NCAA Must Come Down Hard on USC

Obviously, whatever the NCAA is doing to stop athletes from receiving money from boosters or agents is not enough.

One has to admit that big-time college athletes on scholarship have it great. At the very least, they avoid going thousands of dollars in debt, while everyone else their age goes ever more deeply into debt, and at best, they are about to become multi-millionaires because they are good at playing a game.

The problem with the current system is that it is too lenient. There is a huge aura of, “That’s just how it’s done,” surrounding college athletics, and that has to stop.

There was an interesting piece on Outside the Lines last year about how some college football players were using their living stipend for video game systems because they were living in public, or provided, housing. These types of stories make one want to drop the first word from the “student-athlete” label.

Since this incident with OJ Mayo is the second major violation at USC, they should be given a huge penalty since they didn’t get the hint the first time.

Schools are not going to start watching these acts as closely as they should if they are not going to be penalized for their actions.

For the NCAA to be taken seriously, what should happen is:

• The basketball team loses three scholarships for three years and two for the next two.
• The football team loses five scholarships for the next five years.
• The basketball team has to sit out the postseason for the next two years and the football team has to sit out bowl season for one.

Obviously, USC fans are going to hate this because of what it will do to their program. Pete Carroll is probably not going to spend any time at a place that cannot compete with other schools, and will probably leave, even though he may have been able to prevent the problem.

If that happens however, it will show other college administrators that they had better stay on top of things to make sure there’s no illegal business going on off of the field.

The athletes involved in these money schemes are almost always ones who are going to be high draft picks in their respective leagues, and because of that, instant millionaires.

Their life is already going to be so much better financially than their peers, and with

their free education, they have absolutely no right to be receiving other benefits simply because they are talented on the sports field.

Not only does this harm the university, but the kids who are involved similar incidents always get off completely free of punishment since they are usually out of college and getting paid legally by the time the news comes out.

In Reggie Bush’s case, there is an outside possibility that he will have to return his Heisman Trophy, but the Trojans are not going to have any conference or national championships taken away because of his, or his family’s, actions.

If the NCAA does not come down hard on USC for this case, the rest of the agents, boosters, and even sports administrators around the country are going to see how this case was handled and think that they can at least loosen the reigns on their program.

If schools learn that the winning is so much more of a positive than the punishment is a negative, they are going to choose to win 100 percent of the time.

(Of course this should only happen if the NCAA finds there is truth in the allegations during their investigation.)

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