It really wasn't as close as the score tonight. The Hoosiers controlled the game in the second half and ran away with it until the last minute and a half, when they decided they'd done enough. Either way, no harm no foul, and maybe a lesson to learn from a pretty good outing.
Anyway, that's not why I'm on here at 11 o'clock at night in the dead of winter talking to you people (movie reference championship). Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports -- a respected columnist, and deservedly so -- opined today that the NCAA went easy on the Hoosiers, and in larger terms goes easier on big-name institutions and programs.
Wetzel contends, in few uncertain terms, that IU got off easy compared to programs like, for example, Texas Southern, a large and noted HBCU in Houston.
**For those who do not know, Texas Southern recently had its men's tennis and softball teams punished for separate major violations. Among the most serious infractions include the members of the tennis team receiving impermissible benefits, and while heinous, the softball team's crimes were tame by comparison (read on).
I quote from the above-linked article from the AP:
The NCAA said the former softball coach allowed an academically ineligible player to participate in 47 practices and nine games during the 2004 season. In five games, the player participated under the name of an injured, eligible player who had left the team. The ineligible player also received more than $1,500 in impermissible benefits when she traveled with the team and received textbooks at no cost.
In the tennis case, coach Alberto Rojo Jimenez had used money from all sorts of places to pay for "scholarships" for international players, and when the money inevitably ran out, the story reports said players had no money for rent and were subsisting on bread and water. Kelvin Sampson's cell phone bill hardly seems a fair comparison, but whatever.
Back to Wetzel: He contends that the NCAA paid little more than lip service to their investigation of IU, and that the Hoosiers' claim that they blew the whole thing up and started a newer, cleaner program was as much the result of graduation, Eric Gordon's NBA exit and transfers that occurred simply because one coach left and another came in.
Most importantly of all, Wetzel railed against the statement by Committee on Infractions chair Josephine Potuto, which said in effect that the NCAA took into account just how in tatters IU's basketball program was when making their decision. It wasn't so much the end that got Wetzel hot, it was the means.
Again I quote, this time from Wetzel:
What criteria did the NCAA use to judge the "condition of the program" (it's actually quite good)? Why should anyone care that a cheating school might lose some games (isn't that the point)? And how did Potuto figure Indiana was, presumably, going to struggle since the Hoosiers record at the time was just 2-2?
Now, at the risk of being railed at from now until forever, the man makes some valid points. IU lost, in total, 11 players from last year's squad, not counting A.J. Ratliff, who left before the whole Sampson ordeal actually unraveled.
Five graduated or went pro, two transferred to programs where they presumably felt more comfortable with the coaching staff, one flunked out and went to Auburn and I'm not entirely sure of the manner of DeAndre Thomas' departure from IU, but he transferred too. Only Jamarcus Ellis and Armon Bassett were kicked off the team, and Dan Dakich did that.
So I do think Wetzel has a valid argument in that respect, and I've believed for years that big-name programs get off too easy (see: Phillip Fulmer being granted immunity for essentially saying Alabama paid Albert Means more than Tennessee did).
But in this case, I still disagree with Wetzel.
First of all, IU might have been 2-2 then, and they're 5-4 tonight, but the turnover that occurred last spring -- however it came to pass -- essentially guaranteed the Hoosiers a season without a postseason, so any kind of tournament ban would probably have been an empty gesture anyway.
And when you consider that IU fired the offending coach or coaches, put itself on a long probation stay, eliminated scholarships temporarily and stuck its new coaches with the same rather stringent recruiting restrictions as their predecessors, I'm really not sure the punishment hasn't already fit the crime.
Wetzel keeps coming back to the Texas Southern example, which saw show-cause penalties and a postseason ban handed out -- the men's and women's tennis programs had both been disbanded before the decision, and all offending coaches and the sitting AD had been fired.
The one thought I just keep coming back to -- one that debunks Wetzel's theory, at least in my eyes -- is that it's unfair to say IU got off easier than Texas Southern, when in my opinion, IU's crimes were far less severe. As I said before, there were actual students getting screwed and left to eat bread and water because of illegal actions at Texas Southern, not the case at IU.
It's been my (incredibly limited) understanding that the NCAA tends not to opt for punishments that affect players if players were never part of the violation, which they weren't at IU. I'll give you five dollars if every player Rob Senderoff or Kelvin Sampson talked to asked if the IU duo knew they were breaking the rules, but there's no way the girl playing under someone else's name to feign eligibility could have thought that was OK.
Perhaps the NCAA felt IU had done enough to itself, or more specifically, perhaps the NCAA felt the situation IU put itself in -- hiring a coach with a past like Sampson's, failing to monitor him closely enough, etc -- had done enough to the program's well-being that little further action needed to be taken. Even if the program didn't intentionally cleanse itself, the village was still burned.
Most importantly, no one was hurt by what happened at IU, other than in matters of pride and reputation. Wetzel's points are quite valid, I'll give him that. But I just can't agree that the two cases should be compared in his way.
And if he doesn't think the NCAA ever comes down hard on supposed "big-ticket" schools, then perhaps he ought to remember the way Kentucky was punished in the 1980s.
Anyway, that's that. As always -- but especially now -- I encourage you to post your thoughts, reactions and other sorted comments below. Keep 'em clean please.
