I had this ready to go last night, but I waited until it was confirmed.

An icon passed today.

Paterno is up there with the likes of Bear Bryant and John McKay among others. Paterno was a great football coach who sadly stayed longer than he should have.

There will be time to look at his legacy, both good and bad. I will leave that to others...

I will leave it at that.

Our thoughts go out to the Penn St family.

RIP Joe...

The NCAA decided to let the Cam Newton/Aurburn issue go.

Not really surprising......The NCAA's claim is that they don't have any HARD evidence.

 After conducting more than 80 interviews, the NCAA has concluded its investigation into Auburn University. The NCAA enforcement staff is committed to a fair and thorough investigative process. As such, any allegations of major rules violations must meet a burden of proof, which is a higher standard than rampant public speculation online and in the media. The allegations must be based on credible and persuasive information and includes a good-faith belief that the Committee on Infractions could make a finding. As with any case, should the enforcement staff become aware of additional credible information, it will review the information to determine whether further investigation is warranted.

Credible and persuasive evidence?

Really?

So, no hard evidence and they let Auburn off.

A cobbled together story that had more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese and they Hammer USC.

I'm not surprised, not  shocked or upset. I totally expected it.

Feel free to fire away....

I was sent this link today. I saw it on twitter but really didn't pay it too much attention until the person who sent it to me told me I had to read it...

That the NCAA has lasted this long is mind boggling.

The NCAA today is in many ways a classic cartel. Efforts to reform it—most notably by the three Knight Commissions over the course of 20 years—have, while making changes around the edges, been largely fruitless. The time has come for a major overhaul. And whether the powers that be like it or not, big changes are coming. Threats loom on multiple fronts: in Congress, the courts, breakaway athletic conferences, student rebellion, and public disgust. Swaddled in gauzy clichés, the NCAA presides over a vast, teetering glory.

There is a lot here to digest...this article is long.

But how the NCAA actually got its power and then abused its power is the foundation what they are today...

Only one year into his job, Byers had secured enough power and money to regulate all of college sports. Over the next decade, the NCAA’s power grew along with television revenues. Through the efforts of Byers’s deputy and chief lobbyist, Chuck Neinas, the NCAA won an important concession in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, in which Congress made its granting of a precious antitrust exemption to the National Football League contingent upon the blackout of professional football on Saturdays. Deftly, without even mentioning the NCAA, a rider on the bill carved each weekend into protected broadcast markets: Saturday for college, Sunday for the NFL. The NFL got its antitrust exemption. Byers, having negotiated the NCAA’s television package up to $3.1 million per football season—which was higher than the NFL’s figure in those early years—had made the NCAA into a spectacularly profitable cartel.

The NCAA was all about money then, just like they are now.

As the article goes onto show the NCAA became so enthralled with power that they went to far in trying to lock up all the TV money, while parsing out just a small fraction earned to its member institutions. They got the taste for money with the NCAA basketball tournament that started just a few years before.

There is so much here that I don't know where to begin.

The writer did an excellent job at reviewing the history of the NCAA. He shows just how behind the times they are and that for all their posturing, how they really haven't and still don't have the student-athlete's best interests in mind.

Please, go read this great piece!

This should be interesting.

Pat Haden will attempt to educate the NCAA on how to change its enforcement mode.

Haden is going to have either reaffirm or eat his words on the the NCAA being made up "fair minded" people///

In April 2012, the Board will hear recommendations on amendments to the Division I Manual aimed at reducing the volume of unenforceable and inconsequential rules that are not national in scope. It will also review recommended legislative processes to ensure that any new rules align with those values.

Lastly, the Board will examine the enforcement process and penalties in April 2012, evaluating a new multi-level violation reporting and penalty structure that focuses on serious infractions.

[...]

 

The full working group make up is listed below:

	Name	Position	Conference
Collegiate Model Enforcement	Pat Haden	AD	PAC-12

Going to be interesting to see if the NCAA really takes this serious and changes the way they currently do business or if its just another committee meeting that will change nothing.

Paul Dee's hypocrisy has been well documented.

The Sham that is the NCAA has also been discussed until we are blue in the face.

It's clear the NCAA answers to no one, regardless of what some NCAA mouth pieces want you to believe. Mark Emmert pretty much admits that in his interview with the LAT that wrote about earlier today.

But, I read this today...

How bad would the NCAA's committee look in punishing USC's Kiffin when right now, it looks like the NCAA's committee may have had some questionable leadership under Dee when USC's case was finalized.

The NCAA had a PR mess on its hands. It still does. But the raging boil a week ago has today been temporarily reduced to a simmer because Kiffin walked.

He walked because the NCAA had two choices—one was to hammer Kiffin and ostensibly make USC a martyr to even its most ardent haters, the other let Kiffin walk, forget it ever happened and offer no explanation if anyone asks.

Perhaps Pete Carroll was right — maybe the NCAA does have "an agenda."

Last part first...

