College football: bulletproof

Outing Alert: Carlton is Bill Snyder.

 

Pick it up, that one's good.

 

College football will continue to have these issues. It will continue to put teams on probation. It will continue to have sportswriter's clamoring for more control and university presidents vowing to clean things up, and it will continue to have problems after that. And fans will continue to walk through the turnstiles and watch on TV, especially if there's no pro football the next day.

 

How many major programs has the NCAA put on significant probation?

There are a lot of people who believe that USC would have been unscathed if the tapes of Reggie Bush demanding money never surfaced. How Auburn got away with what they did last year is still beyond me.

It seemed like 20 years ago teams would actually regularly face TV bans and significant scholarship reductions. That doesn't appear to be the case anymore.

 

Well, right... But I always thought that was a good deterrent. There always seemed to 5-6 BCS conference schools that were banned from TV and it was a constant reminder of which schools had been on probation.

 

Other than Notre Dame, every other big school is tied into a conference deal. They should do something where if a school is on probation, that school should not receive any of the $$$ that the conference gets for its TV deal. That would get a lot of school's attention and maybe they wouldn't be as willing to blatantly cheat.

I know it's never going to happen, but it was a good deterrent, and they took it away.

 

So, you are Mark Emmert. You call a news conference today to punish Auburn. Tell us:

1. What Auburn got away with last year.
2. The facts and evidence of the case.
3. The penalties you levy against Auburn.

 

So what you're saying is:

Auburn did nothing wrong last season.
There is no reason why, at the very minimum, Auburn should be under investigation right now.

 

Can't agree completely. While the school doesn't get paid, it still gets free advertising and exposure in the process. School associated with the cheating still wins.

And anyone who thinks Auburn is free and clear and that the Cam and Cecil Newton mess is nothing more than a figment of some NCAA official's imagination is either a fan and/or in complete denial.