The decline and fall of the NCAA = OSU sanctions…
The NCAA as a governing body is a lot like the federal government. Everybody hates them until they are needed…As college football fans; we need the NCAA more now than ever. Doing things the right way has become an afterthought on many college campuses and cheating has become a way of life. At OSU with the fox living in the hen house, the game we love is in peril.
The recent slap on the wrist given to OSU after years of drugs, sex and cheating reinforces this fact. While the Oklahoman has downplayed the Sports Illustrate Dirty Game allegations in order to salvage its fledgling paper, don’t kid yourself. When there is that much smoke there is plenty of fire.
The fact that many of the allegations were outside the investigative window does not lessen the despicable approach to the game taken by OSU over the last decade. OSU used drugs, sex, and cheating to get a leg up on the competition and unfortunately for the rest of college football, it worked.
I think that the most bothersome part of the SI story was Les Miles and Mike Gundy serving as pimps for the Orange Pride escort service. These guys auditioned coeds who were chosen, not based on their charm, to show recruits a good time.
As we know there is not enough beer in the world to make Stillwater look good, so these girls had to use other talents to make OSU attractive to football recruits. This is the height of moral indecency and for the NCAA to give Les and Mike a pass on this one is simply inexcusable. While the escort service has been disbanded by the NCAA as part of the recently announced sanctions, the spoils of that despicable system did its job by stepping up the level of football talent at OSU.
This fact is further evidence that the NCAA as a governing body is on life-support. Costly lawsuits have landed the NCAA on the verge of bankruptcy. Only an infusion of capital from the very colleges that may someday be investigated by this organization will save the NCAA. My faith of this happening is waning.
Take OSU for example…As soon as the Dirty Game story hit the newsstand, T. Boone was on the phone setting up offices in Indianapolis for his legal team to move into. Simply put the NCAA cannot match the bottomless pockets of a billionaire like T. Boone when it comes to legal expenses.
An additional downside for OU fans is that with David Boren in charge, breaking the rules has become a thing of the past. This means that the OU football program must be twice as good and work twice as hard to compete against the cheaters of the college football world.
If you notice a plot line here, you are right. Little brother programs like Auburn and OSU that have a hard time competing against their more established state counterparts have always found a way to beat the system, cheating… The penalties handed down on Friday indicate that the NCAA has become complicit in this sordid affair.
Is there a silver lining in this cloud, probably not…After all, cheating in football has paid off handsomely over the years for a number of teams and with an impotent NCAA in place, don’t expect this pattern to change anytime soon. Expect the Auburn’s and OSU’s of the college football world to continue to generate winning seasons through ill-gotten means.
At the same time we can only hope that good will prevail over evil once again and college presidents will take a cut from the billions earned via the college football playoff to prop up the NCAA. While it may be too late to punish OSU, the college game can still be saved.
Regardless, OU fans can always relish in the fact that winning a few football games will never improve the OSU image. After all, a pig in lipstick is still a pig. Playing 2nd fiddle to the Sooners will always be the OSU albatross and for this we must give thanks.
Boomer Sooner…
sportsprofessor 