If you watched even a few minutes of the NCAA tournament this past weekend, you saw plenty of messages hammering home how the organization wants you to view its product. This vision includes student athletes getting up before their general population peers, staying late after practice, and most definitely not receiving extra benefits.
And while I'm sure plenty of that does go on, there is a more honest narrative to be told about the NCAA. In reality, college sports are a business, one that uses this milk-and-cookies ideal to sell entertainment.
So given that, should we really be surprised that Syracuse and Jim Boeheim are as rotten and rancid as any other coach and program?
Boeheim's Syracuse has long been a darling of the national media and college sports purists. As an engaging and willing interview who happened to coach the prestige program at a journalism-centric school, Boeheim was able to let the media craft his image as one of the "good ones." Many talking heads used Boeheim's program as their hero while excoriating Jerry Tarkanian and John Calipari's underhanded empires.
After reading the report, the distinction is all but erased.
Among other typical violations, Syracuse is reported to have had tutors essentially pose as students by logging into their email accounts, corresponding with professors, and attaching coursework. This was not former Utah coach Rick Majerus infamously buying a burger for one of his players who just lost a parent. Boeheim's program is reported to have shown knowing and willful disregard of the rules.
Now to be fair, these are hardly felonies in the big picture, but the NCAA and its protectors have handcuffed themselves by treating them as such when less favored programs and coaches have been caught. Harsh punishments and chastisements accompanied by spoken and unspoken "be more like Jim" messages lose all credibility when Jim is bending and breaking the same rules.
So while the circumstances are far different, it is hard not to see a parallel between Boeheim's ongoing fall from his perch in an idyllic upstate college town to the similar fall that happened with Joe Paterno.
Like Boeheim, Paterno and his program had taken on mythical status from breathless and trite media drumbeats. Their existences were held up as evidence that the amateur collegiate model not only could work, but could thrive under the right men of virtue.
But just like the accounts of Boeheim and Paterno, this depiction is a myth. Let's all agree on something right here, right now: There are no "good ones," at least not all of the time.
College sports are bloated, largely by the revenue generated by the tournament going on now. And why shouldn't they be? Clearly the market values the product, and the schools should be able to profit from that.
Furthermore, Kentucky has mastered the modern rules and runs a graduate-level AAU team fronting as a college basketball program. Calipari says his primary goal is to get kids to the NBA, and why shouldn't it be? It's a worthwhile goal, using the archaic collegiate system to funnel typically low-income teenagers into annual pay grades few could dream of.
At this point, almost everybody gets it. College sports are still a blast, and everyone involved gets something out of the arrangement (yes, I hear you, players could get more).
So can we please give up the charade of moral superiority?
The NCAA has long penalized teams for breaking its rules to reinforce the supposed wholesomeness of its product. But it is clear that the only way to survive at the top of its sports is to push, if not sledgehammer, the rules.
Strip a team of victories earned by ineligible players? They likely would have lose some of those games anyway without them.
Give a team a postseason ban? They would have accepted a de facto one by playing strictly by the rules.
The college sports story needs a rewrite. Because while fans enjoy the Cinderellas this month, the clock has clearly struck midnight on the collegiate amateurism fairy tale.
Leave a Comment