A story in today's Bee talks about how complex the NCAA compliance rules are -- so much so that they are listed in a 494-page manual. While a lot of college sports fans like to make the NCAA out to be the bad guy, the reason the agency has so many rules is that so many colleges cheat. For every rule that the NCAA has created to protect the integrity of college athletics, there are several coaches trying to get around it. That means the NCAA must tighten the rule, making it even more cumbersome.
It's easy to lay this off on the NCAA instead of putting the blame on the coaches and colleges that cheat. They are the problem, not the NCAA. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing cheaters whine about how tough the NCAA is. My criticism of the NCAA is that it's too lenient of repeat cheaters. The answer is simple. Ban the cheaters. That will never happen, of course, because there's too much money in college athletics.
Fresno State is fortunate that it still has a basketball program after all of the violations under coaches JerryTarkanian and Ray Lopes. Bulldog basketball fans can thank the NCAA for being such a softy in dealing with Fresno State, whose motto is "I'll never do it again. Honest."
I think the problem is more fundamental than "cheaters." NCAA football and basketball are multi-million dollar industries, driven mostly by the demands of television.
Athletes attend college as a stepping stone to a hoped-for professional athletic career. While in college they are given a relative pittance for tuition, room and board and laundry money, while they risk serious injury for the benefit of the institutions that make millions off their efforts.
Coaches are hired to win. They are told to stay within the rules, but no matter how "clean" they are, they will be fired if they don't win. If they don't win, fans stay away and revenues dry up.
It's a structural problem that is ripe for abuse, and no amount of rule-making or tough enforcement is going to make the cheating go away.