Daily Dose of Depression (DDD)

November 25, 2010
Auburn Is Seeing Crimson Over Questions and Rivalry
By MIKE TIERNEY

The most anticipated day of every year in the state of Alabama has arrived with Auburn football devotees caught in a riptide of emotions. . . .

N.C.A.A. violations have landed the Tigers on probation six times, totaling 12 years, since 1956, though none recently. (Alabama received penalties last year for the fourth time since the mid-1990s.) . . .  [my emphasis]    GO HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE

Does the NCAA need a “Six strikes and you're out rule”?  Why would any self-respecting institution of higher education want to put up with a record like this? Why would any self-respecting institution of higher education want to establish, cater to, and cower before an army of team boosters that ignore a record of malfeasance equal to Auburn’s, Alabama's,  or _______________, or ____________, or ________________ (you fill in the blanks, many Big Buck Programs to choose from)?

Yeah, the Auburn - Alabama game will be a big game.  Anyone with their nose to the wind will be able to smell it.

A Daily Dose of Depression (DDD)

November 19, 2010
SEC Suspends Vols’ Coach for First 8 League Games
By PETE THAMEL

In what could be a harbinger for stiffer penalties for rules breakers in college sports, the Southeastern Conference announced Friday that the Tennessee men’s basketball coach, Bruce Pearl, would be suspended for the first eight league games. . . .
In September, Tennessee cut Pearl’s pay by $1.5 million over five years and prohibited him from participating in off-campus recruiting for a year after he acknowledged that he misled N.C.A.A. investigators about photographs taken of him with a recruit in 2008. Tennessee also found that Pearl and his assistants had broken N.C.A.A. rules by making too many phone calls to recruits. . . .
“I’m in favor of this type of thing,” Hamilton [Mike Hamilton, Tennessee’s athletic director] said. “I think it’s necessary if we’re going to take back control of things in college athletics.”

GO HERE

I guess this means AD Hamilton is admitting things among the Programs of Plenty of Deficits are out of control.  As the NYT's pointed out  yesterday, "Only 14 of the nation’s 120 major athletic departments reported making a profit in the 2008-09 school year, according to the N.C.A.A."  Financial and ethical deficits in college sports--who'd a thunk it?

A Daily Dose of Depression (DDD)

And the beat goes on. You lose when you lose and you lose when you win. So now we can add a new phrase to our policy/process hip conversations. “Win-win” situations can be tempered with “lose-lose” realities. At least when it comes to the Big Buck College Athletic programs.

NYT November 11, 2010
How Broken Must College Football Be to Fix It? By GEORGE VECSEY

It is time for my annual foray into the lower depths of higher education — that is to say, the business of Bowl Championship Series football as perpetrated on or near centers of learning. . . .

My theory is, when a university suddenly becomes proficient at football or basketball, it is usually a sign its admissions director is being held hostage in some rural hideaway.

But this is worse. The B.C.S. system turns out to be a private enterprise for the usual suspects in the insider conferences. The top colleges make money, but the big winners are the major bowls — and the administrators thereof.

According to the Sports Illustrated article, Paul Hoolahan, the top executive of the Sugar Bowl, made $607,500 in 2007 and the Sugar Bowl was given $3 million by the hard-strapped Louisiana government.

The big losers are the lucky tigers who get invited to the Cement Shoes Bowl and then lose money that could have gone to athletes or, even better, budding physicists or linguists or cellists and other potential assets to society.[my emphasis]

The same article points out that Virginia Tech and the Atlantic Coast Conference had to purchase 17,500 tickets at $125 each for the 2009 Orange Bowl, but sold only 3,342, for a loss of $1.77 million — surely worth it for a marginal inclusion into Our Thing, as the B.C.S. could be called.

The latest Heisman mess and the B.C.S. shakedown have led me to reconsider my long-held position — “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — about bowl games and the national championship. . . .

As it is now, only the anointed championship bowl game is worth a glance. And the old concern about keeping the lads from their classrooms and laboratories seems laughable at this stage.

Full article here