Hypocrisy rules in the NCAA world

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Hypocrisy rules in the NCAA world

Sports

Friday, 15 January 2010 12:40

Rick Pedone
Sports Editor
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Do you know anyone who understands why college coaches sign contracts?
Really, what’s the point?
“Leapin’” Lane Kiffin is the latest example of a college coach who places the same value to a contract as he would to a piece of coal.
Might as well use the coal to burn up the contract; it’s worthless anyway.
Kiffin left the University of Tennessee 14 months after signing a multi-year deal.
Somehow, over the past decade or so, it has become acceptable for coaches to conveniently ignore their contracts when they want to move to a better job. Even if they stay in place, they expect an extension every time they have a winning record.
OK, if the athletic directors and university presidents want to put up with this nonsense, fine.
But, tell me why the players these coaches recruit must remain loyal to the university that the coach is abandoning?
Where’s the logic?
You know who could stop this in about 20 minutes? The NCAA.
All it would have to do is implement this policy: “Any coach who unilaterally terminates a contract will be forbidden to coach at another NCAA member institution until the term of that contract expires.”
Leave a five-year contract in year two, and you sit out the next three years unless you reach an agreement with the university you are leaving.
If the kids have to sit out a year after leaving one NCAA program to transfer to another, then that seems fair for the coaches, as well.
The NCAA should also levy sanctions against any member school that recruits a coach who is under contract.
It’s hard to top the federal government as an illogical bureaucracy, but darned if the NCAA isn’t right there in the discussion.
Aside from writing indecipherable manuals on recruiting policies, and then investigating when those rules invariably are violated, what is it that the NCAA does these days? Oh, yeah: Count the money from the Final Four.
Even though it is the overlord of college football, the NCAA somehow lost control of the postseason to the nonsensical Bowl Championship Series that blocks a major college football playoff system.
Four years after he joined the New Orleans Saints, former Southern Cal running back Reggie Bush remains a subject of an NCAA investigation about alleged financial “favors” granted to him by USC supporters.
Four years? Who’s leading the investigation, Buford T. Justice?
Sure, the NCAA serves its purpose as the governing body and arbiter for major college athletics, but it sure could use a shot of common sense.
For example, when is it going to clamp down on the circus that now is high school football recruiting?
Why does it permit these players, and their parents, to be badgered almost relentlessly until National Signing Day?
Give the recruiters one, count ‘em, one unsolicited recruiting pitch. That’s it. Afterward, university representatives can mail each recruit follow up information. No phone calls, no texts. The players can contact the university if they want further information.
The high school drama queens who love the attention bestowed on them by the recruiters, and by the countless media outlets that “score” football recruiting like it’s a game, can still hog the limelight, if they like.
Really, though, what is it with grown men these days that they find it so absolutely fascinating when a 17-year-old kid says he might sign a football scholarship to a university next year?
Next year?
Have you been around many 17-year-olds? Most of them change their minds four times in 20 minutes about what movie to see.
On the other hand, following football recruiting is much easier than understanding the BCS bowl system, or wondering how in the world Lane Kiffin keeps getting plum jobs.