Pat Forde has an article out about the Miami football debacle. He basically chronicles Miami football’s penchant for breaking NCAA rules and speculates about the severity of the coming punishment. He mentions that they may get the “death” penalty, which would basically kill football at Miami.
It looks to me like Forde is trying to setup the old “rotten apple” argument. I expect we’ll see this form of argument a lot in the weeks and months ahead. By sticking to that argument, it keeps the focus on the schools not enforcing rules properly and obscures the reality of the situation.
What’s the reality you ask? It’s the money making machine that is NCAA football. Thanks to NCAA football, we have football games almost every day of the week during the season. We’ve got multi-million dollar TV deals with conferences, multi-million dollar bowl games, multi-million dollar coaches and multi-million dollar facilities. We’ve got an entire parasitic culture (called “reporters” and “editorialists”) making money on the side for their 4 or 5 months worth of effort during the season.
Let me be more succinct. We’ve got everyone and anyone even peripherally involved with NCAA football making good money. With one notable exception. Have you noticed it yet?
No mention of the players. And without them, there is no money to be made. They are the lynch pin of college football- none of the above is possible without the players. Given all the money sloshing around the “amateur” apparatus, is it really so hard to believe that players might look at the occasional payout as a way for them to cash in?
I love the game. That’s what happens from the opening kickoff until time expires and a winner is determined. But the apparatus around the game; the rules makers and their apparatchiks from coaching staffs to the media, are rotten to the core. Playing whack-a-mole with the offenders won’t fix anything. For one, give Miami the death penalty and next year it’ll be Florida or Florida State.
More importantly, it obscures the real problem. That the system is the problem. A system where the very driver of the revenue is taken advantage of for 4 years of their lives. As long as that situation persists, so too will the Miami’s of college football.