It’s sure going to test one of John U. Bacon’s favorite anecdotes regarding NCAA regulations. How many times has he referenced what I call the Bagel Rule regarding purchased meals for players?
[The NCAA] is an organization that ruled athletes could put butter on their bagels but not cream cheese, because cream cheese would make it a meal, and therefore a violation. The NCAA’s leaders have a knack for punishing the innocent while letting the guilty go.
This may well be right. We’ve already seen Engler–who we might assume could step in here–making very clear what his mandate really is when he said he looked forward to exonerating the basketball and football programs. No way, from thenceforward, could he be presumed to be pursuing justice. Any victory for MSU is, at this stage, a Pyrrhic one though, in my view. And few people will be surprised if, as you say, Izzo moves on after the season.
Izzo will be mumbling stuff about “mistakes were made” for a few years and back in the good old boy fraternity before too long. It’s the school and students that will suffer.
Fair enough. It’s a matter of scope and circumstances I suppose. Does the NCAA care that they wouldn’t have made the tournament, or won it, without said player? Did the school know the player should have been ineligible at any point since the infraction occurred? What did they do when they discovered the infraction? I’d say it depends on these factors.
Bridges and everyone involved in this report I believe is going to play out the year. The NCAA isn’t going to suspend players this late in the year with march madness coming up. Who wants to watch a tournament without all the star players. NCAA won’t risk losing that much money. If they do their investigation and find the same facts as this report then they punish programs and vacate wins but it won’t matter much at that point since there will be new star players and no money to be lost on the NCAA’s part.
I don’t think that the Aztecs have any post-season hopes this year (unless the CollegeInsider.com tournament still a thing), so the downside is limited.
Could be missing something, but where that risk-reward is concerned I would say that if MSU already stands to vacate a season’s worth of wins (in a bad or worst-case scenario) they must be thinking they might as well play Bridges now and go for broke. In for a corrupt penny, in for a corrupt pound.
It just looks like resisting and fudging–rather than owning the ugly–is the lawyer-approved way for schools to handle these issues. Meanwhile, the credibility of college football and basketball suffer.
They’re not considering any option other than playing Bridges. Next up, the feel good article about how well they’re dealing with another “distraction.”
9 hours, 45 minutes: Time from Yahoo story being published to time when Duke says its player identified, Wendell Carter, will remain eligible. https://t.co/h44P8q68s0
Yes, playing ineligible players usually leads to forfeiting those games. If the school was aware they should be ineligible or was involved in the impermissible benefits, then they should expect additional penalties.
Sean Miller