The Continued Corruption of the NCAA

Prior to the announcement of the NCAA's internal investigation on their handling of the Miami investigation, NCAA president Mark Emmert fired a number of the enforcement staff.

One of those people was Julie Roe Lach.

With the impending release of a report detailing the abuse of power in an investigation on the University of Miami, the NCAA has fired the Julie Roe Lach, vice president of enforcement, on Monday morning.

According to Yahoo! Sports, Roe Lach was fired because of her approval of an "improper financial relationship" between an NCAA investigator named Maria Elena Perez and Nevin Shapiro, a former Miami booster.

You remember Lach...she is the one who went toe to toe with Gene Chizik over the Cam Newton investigation.

Lach, as it turns out, is part of the culture of corruption that has infested the NCAA.

So much for her goal of being transparent in the NCAA's investigations.

The NCAA wanted to nail Miami so bad (how does Donna Shalala feel about her buddy Emmert trying to torch the program?) that Lach went all out in approving an improper payout to Nevin Shapiro's attorney to get even more dirt.

I am not the biggest fan of Dennis Dodd but he nails it here.

The NCAA is guilty of failure to monitor and lack of institutional control. Guilty of its own rules which it applies arbitrarily and -- at times -- unfairly.

Take a dip in the deep end of that pool of irony.

Bylaw is 11.1.2.1 states that in such case a coach must "promote an atmosphere for compliance within the program … and to monitor the activities regarding compliance of assistant coaches and other administrators."

For this this case – marking one of the most embarrassing days in NCAA history – president Mark Emmert is the coach. And he must step down. Even if you believe the scandal stopped at former enforcement director Julie Roe Lach – which it doesn't -- Emmert was her boss. And from Enron to Watergate to Camelot, bosses have fallen on swords.

If Mark Emmert didn't know that company funds were being misappropriated in the Miami investigation, he should have known. That's what good bosses/coaches do.

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The immediate question is what did Emmert know and when did he know it?

The question was not asked on Monday's conference call because I was cut off before it could.

Emmert must step down because if he didn't know, he should have. He must step down because Roe Lach was his hand-picked director of enforcement. She was only the sixth enforcement director in the six-decade history of the process – and the first woman. To believe that even any vice president could go down to a pay window and grab $20,000 to hire an outside attorney bends the concept of believability.

We know that Mark Emmert has to step down because if he didn't know, he wasn't doing his job. Not even close to it.

Just like Todd McNair was shown the door because he "should have known".

Let me be clear here, McNair is hardly a model citizen but no one should be railroaded like he was. It gives those doing the railroading free reign to do it again and again.

The bigger issue is of course just what does this all mean?

To USC it means nothing.