Saturday, March 12, 2011

Does the NCAA Promote a Double Standard?

This has not been a good week for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)—the organization that administers college athletics.

People have a serious bad taste in their mouths about the NCAA and the organization seemed to shoot itself in the foot again.

Ohio State placed sanctions on its football coach Jim Tressel over withholding information. This case relates to the Ohio State tattoo mess last fall. The NCAA declared several players ineligible to play in opening games in 2011, but allowed the players to participate in the 2010 season bowl game. People cried foul and said the NCAA favors its banner schools like Ohio State.

The NCAA must rule on this latest Tressel finding and that will be interesting.

And then this week, the NCAA ruled Baylor freshman Perry Jones illegible for the remaining basketball season. He missed the Bear’s Big 12 conference tournament game. The NCAA didn’t like Jones mother receiving money from his AAU coach. Again people cried foul. They said how different is this from Auburn’s Cam Newton and the problems with his father allegedly talking money for his son’s football services. Newton or Auburn received no penalties. Again, is Auburn one of the NCAA favorite schools?

The NCAA did release a statement that it believed the Jones and Newton cases were separate incidents. My editorial comment: nice try NCAA.

The NCAA has a serious image and marketing problem. People are watching and they want answers. Unfortunately, the NCAA is dancing around the problems hoping they will subside.

Good luck with that.

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