The recent brooha around Coach Jim Tressel and Ohio State University football is a joke.
Not because what happened broke the rules but because what happened is a huge pink
elephant sitting dead in the middle of NCAA headquarters.

It is the tip of a huge iceberg that is the size of college athletics. Oh, Im sorry, it IS
college athletics. I am not moralizing here. I am not judging the athletes, coaches and
administrators involved. Also, I am not pointing a finger at those boosters and alums in
the stands on Saturday afternoon.

It is an amazing conundrum created by people being more interested in winning than
the value of the process of athletic competition. I can say this with authority since I
have œbeen there, done that for most of my life. (Hate that statement, but you get the
picture.)

The NCAAs performance in policing college athletics is at about the same level
as the Feds attempt at keeping drugs out of this country. The have something in
common: when they do catch someone they make a big deal of it and the media is
right there œbeating the dead horse. These are not people who should be put in prison.
They are people who forgot what the game is all about and there are consequences for
everyone involved.

My quarrel with the media is simple. The ones who have been around know exactly what
is going on, especially the former athletes. They arent going to say anything because
our society is too good at shooting the messenger plus they like their well-paid jobs. Too
many front-runners in the media. Yawl know what Im saying.

I have no interest in pointing a finger at anyone. I love college athletics. It has been a
huge part of my life. Everyone involved in the game is responsible for the mess. A mess
that cannot be cleaned up by adding another rule or catching an occasional œperp.

When I started my college coaching career I could put the NCAA rule book in my back
pocket. Now you need a little boy with a red wagon to haul it around.

My other big quarrel with the rule book is that rarely, if ever, is a rule made to benefit the
athlete. Its all about what you cant do, not what you can do. With all the rules and
add-on rules you cant even extend common courtesy to the athlete. Consequently it gets
extended in a œbackdoor way. Is that the best we can do?

A month or so ago Sports Illustrated featured a story on Beryl Shipley, a much maligned
basketball coach at then, Southwest Louisiana University. Beryl was my friend and he
was a coach who gave black athletes a chance to play in the 60s and 70s. Not a popular
thing and in many peoples eyes, his greatest sin.

I saw the NCAA charge sheet. A Big Ten school would have received a slap on the wrist
after the coachs apology. They took the program away from the Rajun Cajuns for a
year. And, not because of the infractions, but because of the infractions a
smart Baton Rouge attorney got an injunction against the NCAA that allowed SLU to
compete in the NCAA tournament.

The message here is œdont fight the NCAA. Coach Jerry Tarkanian, UNLV Icon,
kicked the NCAAs butt in court but ultimately it cost him his job. So much for hearsay
evidence being inadmissible.

How do I know these things? I was hired to replace Beryl Shipley as Head Basketball
Coach at Southwest Louisiana. Really! I was in the school Presidents office when he
called the NCAA to see if it was okay to hire a new coach. They said yes. A month later
they took the program away. I probably should have sued. Not my style. And, should be
Hall of Famer, Coach Tarkanian, was my roommate in college.

I dont pretend to have the answers. I just know that things will continue to demean
one of the greatest experiences you could have ina lifetime”competing at the collegiate
level. There are lot of people doing the right thing but there are too many who are not.