Note that the sextet will not miss the Sugar Bowl, because "the student-athletes did not receive adequate rules education during the time period the violations occurred" – even though the NCAA decided to dock a fifth game on top of the standard four-game suspension because the players "did not immediately disclose the violations when presented with the appropriate rules education."
Whatever shred of credibility the NCAA had left after the Cam Newton saga is gone now, in the wake of the suspension of several key Ohio State players for games occurring after the Sugar Bowl.
The alleged lack of "adequate rules education" (about which more anon) is an aggravating factor, not a mitigating one; if they didn't know, they should have known. Isn't that the precedent the NCAA set with A.J. Green and the other athletes who were sidelined earlier this season?
Regarding the absence of "adequate rules education," I'm sorry, but I call BS on that. In this environment, a student-athlete who says he didn't know not to sell his stuff is like a suspect in police custody who says he wasn't told his Miranda rights. Dude, do you own a television? Every American who's watched a cop show in the last 30 years can recite the Miranda warnings by heart, and every NCAA football player who's watched ESPN in the last six months knows you're not allowed to do this sort of thing.
This isn't baseball, where postseason games are treated as entirely different entities. Bowl games no longer are treated as exhibitions; bowl numbers count toward season statistics and bowl outcomes affect rankings and determine national championships. If I were an Ohio State fan preparing to watch the Buckeyes take on an SEC team in a bowl game, I might like to believe that bowl games aren't "real" games, but they are.
Athletes were declared ineligible and were given suspensions. Those suspensions ought to run from the point at which ineligibility was determined; if you're not eligible, and you must serve a suspension before becoming eligible again, you can't play a game prior to serving the suspension. The NCAA's excuse is totally bogus; ignorance of the law is no excuse, and, if it is, then why are they being suspended at all? The NCAA's cockamamie explanation reads like something out of Kafka or Lewis Carroll; all that is required to refute the Association's position is to state it aloud and stand back to watch it collapse under the weight of its own implausibility.
This is complete crap, and, if Ohio State wins the Sugar Bowl, there needs to be a great big asterisk next to the Buckeyes' glittering 1-9 record against the SEC in bowl games.
Go 'Dawgs! . . . and go Hogs!
over 1 year ago
T Kyle King
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Well said.
There’s nothing like an NCAA ruling to make one feel as though he’s fallen down a rabbit hole and emerged as a giant bug.
Well at THE Ohio State University
You get to pick when you serve your suspension. When your conference’s reputation is again on the line and Delany wants redemption, or next year when they start off their patsy schedule and it won’t hurt much.
Hey! I'll have you know that THE Ohio State University plays the country's toughest . . .
. . . non-conference schedule!
It’s a fact!
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on Dec 24, 2010 11:13 AM EST up reply actions
LOL
That’s a good one, Kyle.
Anybody remember any similar precedents for this and whether the NCAA punished the players effective immediately or whether it was postponed to the next year so that they could play their bowl game because of “lack of education regarding the rules?”
I love this new "I didn't know" defense...
Both practical and realistic.
I’ll have to remember it if I ever choose to do something illegal in my personal life or anything unethical on the job.
"I want anything wearing red and black to tear the head off anything that isn't." - Lewis Grizzard
by RedCrake on Dec 24, 2010 12:42 PM EST via mobile reply actions
I saw this yesterday and thought the same thing: what a load of crap!
If you're gonna do it, go ugly early.
Change of Heart
Well I never thought i would pull for a Petrino coached team, but now I guess I must eat my words. GO ARKANSAS!!!! It does seem a bit odd that at the start of each season Ohio State is touted as the team to beat, expected to be the national champ, but alas they fall on their face or something like that.
Well the NCAA must be tired of them losing so they have made a decision that may help them win, alas, I doubt it. I do agree that all 5 of them need to move on and not come back next year. If ANY of them had an ounce of character, they would establish their own penalty and sit out the BOWL, but then they would not get another thing to sell.
Getting long so I sign off for now.
Lots of Ohio State hate here,
but that is to be expected and mostly justified. However, the selling happened in 2008, so it was done before AJ Green’s incident and the last 6 months of ESPN coverage. My thoughts are that the players (and possibly OSU) waited to come clean until the end of the regular season. That way, no immediate suspension because the NCAA is soft and doesn’t want to hurt the BCS games, and then they have a whole off-season to plan around the suspensions.
Another thing though, this happens in every sport at every institution. From golf to football, players are given equipement, rings, charms, and so on, which frequently get sold when the player is still on the team. This issue (OSU and AJ) is so blown out of proportion and all the hatred should be directed towards the NCAA, not a team, player, or institution. I knew fellow athletes in minor sports that made more money when they sold their stuff.
