BleedGopher
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 11, 2008
- Messages
- 60,716
- Reaction score
- 15,966
- Points
- 113
per the Mankato Free Press:
It is, sadly, an observation that can be made every March: One of American sports’ most popular events gets underway in the shadow of rampant corruption.
This time around the schedule put it front and center. The very first game of the round of 64 in the Division I men’s basketball tournament, tipping off late this morning in Des Moines, is Minnesota versus Louisville. Richard Pitino coaching against the school that his Hall of Fame father is suing for firing him after his latest scandal.
It seems to us self-evident that a university has every right to dismiss a coach whose program gets dinged by the NCAA for using prostitutes as a recruiting tool and is implicated in the shoe-companies-paying-players investigation. That Rick Pitino doesn’t see it that way suggests that, in his mind, all this is standard operating procedure.
The shoe company probe is still playing out legally. On Tuesday, a bit more than a year after the initial round of indictments were revealed, a former Auburn assistant coach pleaded guilty in federal court. Earlier this month, Louisiana State’s head coach was suspended after the release of a taped phone call with an implicated shoe company rep in which he is heard dissecting why a “strong-ass” financial offer to a recruit was declined: “I know now, he didn’t get enough of the piece of the pie in the deal.”
“A piece of the pie” is something the players, by the NCAA’s rules, can’t have. There is enough money sloshing around college basketball for the elder Pitino to have $44 million left on his contract, but nothing (legitimate) for the athletes who attract that money.
Not all of the NCAA’s basketball problems are its fault. The one-and-done rule, which encourages the best players to attend college for one semester before leaving for the legitimate cash of professional basketball, is the NBA’s creation, and it helps make a mockery of the “access to higher education” argument for the NCAA’s version of amateurism.
But at the core of the unending stream of scandal is the NCAA’s insistence that the schools and the coaches get all of the money and the players none. Such an uneven division is not only unfair, it is unworkable. As long as that remains the association’s position, the scandals will continue.
http://www.mankatofreepress.com/opi...cle_519b80b9-56ab-5805-9b8d-a7a3b000827b.html
Go Gophers!!
It is, sadly, an observation that can be made every March: One of American sports’ most popular events gets underway in the shadow of rampant corruption.
This time around the schedule put it front and center. The very first game of the round of 64 in the Division I men’s basketball tournament, tipping off late this morning in Des Moines, is Minnesota versus Louisville. Richard Pitino coaching against the school that his Hall of Fame father is suing for firing him after his latest scandal.
It seems to us self-evident that a university has every right to dismiss a coach whose program gets dinged by the NCAA for using prostitutes as a recruiting tool and is implicated in the shoe-companies-paying-players investigation. That Rick Pitino doesn’t see it that way suggests that, in his mind, all this is standard operating procedure.
The shoe company probe is still playing out legally. On Tuesday, a bit more than a year after the initial round of indictments were revealed, a former Auburn assistant coach pleaded guilty in federal court. Earlier this month, Louisiana State’s head coach was suspended after the release of a taped phone call with an implicated shoe company rep in which he is heard dissecting why a “strong-ass” financial offer to a recruit was declined: “I know now, he didn’t get enough of the piece of the pie in the deal.”
“A piece of the pie” is something the players, by the NCAA’s rules, can’t have. There is enough money sloshing around college basketball for the elder Pitino to have $44 million left on his contract, but nothing (legitimate) for the athletes who attract that money.
Not all of the NCAA’s basketball problems are its fault. The one-and-done rule, which encourages the best players to attend college for one semester before leaving for the legitimate cash of professional basketball, is the NBA’s creation, and it helps make a mockery of the “access to higher education” argument for the NCAA’s version of amateurism.
But at the core of the unending stream of scandal is the NCAA’s insistence that the schools and the coaches get all of the money and the players none. Such an uneven division is not only unfair, it is unworkable. As long as that remains the association’s position, the scandals will continue.
http://www.mankatofreepress.com/opi...cle_519b80b9-56ab-5805-9b8d-a7a3b000827b.html
Go Gophers!!