Cheating in College Football - How much more redundant can you get?
Written by Sean Salisbury, Wednesday August 17 2011
I’m more shocked at the reaction of fans, media and everybody else involved than I am by the cheating itself.
There always was cheating, there is cheating and there always will be cheating in college football. And much of the cheating, I’m quite sure they don’t even know they are cheating, but let’s not kid ourselves. Every Division I program in the country has cheated knowingly or unknowingly and that’s never going to change. There isn’t enough money, bodies and elbow grease to police every alumnus, coach and player at every program 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
If you can’t do that, rules will be broken. So all you holier-than-thou, self-righteous, how-can-you-do-this college football followers – yank your head out and grow a set and realize your university does it too! Some cheating is bigger than others and some get caught at it, but most get away with it.
And no matter how you were raised in your family with the highest morals, values, and standards, when an alumnus hands you two $100 bills after he takes you out to lunch, I know very few who gave it back. Trust me. I was a Division I student-athlete.
The NCAA (one of the three worst government bodies on the planet, next to our own government and the IOC) has set itself up for failure. It has rules to set rules to enforce rules to stop rules. Which means for every rule it seems to set, there’s another one broken.
Hey, in a perfect world, would we love every program to follow the letter of the law, like not giving a kid a $5 bill if he doesn’t have lunch? Yet as a coach, why is it illegal if one of your athletes needs lunch money and you give it to them? The NCAA calls this having an advantage? Give me a damn break – it’s called having a heart! And why should anybody care if a coach at Florida sends a sweatshirt and a hat to a sophomore at some Florida high school? To me, that’s just good sales and marketing.
It’s obvious that it’s not the universities that need to change, it’s the NCAA. Now, is the answer paying the athletes a stipend or offering more scholarship money? Or maybe the answer is to quit stressing over the molehills and start focusing on the mountains. Buying a recruit a car is a mountain – enforce it! Buying a recruit a pizza after a high school game and texting his dad that you love his talent 15 times if you want is a molehill – leave it alone!
I think we all know what’s immoral and what epitomizes cheating, but I believe the NCAA loves to be heard, and the way to be heard is to keep making rules. Rules that have no advantage, no recruiting edge and harm absolutely no one. If we focus more on the life- and career-changing allegations, we’ll have far less of the illegal pizza and the he-texted-him-one-too-many-times violations.
We need more former players and coaches hired by the NCAA, because those that have lived it actually understand what goes on and how to provide a solution. Unfortunately, when we have a bunch of stuffy suits who were never recruited making the rules, we are always going to have cheating.
So get used to it, people. Allegations and recruiting violations are coming to a university near you. I think it’s high time we gave the NCAA rules committee the death penalty.
Sean Salisbury, former NFL quarterback and NFL analyst for ESPN, covers sports for www.playerpress.com. Follow him on Twitter @SeanUnfiltered.
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