Yes, the NCAA does have an agenda. That's old news...

Continue reading this post »

I know this is posted as a FanShot with some great comments but I wanted to chime in...

I could go in a lot directions with his interview with the LAT, but I want to just focus on one area that stood out.

The chairman [Dee] was one of nine voices on the committee. He has no more power than anyone else. We look at individual cases on their merits. What happened at Miami has no bearing on USC. I understand it doesn't feel right. We decide cases based on the facts on the ground, and we will continue to do that.

Emmert can't be serious...

Dee should have never been on the committee.

Emmert's disconnect is a simple one...because Dee was at the helm at Miami when the largest Pell Grant scandal went down and because of Dee's role in the withholding of some drug tests that allowed some players to play in a bowl game, he is far from qualified from sitting in judgment of other programs when on the committee.

Because Dee was the AD at another school, A school that had numerous infractions under his watch, it is logical to say that there was a huge conflict of interest.

USC was the in thing, the flavor of the month as it was. USC was laying waste to a number of schools that were part of the good ole' boy network.

The rumors have circulated that Dee took over the investigation and that a number of members on the committee felt "pressured" to go along.

My five year old could figure out that Dee and his cronies had an agenda.

There are those who will say that it is a conspiracy, fine. But based on the standards that Paul Dee nailed USC for and then to have worse infractions happen on his watch while saying to other programs that he sat in judgment over that they needed to use the Miami model of compliance exposes Dee not only as corrupt but woefully ineligible to stand in judgment of other programs.

If Mark Emmert can't see that, then it will only get worse.

Good!

The only way the NCAA is called out is for its members to break away from this sham organization.

The main problem with the NCAA is that it is staffed with only members of academia...they all eat from the same trough. Everybody looks out one another...and if you're an outsider then you're screwed. There is no impartiality...agenda's abound.

If Mark Emmert is too ignorant to see that then things will never get better.

They will get worse!

I went back and forth with Ronnie Ramos on Twitter last week. He tried to pass the BS line that the member institutions make the rules, that the NCAA answers to the member institutions....right.

Obviously, Ramos and his superiors are floating us a line of BS.

He can't really believe that, can he?

How stupid do these people think we really are??

UPDATE: Eamonn Brennan agrees...

Max Nikias made the call and it is final...

"I have determined that the university's mission is best served by moving forward at this time, without pursuing further redress," says USC President C. L. Max Nikias.

"This decision followed an extensive review of all of our options and after consultation with many sources.  We ask that the Trojan Family offer its utmost support to the student-athletes and coaches of the Trojan football team, confident that USC's commitment to the highest level of excellence in academics and athletics will not waver in the coming years."

Yeah...not really surprising, (I laid the argument out here and I stand by it still today).

I really didn't care if USC sued. Their chances of relief were slim. What really steamed me was the lack of a PR campaign...something, anything.

Even today...

Nikias as a university president is THE person to go Emmert and say whats up?

Nikias can also be THE person to lead the charge to force change but he is going to have to get his hands dirty and as I have said before that is not something he is comfortable with.

Getting his hands dirty means calling people out.

Yes, I know that back room diplomacy leaves a better impression so that things don't become adversarial...but the NCAA won't change a thing, no matter how diplomatic Nikias is.

In light of the Miami Scandal that Paul Dee was very much a part of as well as his hypocrisy that was exposed, Mark Emmert won't publish a statement saying the NCAA was wrong or that they are sorry...and they sure as heck won't back off the sanctions.

Today's news is merely a rubber stamp of what he already knew...

While the NCAA was holding a retreat to discuss the future of college sports, Larry Scott and Jim Delaney got together to discuss one subject that many college football fans have been clamoring about...

Athletic directors of the newly expanded Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences found consensus on a "plus-one" football national-championship proposal at meetings early this week that could signal movement toward a revamped Bowl Championship Series.

[...]

The proposed format the ADs favored in a straw vote calls for adding a BCS bowl, probably the Cotton, and seeding the top four teams, which would play semifinals in two BCS bowls on a rotating basis. Presumably, the current BCS formula still would be used to rank teams. Winners would advance to a title game in what has become known as a "plus-one" format.

In this format, the Rose Bowl wouldn't host semifinal games in exchange for the right to preserve an annual matchup of the Big Ten and Pac-12, but would host the title game every five years.

Intriguing...

I have been on the fence with regards to a playoff in CFB...but I like that there are some forward thinkers who have some juice are looking at alternatives to the current format.

So, while I am yet sold on a play-off, anything that could blow up the BCS I will look at.

The BCS is as corrupt as the NCAA. The BCS claim's independence one one hand and on the other say they follow the eligibility guidelines of the NCAA.

Unless of course the NCAA looks the other way to let the Tat-five play.

The NCAA, and the BCS, are going the way of the dinosaur. Things are moving way too fast for them to keep up...they are already woefully too far behind.

I had my doubts about Larry Scott, but he continues to move the needle...