If not then Mark May must have been living under a rock for the past six months...
If you haven't yet seen this, please watch it and then tell me if you heard the same thing I heard.
The Pac-10 is an NCAA sacred cow?
He is kidding right?
He does realize that USC was hammered with what some would call a modern day Death Penalty.
The NCAA hardly acknowledges that the Pac-10 exists. they are geographically nestled in Big-10 country and pretty close to the SEC. May does realize that Cam Newton plays in the SEC doesn't he?
Does May also realize that UGA receiver A.J. Green faced essentially the same punishment for doing something similar?
I mean it was SEC commissioner Mike Slive and new NCAA commissioner Mark Emmert who conspired to ignore the rules to let Cam slide because "he didn't know" that his dad was shopping him around. Is that the sort of "punishment" that Mark May meant?
Tennessee's Bruce Pearle would also disagree...
Pearle lied and changed his story more times than a baby goes through diapers and he got to keep his job. Dez Bryant is scratching his chin at that one...and he didn't even break the rules, he just lied.
I have always respected May's analysis. I didn't always agree with his take and I think at times he lost his objectivity when 'SC was on their run...but he knows the college game better than most. He then swung a complete 180 and hammered 'SC when the ruling came down, so this guy is all over the map now.
I mean come on...No rational person can look at recent rulings against USC, Arizona basketball, and ASU baseball and say the Pac-10 is a sacred cow. Not while Cam Newton is still playing within clear violation of (at a minimum) the SEC rules, where there are basically no serious penalties for the ills that we are seeing at UNC other than a few player suspensions and then come to the conclusion that the Pac-10 is anything but the target of much harsher penalties than the rest of the country.
Even respected, credible regional and national media members are now shaking their heads.
Guys Like:
These are not slouches.
What about that whole "high profile athletes need high profile monitoring" thing?
I realize that I am a USC apologist. I make no bones about it and make no apologies for it, and this has little to do with USC in the grand scheme of things other than the lack of consistency in the rulings with the NCAA.
There is little in common between the USC's case and this case against tOSU other than an "high profile" athlete getting extra benefits. How much and the reasons the infraction was committed are irrelevant
There is no question that 'SC deserved some punishment for some of the things they were charged with. We all agree that they should have taken a more proactive approach in dealing with things as they became known and their lack of a PR campaign overall but with 'SC getting ready to have to their appeal heard with an already stacked deck, these recent rulings show just how corrupt the NCAA is.
Mark May is now the poster child for the shill that ESPN is. This is nothing new. If nothing else, he just proved Jason Whitlock right and there is no further proof needed that ESPN is nothing more than a marketing firm for its business partners.
ESPN's brand was already damaged, this seals the coffin shut.
What a shame...