Does the Punishment Fit the Crime?

Imagine being a 17 year-old kid and your parents bring you into a room and say the following:
“Son, because your Older brother (who is now 26 years old) broke our rules 6 years ago, you will be punished for his transgressions. You will not be allowed to attend a single School dance for the next 2 years. You will get no allowance. And you will have to give back every little league trophy that you won between the ages of 11 and 15.”

Sound crazy? Well, substitute “Bowl Games” for “School Dances”, “scholarships” for “Allowance” and “wins and national Championships” for “little league trophies” and you’ll have EXACTLY what the NCAA recently told the USC Trojans.

Unfair, huh? I agree. Is this the right way to handle situations like this that arise in College Athletics? Absolutely not. But instead of just telling you why it’s wrong, I’ll also sprinkle in a few ways to fix it.

As my aforementioned metaphor illustrates, it is completely unjust to punish the 2010 and 2011 USC Trojans for illegal activities of the 2004 and 2005 USC Trojans. Sure it’s the same program, but literally EVERYBODY from that 2004/2005 team is gone, including most importantly, the head coach Pete Carroll and the main culprit, Reggie Bush. The NCAA is still stuck in it’s mid-20th Century mold, where these practices of just punishing the entire program/university might have made sense. But with the Cash Cow that the NCAA (particularly the World of College Football) has become, this model no longer works.

It has long been said that “the punishment should fit the crime” and the NCAA should take this line and put it to practice. There are 3 easy to implement solutions that will change the way situations like this are handled, and in turn it will reduce the amount of student-athletes that illegally accept extra benefits.

1. The Coach & Athletic Director get fined. The NCAA should implement a fine, not to the University, but to the coach and athletic director of any University found to be guilty of a major violation. These coaches often times do not necessarily think about the welfare of the student-athlete or the welfare of the institution that they represent enough… but if you hit their pockets directly, then I guarantee you would see much fewer “loss of institutional control” violations. In addition, make the fines compounding… i.e. have each successive violation hold a bigger fine for a coach… no matter what. So even if a coach switched schools and goes to another university, he still keeps his “black marks” for his entire career and they continually compound. And even if the coach has retired or moved to the NFL, he would still legally be responsible for paying the fine.

2. Fine the players. It may sound harsh to some… but usually the players are the direct people at fault in these situations. In the USC football example, Reggie Bush was the lone culprit of taking these extra benefits from an agent in 2004 and 2005. So, when athletes enter as freshmen, the NCAA should have them sign a form (similar to the coaches fine) that would require them to pay back every penny of any extra benefit that they may have taken. Furthermore, that form should have a clause that would state “any player that makes it to a professional league who received extra benefits while in school will be subject to a fine larger than that of a normal athlete”.

3. Pay the players. Granted, this one is going to be incredibly difficult to actually organize and implement… but I would venture to say that a large majority of student-athletes that take extra-benefits are those that just want some extra money to do things that other students are doing. As fans, we often view the life of a college football player to be glamorous. But being a former player and having good friends who also played at the collegiate level, the one thing that college athletes do not have is time (to get a job, for example). And it is particularly frustrating to a student-athlete that wants a few extra bucks a week to buy new clothes, take a girl out to a movie, or things of that nature. If players were paid a salary, even on a small scale of a few hundred bucks a week, I think we would see a significant decrease in the amount of kids that think taking extra benefits is the way to go.

I am fully aware that implementing these rules would be extremely difficult, but the NCAA needs a shock treatment in dealing with these types of situations. No American Citizen gets punished for a crime they didn’t commit. The same should apply to the young men of the 2010 and 2011 USC Trojan Football team. They are innocent and should be treated as such.