On Friday, Ohio State University vacated its 2010 football season and relinquished its 2010 Sugar Bowl title and its share of the Big Ten football championship.
The school made this decision after a windfall offseason that saw its head coach, Jim Tressel, resign under scrutiny, and one of its star players, Terrelle Pryor, abruptly leave school after the National Collegiate Athletic Association launched an investigation against the football program for allegedly violating NCAA policy.
The main allegations against the program broke shortly before January’s Sugar Bowl, as the NCAA said it was investigating a memorabilia-for-cash scandal that included quarterback Pryor.
The school suspended five players, including Pryor, for the first five games of the 2011 season. Further investigation, however, revealed that Tressel allegedly knew of the problems and failed to report them immediately to Ohio State’s administration. In May, he resigned and Pryor left. The school might receive harsher penalties from the NCAA, which could include a ban on postseason play and a reduction of scholarships. These are harsh but necessary penalties for a proud and prestigious football program.
Unfortunately, Ohio State is not the only major college sports program that may have violated numerous NCAA guidelines in order to win. It just happened to get caught.
College sports, especially at the Division I level, are big business, with billions of dollars per year in ticket sales, television and radio rights and sports memorabilia. Coaches at the top schools such as Ohio State football or Kentucky basketball earn $2 million to $4 million per year, which tops the pay of some coaches in the National Basketball Association or the National Football League.
These salaries at times force coaches to win at all costs, place student-athletes’ educational needs second, and lead to NCAA violations in recruiting in order for that coach to keep his lucrative job.
Auburn University, for example, could face future problems within its football program because of former star quarterback Cam Newton. Newton’s father admitted that he had contacted Auburn prior to his son playing for the school and demanded that it pay him for his son’s services. The NCAA has so far cleared the school of any wrongdoing since Newton’s father, and not the player, asked for the money, and there is no evidence that any money was ever exchanged.
On the heels of this news, HBO ran a sports report where former Auburn football players alleged they were paid on a weekly basis and that pay was sometimes determined by stats from the previous week’s game.
It’s not just college football that faces the problem.
Top Division I basketball programs have also faced punishments in the past regarding corruption.
University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari led two schools that had to vacate seasons, wins and Final Four banners: This happened once at the University of Massachusetts in 1994 after star player Marcus Camby admitted he received money from an agent. Then in 2008, the NCAA investigated former University of Memphis star Derek Rose’s SAT scores, alleging the now-Chicago Bull didn’t take his own SAT examination.
Calipari was never implicated of wrongdoing in either case, and the NCAA never proved that Rose didn’t take his own college entrance exam, but the punishments remained.
Should fans and outside spectators be surprised by this corruption in college athletics? No. While there is a lot of money to be earned, greed will always remain. Where there is greed, corruption will always follow.
The problems at UMass, Auburn, Ohio State and Memphis are a small percentage of known violations, but what about the unknown corruption that occurs?
It runs rampant through college sports, despite the fact that it should be a priority for athletics associations to eradicate corruption and wrong-doing. Let’s face it, high-level college programs have smart people at the top making sure the top players continue to sign with the top schools regardless of the methods used to recruit them.
These scandals also lead to another problem within college athletics that must be corrected as players ”“ especially football and basketball recruits ”“ are treated more like cattle than humans.
Coaches tell the top athletes whatever they want to hear, and in some cases give them whatever they want, in order to get the player to that school. Calipari, while no one has alleged wrongdoing, continually gets the top-ranked recruiting classes to come to Kentucky and these players stay one year and bolt for the pros. They never develop a connection with the school, and in most cases never a degree, which is supposed to be the purpose of intercollegiate athletics. Unfortunately, money, rather than education is the focus right now and it’s the athletes who lose out in the end.
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Questions? Comments? Contact Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski by calling 282-1535, Ext. 322, or via e-mail at kristenm@journaltribune.com.
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