The NCAA's multi-tiered investigation and sentencing policy

We are not fans of Jerry Tarkanian's selection of recruiting targets nor of his barrage of excuses for the litany of problems his players caused but Tark was spot on in one regard: the NCAA both selectively investigates and punishes its member schools.

The more powerful the school, the lesser the chance of anything ever being uncovered.

So please do your best not to retch the next time any NCAA official piously claims to put the interests of the student-athletes first and foremost.

The NCAA’s predictable injustice
Dan Wetzel
Yahoo! Sports
Dec 10, 2008

The NCAA manual is thick, detailed and contains about a million bylaws. None of them state “Indiana must field a winning basketball team.”

Yet there was Josephine Potuto, the chair of the committee on infractions, claiming that one reason the NCAA had sympathy for Indiana in its major violations case was the Hoosiers might not field a winning basketball team this year.

“The committee did note the current condition of the program,” Potuto said.

IU had already fired coach Kelvin Sampson and come up with its own sanctions prior to last month’s ruling. It’s not that additional sanctions were necessarily needed.

The NCAA just didn’t have to base its satisfaction with IU on an illogical (and inaccurate) standard.

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?

The statement spoke to the NCAA’s history of going easy on powerhouse programs while burying small schools...

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