Miami Hurricanes Football: NCAA and Universities Perpetrate Double Standard

As a 'Canes fan and Miami resident, my reaction to the Nevin Shapiro allegations only went like this.

Yawn.

We've been inundated with college sports scandals: from Los Angeles to Columbus and now, back to Miami.

As Bob Ryan called it on Pardon the Interruption the other day, it almost forms a perfect triangle.

But yet for all of the attention it gets, it just all seems so boring. With either USC, Ohio State or Miami, I don't look at those schools so much as problems, but as products of the system they compete in.

The NCAA allows this because, to quote Miami alumnus and filmmaker Billy Corben:

"NCAA regulations are like marijuana laws—Americans don’t understand or respect them."

Because of this you see what happens in Miami. In one of the pictures in Charles Robinson's report on Yahoo Sports, you clearly see Shapiro hand University president Donna Shalala a check.

What message is that supposed to send to the students?

If you think that a certain program is clean, then you're being naive. Watch the great documentary on SMU, the only school to get the "Death Penalty" in football. SMU wasn't the only school cheating, they were just the only ones caught.

However, SMU was also located right in the middle of the biggest media market in the then Southwest Conference, Dallas. With competing newspapers and competing television stations attempting to break big stories, if anything came out, it would be reported.

In smaller campus towns, this doesn't happen mainly because the University is the town, with Ohio State being the exception, and they draw attention because of how huge of a national draw they are and the success they've had in the last 10 years under Jim Tressel.

But speaking of Tressel, really think about this: what options did he really have?

See, despite the NCAA claiming "amaturism," the pressures to win are sometimes bigger than those of professional teams. Look at Tressel's predecessor, John Cooper. Cooper coached at Ohio State from 1988-2000. He ran what looked like a clean program, despite minor academic and discipline problems within the players.

But it wasn't those problems that got Cooper fired, it was his record in bowl games (3-8) as well as his record against arch-rival Michigan (2-10-1).

Don't think for a second that Jim Tressel didn't know that going into the job. He was expected to produce and he did.

To think that he was the only one at Ohio State that lied is a sham, much like it's a sham to think that Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll were the only ones at USC that lied or to only pin the blame on the students at Miami. In each case, the entire university was complicit with what happened. There's no way you can convince me that they didn't know.

And they didn't care. Ohio State wants to beat Michigan and win the Big 10 and play for national championships every year. Tressel delivered that, hence, they turned away until the NCAA came calling. USC wants National Championships and Carroll brought them one BCS national championship and two AP National Championships, plus they played in another BCS Title game, while USC dominated the Pac-10 (now Pac-12.) Of course, USC would look the other way.

And the NCAA tends to look the other way until it's shoved in their face. It was the media that was responsible for breaking these stories. The NCAA doesn't show up until they know something is wrong, and in reality, it's only to save face for their claim of "amaturism."

The NCAA starts this greedy culture by being greedy. They're listed as a non-profit, which is funny because I've never seen a non-profit organization sign TV deals with Disney, NBC Universal, Time Warner or CBS. If the NCAA is truly a non-profit organization, than shouldn't those TV deals be considered tax write-offs?

They're not though. Everybody makes money, then we look down when someone is caught "cheating." As long as the wins are coming in and the alumni are happy, none of it matters.

I find it hard to really enjoy college sports the way I did as a kid because of that. Its really hard to get yourself hyped up into a game when there's a chance that a few years down the line we're going to be expected to pretend that it never happened.

And I can't blame the schools for that. They're treating it like a business and trying to win football games. So they'll look the other way until they're forced not to.

And the NCAA wants ratings for their games, so of course, they want great teams to get in. They look the other way until they are forced not to.

Thinking the NCAA doesn't know that there's something wrong, now that's being naive.

Maybe instead of punishing USC, Miami or Ohio State, the NCAA should punish themselves because they do the same thing that those schools did. In fact, they even hired someone from Miami to dole out discipline, former Miami athletic director Paul Dee, who, and I'm paraphrasing this, stupidly (I say stupidly because there's no way he didn't know what was really going on at Miami) said:

High profile players should have high profile compliance.

He should've said this about the NCAA on its own.

When looking at all of the evidence, its clear to me the right form of punishment.

The Death Penalty.

Not for USC, not for Ohio State and not even for Miami, no matter how egregious the violations in Coral Gables.

But for the whole NCAA.