is all good. I don't even care of Demi wants to show them the breasts that they lost their self-virginity to during Disclosure. That's called a recruiting tool...just like a state-of-the-art gym or a Hall of Fame coach.

Which brings me to the practice of using girls to lure recruits to a university. I think that the NCAA should take a serious look into any claims by female students that they were coerced against their wills into making recruits feel at home sexually. This is basically prostitution and is so many shades or wrong. However, I have no problem with universities having attractive, willing female students available to recruits to show them around campus. And if these females decide to show top recruits what they'll be getting every weekend at said university without any coercion from the athletic department...then I have no problem with that. If my knowledge of Xavier's program is indicative of other colleges then top tier athletes get their knobs slobbed on very regularly anyway.  However, the NCAA recently looked in to allegations that Tennessee sent cheerleaders to high school games at which they had potential recruits who were playing. The only problems...the cheerleaders were not in Tennessee uniforms...and it was their alma mater! Are you trying to tell me that I can't go and watch my alma mater play because my university is recruiting their star player? Get a hold of yourself NCAA. Trying to deny recruits improper benefits is important, but I think that we need to take a serious look at what improper benefits are. If we take all creativity out of the recruiting process then what chance do smaller schools with less facilities have of landing big-time recruits. Obviously, not allowing financial compensation for players stops the big money schools from landing big-time recruits, but all of the stringent rules are doing the little guys no favors.

And whether the violations are big or small...we need to change the way that the NCAA deals with them. Loss of scholarships and postseason bans aren't an unfair way to deal with things, especially for heavy offenses. However, a recent trend in punishment that makes no sense is the vacating of wins of titles. The NCAA thinks that if they re-possess the ill-gotten gains of a school, then that will curb the thinking that the price of the violations is worth the success that came from them. However, the main problem with this line of punishment is that it is dishonest, it doesn't work, and it is pathetically sad. We live in an age where you can't just whitewash history to present the public with your version of what you think should have happened. This isn't the Soviet Union in the 1940s. We the fans will always hold what actually happened in our minds. The 2008 NCAA title game featured a tremendous finish with Mario Chalmers hitting a thrilling 3-pointer at the end of regulation and then Kansas prevailing over Memphis in overtime. However, the NCAA would like me to believe that Memphis was never in that final because there star player didn't take his own SATs. I saw it...just because you say it didn't happen, doesn't mean that it didn't. The same goes for Chris Webber and his ill-fated time out. I refuse to allow the new-age Stalins to tell me what happened in the world of sports. If you're slacking on the up-take when it comes to these crimes and you catch them significantly after the fact...then you punish them after the fact. You don't go back and try to re-write history.

However, I do believe that it is important to show people that you are serious about keeping agent and booster money out of the hands of potential recruits or even All-American juniors and seniors. Sports Illustrated recently had a cover story which described just how prevalent "pay for play" has become in college athletics. And while we would hope that athletes would do the right thing, it clearly does fall upon the NCAA to make things right. It's because they refuse to look at college athletics for the business that it is. The NCAA and fans of college sports like to pretend that college athletics are vastly different from professional sports. They're more alike than you think. And if you'd beg to differ, please consult the price of your season tickets before telling me that I'm wrong. But the NCAA doesn't have to monitor it's swimmers, lacrosse players, wrestlers, or volleyball players to make sure that they aren't taking money from agents. The main place that they need to focus their eyes are on the big money: football and basketball. And maybe they need to spread the money around a little bit. I'm not talking about profit-sharing with players...I'm talking about allocating charitable donations towards the high schools and Boys and Girls Clubs of certain players choosing. Athletes can't earn money while in college, but there is no reason that they should have to feel like they are just pawns to line the pockets of a bunch of fat cats who are getting rich off of their blood and sweat. Let athletes see that they have some say over the cash flow that they helped earn. Do this by letting every graduating senior that makes the NCAA tournament or a bowl allocate a certain amount of the NCAA revenue to a charity of their choice. This will help facilitate a better crop of student-athletes and reward those who are actually doing what they're supposed to be doing: graduating.

And if you want to keep kids in schools and keep graduation rates high...then pressure the NBA and NFL to get rid of the ridiculous stipulation that athletes need to spend a year or two college before going to the pros. It's not helping anybody. When a kid tanks out of the NBA, employers don't care that he completed one semester at Florida State. Sure, I think that the college ranks make for better pros, but having your league be saturated with talented freshman who would rather be somewhere else is not helping your brand. Middle America will relate more to senior leaders who win championships with defense and grittiness. We don't want to watch some uber-talented freshman who should be getting dunked on by Andrew Bogut while he wears a Clippers jersey. It's even worse with the NFL because they require multiple years in the college ranks. I realize that high school kids aren't ready for the NFL out of high school in the same way that they could be ready for the NBA. However, by the time a running back graduates college he is almost over the hill. Certain positions have long shelf lives in the NFL, but others are already on the decline before they ever get to play on Sunday. I have long believed in the importance of athletes getting an education to further themselves in life, however this pushing of athletes toward an education they don't want is ridiculous. We can't have this "No Child Left Behind" sort of attitude about collegiate education. Anybody who doesn't care if they're left behind, can be left behind.