Sports Rant, Part 3

Now it turns out that the players were told they had to recommit to play for Ohio State next year so that they could be punished for their transgression. The NCAA wouldn’t do it this year because too much money would be lost, but they can’t let them get off scot free can they? Apparently not, so they were pressured to come back for their final year of eligibility and leave, literally, millions of dollars on the table by not going to the NFL at the end of this year. Of course it helps that Ohio State plays a soft schedule for the first five games. Although they will miss the Michigan State game, the players will be back right for the beginning of the Big 10 schedule, so Ohio State, the NCAA and whatever bowl game they go to next year will still be sure to make a lot of money of these players.

I really, really hope that there is someone these players trust who will tell them to just go ahead and go to the draft and hire an agent (as that is the breaking point for the NCAA) and then let the NCAA come after them. What are they going to do? Honestly, what could the NCAA possibly do? They are never going to want to take anything to court, which they would have to do if they wanted to fine them or sue them in some way, because there is absolutely no way the NCAA wants to have anyone testify in court about how and why decisions are made the way they are. They simply cannot allow that to happen.

As much as I want these athletes to stay in school to get their degrees, let me say to them: Don’t let the university and the NCAA blackmail you into doing something that helps them immensely but will only hurt you financially if you have a career ending injury next year. They are not going to support you for the rest of your life. make a commitment to yourself that you will go back to school and complete your degree and then follow the example of the NCAA and Ohio State and take the money and run.

Here is a great story by Dan Wetzel on this issue. Pay particular attention to the contradictory quotes from the NCAA and the head of the Sugar Bowl.

But as long as I'm on the subject of students graduating versus the emphasis on winning, let’s talk about Miami firing their coach Randy Shannon. Shannon took a program mired in scandal (although this was nothing new) and also losing and returned them to winning, and more importantly winning cleanly. Compare their program to the University of Florida. Shannon was also graduating his players. ESPN said at the time that he had the third highest graduation rate of any program, behind Army and Navy.

Now I could not substantiate that claim. What I found was a 75% graduation rate, which isn't great, but is a lot better than many schools. In my search I found that it’s actually hard to find graduation rates in a really usable source. The NCAA does release this information, but to say that it is not user friendly would be an understatement. Of course they don’t want it to be user friendly because the truth is often not pretty. I did, however, find this breakdown from a Stanford blog of graduation rates. I strongly encourage you to take a look. This will be something I come back to at some future point, because the stats are pretty ugly. (Here are older numbers also from the same blog)

But, even though Shannon was graduating his players and also running a clean program, he was not winning national championships which is what they expect. It doesn’t matter if the players are getting arrested and not attending class, as long as they are winning then everything is fine. I really hope that he ends up someplace that respects what he can bring, but I believe those places are getting scarcer every day.

Ralph Friedgen of Maryland was also fired because he was not winning enough and also wasn’t courting those who buy up luxury suites. (He was also only graduating 60% of his players, although that had nothing to do with his firing.) When are we going to say that enough is enough?

Now if you want something to fire Friedgen for it should be for the fact that he was still throwing long passes when his team was up 43-13 in the fourth quarter of the Military Bowl. That is just plain and simple poor sportsmanship. If you want to fire someone, don’t do it because he’s not sucking up to your wealthy boosters, do it because he is not teaching his players good sportsmanship.

Each year the Big 10 is exposed when forced to play the best competition from the other conferences in bowl games, and yet year after year their teams continue to be ranked highly. Why is that? Is it simply based on history? At some point you would think this would end, but so far it hasn’t. It's time to realize that the Big 10 is not that great of a conference and begin to rank them accordingly. When they prove that they can play against the other conferences then they can get their "legends" and "leaders" status back.