And one last thing, why do people still pay attention to ESPN (read: touting OSU as the team to beat). I’m a die hard Buckeye, and for the last decade I’ve never placed them above 5th in my preseason poll. Mainstream media touts them because their fanbase is one of the largest, most rabid (and ignorant) in the nation.
Thanks for correcting my mistake on the timetable.
Nevertheless, the rule about selling championship rings was put in place in 2003, after several Georgia players sold their 2002 SEC championship rings. Not one of these players has ever played college football in an era in which such sales were legal. If they knew it and did it, anyway, they should have been punished the same way A.J. Green was; had deferral for a season been an option earlier, we’d have been happy to have delayed A.J.‘s suspension until 2011, too. If the Buckeye players managed to reach this point in their college careers without knowing this information, Ohio State’s compliance staff didn’t do its job, so the players’ ignorance was an aggravating factor, not a mitigating one.
The bottom line is that Ohio State players are getting preferential treatment. They did what A.J. Green did, only more extensively, and they’re getting the benefit of a deferred punishment that may end up being no punishment at all. The NCAA is hip-deep in hypocrisy.
Go 'Dawgs!
Couldn't agree with you more...
and I would be as happy as all if they would not be playing in the bowl game, even if that meant a blow out loss to a former Wolverine led Arkansas team. I would do nothing but commend OSU if they self-suspended them, but of course that wish is a pipe-dream and I loosely understand them not doing so, in spite of my disagreement.
The fact of the matter is that the NCAA has not kept up adequately with today’s landscape, and they pick and choose the enforcement of their rules based on $$$s. This leads to programs and players being painted in a bad light, while the NCAA profits no matter what happens.
Of course I’ll still pull for OSU as a program in the bowl game, but I’d prefer that they rid themselves of such individuals as soon as possible like they did of Clarett (no matter what people say, they handled that situation better than most given that it all went down in a semesters time). It sucks that they got caught doing what others do, but that’s the breaks and it just emphasizes how ridiculous the NCAA is.
Thorough summation of the NC2A here:
they pick and choose the enforcement of their rules based on $$$s
And that’s why I totally agree with secession (okay, and because I’m born and raised in GA) from said NC2A. You’ve found a home away from home here, kmzipsgolf, because most of us held the same mindset vis-a-vis AJ when we found out he sold his jersey (not the whole 4 games, mind you, but a suspension nonetheless). Welcome to the Island of Misfit Rational Fans, we hope your stay is a joy…..
by Just Some Dawg on Dec 25, 2010 1:51 AM EST up reply actions
Well thank you for the welcome,
and happy to be here. .Since moving to Athens, the Dawgs have quickly moved to 1b on my list of teams, and I couldn’t be more happy to be back in football country (spent half a decade on the west coast). Here’s to hoping for some good years in the near future.
Good stuff as always, Kyle
and just another crappy thing to cap off a pretty crappy season which I hope we can cap off with a crappy win in a crappy bowl against a team who’s colors remind me of crap.
Still not over not winning the pumpkin bread with the extra butter. Crap.
"If we score, we may win. If they never score, we'll never lose."
-Erk Russell
Podunk, in the name of Christmas, I ask that you send DavetheDawg the pumpkin bread! He's a DGD who loves buttery-goodness!
If you're gonna do it, go ugly early.
UGA should have played AJ
regardless of any impending NCAA decision. I mean, look at Auburn and OSU.
Schadenfeude
Allow a BSU fan to stick his nose into this discussion for a moment.
A month ago President Gee, tenting his fingers in an interview, declaimed in lordliwise fashion that, in his opinion, TCU and BSU don’t deserve to play in the National Championship because they only play the “Little Sisters of the Poor”. Ahh, but not Ohio State. No sirree bob! Gordon’s Worthies play power teams—it’s a real murder’s row every week for Lord Gord’s Buckeyes. Therefore and ergo tOSU is entitled to and worthy of a BCS bowl berth.
Of course, I’d like to point out that as members of an Automatic Qualifying conference the Buckeyes are pretty much guaranteed consideration for a BCS bowl while a non-AQ team like BSU in a non-AQ conference like the WAC almost always gets a non-BCS bowl.
That’s why an unranked, four-loss UConn (Big-East—i.e. AQ) gets to play in the Fiesta Bowl. That’s why a #13-ranked, two-loss VA Tech (a team that lost to BSU AND to Div 1-AA James Madison) gets to play in the Orange Bowl. And that’s why a #10-ranked, one-loss Boise State (WAC—non-AQ) was only allowed to play in the Maaco Bowl.
Excuse my confusion, but doesn’t "unranked" mean lower-ranked than #13. Or #10?
