NCAA Decisions Give Newton and Pryor Uncommon Leniency

Organization’s Consistency Called Into Question

Perhaps more than at any time in recent memory, the NCAA has nearly everyone confused regarding their stance on rules enforcement.  With two lenient rulings in the past two months which appear to contradict historical NCAA positions, college sports’ most powerful organization has its members, the public and media scratching their collective heads.

On the one hand, there’s the hard-nosed NCAA which severely punished the University of Southern California in late summer after a three-year investigation uncovered evidence that two of USC’s former student-athletes, football’s Reggie Bush and basketball’s O.J. Mayo, had accepted money and gifts from agents while playing for the University.  Bush’s parents were also mentioned for having received substantial benefits from someone interested in signing their son Reggie following the end of his college career.  Roundly applauded for its fist-full of sanctions which showered down on Trojans athletics, it was widely assumed that NCAA officials were sending a clear message to potential offenders – stay clean or your school will pay a steep price. 

The message obviously wasn’t taken very seriously by Auburn’s Cam Newton or Ohio State’s Terrelle Pryor, both star quarterbacks for their respective 2010 teams.  According to the NCAA, Newton’s father attempted to put Cam’s services up for sale when he asked a friend to demand upwards of $180,000.00 for the JUCO transfer to play this season for Mississippi State University.  No matter how you look at it, that’s a no-no.  Has been for a good, long time.  In short, parents and relatives of an NCAA-member student-athlete are considered the same as the student-athlete when it comes to accepting what the NCAA considers inappropriate benefits from others.  If or when that occurs, the student-athlete is deemed ineligible, period.  Regardless, even with the acknowledgement of evidence in hand, the NCAA has allowed the now-Heisman Trophy winner and 2010 AP Player of the Year to continue playing out the season despite the organization possessing facts which have typically doomed past athletes.  

In the Pryor matter, Terrelle and four other star Buckeyes were found to have sold prizes and awards received for winning OSU games to people in exchange for cash.  With proof secured, the NCAA has hit the boys in the face with a two-by-four:  a five-game suspension for each at the start of the 2011 football season.  But, and here’s the apparent rub for many, the NCAA has simultaneously given them temporary amnesty by giving them the thumbs up to play Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl in January.                  

In what some would say is an uneven distribution of punishment, prior to the 2010 football season opener for the University of North Carolina, eleven players were named by the NCAA for having potentially accepted inappropriate gifts and cash.  Two players were immediately ruled permanently ineligible for their transgressions while the others sat and waited without playing a minute while the NCAA determined their fates over time.  As the season progressed, the NCAA methodically doled out their decisions.  Some were harsh.  Others were tantamount to full pardons.  Regardless, swift judgments were handed out to some while others were insufferably bogged down. 

The nuances of these situations could fill a good-sized daily newspaper, cover to cover, so to be fair to the NCAA, minutia can take an inordinate period of time to filter through.  Frankly, time is not the primary issue.  Consistency is, however. 

A final analysis by those of us sneaking a peak really yields nothing more than conjecture and to offer opinions as facts in such matters is about as valuable as guessing what the stock market will do 12 months from now.  That said, there is a lack of consistency in the NCAA’s decisions in these matters compared to their actions in the past, at least from this writer’s perspective.  It may not be to the point of mind boggling as some talking heads have suggested, but they (the decisions) do raise questions and concerns.  Someone once said, “If you don’t stand for something, you stand for nothing.”  So, we ask, just where does the NCAA stand?  We think it’s a good question.