Hey everyone. I am the clown. I read the site fairly often. Glad some of you like us. I enjoy reading. Some of the best Cuse fans I know post on here all the time. Hope you don't hold it against us personally if you don't like some of our opinions. And Steve is actually a good guy in real life, even if he picked UConn to beat Saint Doug. Few things on the hoops penalties...
I really don't think the punishment is all that excessive and I really don't want to be "hot take" guy in the media. My opinions come from all the people we've talked to about this, on and off our show. And we were pretty proud of how many guys we had on that people would want to hear from. Anyway, doesn't make my opinions right; lots of smart people disagree, but it's definitely not just for attention. I think different people are offended or not offended by different parts of the 94 page report.
To me, I don't know how anyone on the hill is supposed to police what the players do at a YMCA. An estimated few thousand dollars worth of extra benefits over eight years is laughable, especially now that they get that much over a couple of years with the cost of attendance stipend. They should be embarrassed that it took them eight years to come up with that.
The drug test thing is neither a competitive advantage nor morally indefensible, in my opinion. But how hard is it to follow your own policy? The previous administration left them without a leg to stand on with that.
Cusefan, the reason we spend the most time on the academic part is because, to us, it's the worst part. We carried the conference call with the Committee on Infractions that day, and the spokesman spent the most time on the culture, monitoring, (other buzzwords) that would allow for the Fab Melo incident to happen. That's where the NCAA had the biggest problem. They are now saying that the coaches will be held responsible for the actions of their subordinates (Stan Kissel, in this case). I think we will be seeing more of this in future cases. I don't think JB is morally bankrupt or a cheater, but if they want the culture to change, they have to stop allowing the "I was unaware" defense. It's been allowing coaches all over the country to tell their people, "I don't care what you have to do, just get him eligible," which the subordinates are obviously going to follow. I have no idea if that happened here, but they are making it the coaches' business to make sure that doesn't happen at their programs.
For the record, I do think the academic priority in the NCAA is mostly a farce, but if they don't pretend to care (by punishing coaches and programs like this), their whole system will be in jeopardy as the lawsuits keep coming. I could spend the rest of my life complaining about the setup of the NCAA and the member institutions that allow this archaic system just so administrators can line their pockets, but for now, this is our lousy system.
And, bottom line, the penalties don't cripple them. They're thin next year, but that's not entirely NCAA related. The 2016-2018 rosters could be loaded in spite of the penalties, so I really don't think the punishment is as bad as people make it out to be.