Lord Gordon claims that Ohio State will play BSU if we want them to. We certainly do. What we won’t do is agree to play only away games. First, there’s something viscerally repulsive about an implied sense of "We are royalty. YOU are commoners. Royalty does not travel to play in cow-pens. You commoners must come to play in our royal courtyard." It’s called putting people in their place, and it’s arrogant as hell. And secondly, there’s always a disadvantage for the visiting team—having to travel, playing in an unfamiliar venue, playing before a hostile crowd. Essentially, the home team always has the advantage. Not to seem paranoiac, but it almost suggests that the Buckeyes won’t play us unless they can stack the deck in their favor.
What it comes down to is this—a system that is designed to favor some teams over others; a refusal to meet us unless we agree to play at a disadvantage; players in an AQ team, who are being suspended AFTER the Sugar Bowl has been safely put away.
It seems to me that Lord Gord shouldn’t be prating about how BSU wouldn’t be entitled to a BCS National Championship Bowl berth—If we had made it, we would have been entitled to it. I guess the reason is because we fight for every bit of respect we can earn. We fight for every spot that we qualify for. This despite struggling in a system that is crafted to work against us (and any of the other Little Sisters).
At least we earn everything through our own hard work. Ohio State? The only way they get anything is because it’s given to them.
Hmm. Perhaps it’s tOSU that doesn’t really deserve to make it to the National Championship Bowl.
I agree with almost all of your points about Ohio State, . . .
. . . but there is a practical reason why teams from AQ conferences are disinclined to schedule games against Boise State: Bronco Stadium has a seating capacity of 33,500, and that’s including the removable bleachers that were added prior to last season. That’s smaller than Vanderbilt Stadium . . . and, when the Commodores recently played Michigan, it, too, was a one-off road game in the Big House with no return trip to Nashville by the Maize and Blue.
It’s not what BSU does on the field, which many of us consistently have praised; it’s not even the field itself, although I submit that the blue turf is a gimmick that has outlived its utility. It’s the stadium itself. The planned $100 million expansion to 53,000 is scheduled to happen in as many as six phases, yet even that will bring Bronco Stadium to a seating capacity just shy of Mississippi State’s Scott Field (55,082). There’s just no money to be made playing in a stadium that small.
All twelve SEC stadia are larger than Bronco Stadium; after the expansion, Bronco Stadium still will be smaller than the home venues of eleven of the twelve SEC schools. All twelve Big Ten stadia (including Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium) are larger than Bronco Stadium; after the expansion, Bronco Stadium still will be smaller than the home venues of nine of the twelve Big Ten schools (Indiana’s Memorial Stadium, Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium, and Northwestern’s Ryan Field being the sole exceptions).
It is unsurprising that teams from those conferences are unwilling to travel to Boise—-which is as far away for them as their home towns are for Boise State—-to play in a stadium that small. While the Broncos obviously offer a much higher quality of competition, SEC teams could schedule dates before similarly-sized crowds much closer to home by playing at such Sun Belt stadia as Middle Tennessee State’s Floyd Stadium (30,788), Troy’s Veterans Stadium (30,000), North Texas’s Fouts Field (30,500), Arkansas State’s ASU Stadium (30,406), Louisiana-Lafayette’s Cajun Field (31,000), or Louisiana-Monroe’s Malone Stadium (30,427). The MAC offers similar opportunities for the Big Ten. It is no accident that the Big Ten and the SEC never agree to home-and-home series with MAC and Sun Belt squads, respectively.
Pac-10 teams, however, are willing to travel. Why? Because Boise State’s planned expansion to 53,000 would put Bronco Stadium in the same range as Oregon’s Autzen Stadium (54,000), Arizona’s Arizona Stadium (57,400), Oregon State’s Reser Stadium (45,674), and Stanford’s Stanford Stadium (50,000). BSU already has an arena on a par with Washington State’s Martin Stadium (35,117) . . . and those figures do not account for the fact that Pac-10 teams have a much tougher time selling out their smaller arenas than Big Ten or SEC teams do in their larger stadia.
I quite agree that Gordon Gee was being arrogant and condescending, and that he vastly overrates the supposed superiority of the Big Ten. However, the seating capacity of Bronco Stadium is limiting Boise State’s ability to get AQ teams to play BSU on the road, and, until a real upgrade occurs, it will continue to do so, to the same degree (and for the same reason) that Auburn’s previously subpar facilities made it difficult for the Tigers to get Alabama, Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Tennessee to come to the Plains.
Long before the initials “AQ” and “BCS” entered the college football lexicon, Georgia played Georgia Tech in Atlanta for 19 straight series meetings from 1900 to 1928. No notions about the superiority of the Engineers mandated this arrangement, for the series standings were almost exactly even to that point; the problem was that Athens lacked the facilities available in Atlanta. The Bulldogs’ Steadman Vincent Sanford solved the problem by building the stadium that bears his name. Boise State would profit by that example.
All that said, I appreciate your comment, and I look forward to crossing paths with the Broncos again in Atlanta next Labor Day weekend.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on Dec 27, 2010 11:03 PM EST up reply actions
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