Proposed new NCAA penalties for infractions

[sandgk]

The degree of punishment imposed going forward is less troublesome in my view than consistency of application.

The ability of the NCAA to determine that there is cause for applying punishment is, of course, unchanged - meaning they remain nearly powerless, still dependent on loose lips, disaffected pariahs and hangers-on, or poisonous whisper campaigns.

Fially, this is a work in progress; what the NCAA actually decides in the end may be more or less lenient than the matrix they are currently discussing.

 

[MaxBuck]

The degree of punishment imposed going forward is less troublesome in my view than consistency of application.

Consistency in applying penalties is not valid if there is no consistency in finding the infractions to begin with -- and there can never be such consistency so long as there are private colleges in the NCAA. Such institutions are immune from the FOIA requests and their responses that provide the media with the necessary ammunition to pursue the "violator du jour" and identify such infractions at high-profile public schools like Ohio State, Auburn, Kentucky and Alabama.

You cannot have a just system given the vagaries of the enforcement infrastructure that exists today. This proposal simply guarantees that schools like Ohio State that maintain large compliance departments, cooperate with the NCAA, and have high market visibility, will continue to be unfairly targeted and consequently unfairly punished.

So long as the NCAA focuses its primary enforcement tactics on amateurism-related "violations," we'll continue to suffer this nonsense. Too bad they can't concern themselves with things like, whether the student-athletes actually benefit from learning something during their five scholarship years.

 

[sandgk]

Consistency in applying penalties is not valid if there is no consistency in finding the infractions to begin with

If a murder goes unsolved does that make the choice between imposition of a life sentence versus death penalty for a murderer caught and convicted inherently inconsistent?

No, it does not.

You can only punish infractions that are known and established. But, you can consistently apply standards of punishment for those known infractions.

-- and there can never be such consistency so long as there are private colleges in the NCAA. Such institutions are immune from the FOIA requests and their responses that provide the media with the necessary ammunition to pursue the "violator du jour" and identify such infractions at high-profile public schools like Ohio State, Auburn, Kentucky and Alabama.

The underlying issue of some schools being inherently more shrouded or secretive is real - but, truly, that isn't what spilled the beans on D-U, nor on USC (both private), nor on tOSU. All three had outside leads generate the data from which the investigations stemmed.

How it proceeded from there differed because of the relative openness of tOSU's information sharing with the NCAA, that is true.

How that would differ going forward is somewhat open to question. There is wording in the linked article and on the NCAA web site from Emmert that suggests they would take a very dim view of an institution getting caught - however that happens - and then not opening up the books. USC would come off particularly badly in that light if they hid behind not needing to honor FOIA.

You cannot have a just system given the vagaries of the enforcement infrastructure that exists today. This proposal simply guarantees that schools like Ohio State that maintain large compliance departments, cooperate with the NCAA, and have high market visibility, will continue to be unfairly targeted and consequently unfairly punished.

Let's look at what we know from the article and focus on that. NCAA wishes to make the punishments more severe - and more carefully graduated. If they apply the punishments with even-handedness then we should not complain.

Your response in the above blockquote goes again to that seperate issue of the ease with which NCAA accesses evidence of infractions - that of enforcement infrastructure. Should that be improved? Yes, absolutely. Is that the subject of the article itself? No, not really one word.

 

[MaxBuck]

If a murder goes unsolved does that make the choice between imposition of a life sentence versus death penalty for a murderer caught and convicted inherently inconsistent?

No, it does not.

Once again: if "justice" is the objective (which the NCAA implies it is), then imposition of draconian penalties that result from "discovery" that might as well result from a random-number generator won't get you there. Even if those penalties are applied "consistently" to those poor suckers whose number is drawn from the drum.