Losing respect by the drop

Last week, a group of more than 100 university presidents signed a letter to NCAA President Myles Brand – a former IU president – accusing the NCAA of violating its own rules concerning alcohol advertising during broadcasts of games.\nThe letter called the ads “embarrassingly prominent” and counted 200 and 240 seconds of beer advertising in the two national semifinal games, with 270 seconds in the national championship game. The NCAA’s policy restricts beer advertising to 60 seconds per hour and 120 seconds per broadcast, with hard alcohol ads banned completely.\nWe don’t think it’s that big of a deal whether or not beer commercials are shown during basketball games. It’s not as if anyone could honestly say that he or she was directly pressured into drinking by a simple television ad. Taking away all the beer ads in the world wouldn’t make college students – or, for that matter, the rest of the world – stop drinking.\nThe problem here is the hypocrisy. The NCAA has made a rule for itself, and it has broken that rule in the name of making more money. As anyone who’s seen one of the “most of us are going pro in something other than sports” commercials can easily tell, the NCAA purports itself to be something bigger than a purely athletic institution, something that advocates and promotes learning and success in life in general. But when the NCAA makes such a blatant money grab – and it doesn’t get much more blatant than ignoring rules that one has set for oneself – it’s really hard to believe that the organization really cares about anything other than making as much money as possible.\nThere’s another side to this, though, one that comes directly back home to IU. This school has become quite familiar with NCAA rules (and the violations of those rules) because of the transgressions of former coach Kelvin Sampson. It’s been generally assumed that the violations of the departed coach will lead to some kind of new sanctions being levied against the IU basketball program.\nUp until this point, it’s seemed like that would be a reasonably fair and just outcome if it happened. Rules were broken, and when that happens, there are consequences. Although those consequences would likely hurt the program in the short run, fans of a historically honorable program understand that doing things the right way leads to good results and doing them the wrong way catches up with you.\nBut now, it seems like the NCAA has set a precedent it doesn’t want. It made rules for itself, and it broke them. Everyone knows, though, that the NCAA won’t be punishing itself. Why, then, should IU – or any other sports program at other universities – have to abide by the NCAA’s rules? If the NCAA won’t honor its own authority, who will?\nThere should either be a hard-and-fast restriction on beer advertising, or none at all. And there should be some kind of oversight for any restriction. Otherwise, the NCAA has no teeth when dealing with any issue – even the important ones.