The NCAA messed up again.
Instead of looking out for the best interest of the student-athlete, it decided to punish IU freshman defensive back Bryant Fitzgerald for a mistake made by the IU compliance department.
IU announced Saturday that Fitzgerald was ruled ineligible for the entirety of the upcoming season because he was incorrectly advised about his eligibility requirement. What exactly happened remains unclear, but it appears he didn’t do anything wrong other than following bad information.
IU tried to remedy the situation by filing a waiver to restore his eligibility, but the NCAA denied the waiver along with a subsequent appeal.
“I am very disappointed in the NCAA for not granting our waiver request nor our appeal,” IU Athletics Director Fred Glass said in an IU Athletics press release. “Bryant should not have to bear the brunt of our mistake, and the NCAA could have, and should have, remedied that in the interest of the student’s well-being, who is in this situation through absolutely no fault of his own.”
Fitzgerald did nothing wrong, yet on two occasions the NCAA decided to deny his attempt to play this season. The NCAA had multiple opportunities to fix the situation, but it instead chose to use an unnecessarily heavy-handed approach. It brought the hammer down for no apparent reason other than because it could.
This isn’t a great look for IU, either. It’s not every day that you see a university openly acknowledge it made a compliance mistake, nor is it normal that its mistake causes an athlete to miss an entire season. If anything, the NCAA should’ve punished IU for its error instead of taking it out on Fitzgerald, who is innocent in this case.
He didn’t do anything wrong beyond trusting the people that hold all the power in college football: the NCAA.
In July, Donald De La Haye, a former kicker for UCF, was ruled ineligible by the NCAA because he monetized his YouTube channel. Haye was powerless against the NCAA because if he wanted to play college football, he had to stop making money from his YouTube channel. Haye decided to stop playing football rather than give up his opportunity to earn money.
This is just one of many examples of how the NCAA holds too much power in college athletics.
While most college football players do receive a scholarship and many other benefits from playing football, it doesn't seem like their interests are fully in mind when the NCAA makes decisions.
On the NCAA’s website, it says that “student-athlete success on the field, in the classroom and in life is at the heart of our mission.”
If this were truly the case, Fitzgerald would be on the field when IU takes on Ohio State in less than two weeks. Instead, the NCAA failed to use common sense when deciding what should have been a simple appeal.
Fitzgerald just happened to be in the crosshairs of the NCAA's stubborn crusade against rationality.
