Courtesy/Alasec.worldpress.com

SPORTS FLASH: There is major activity afoot in big time college football. Conferences are furiously switching member schools like shirts, in frantic efforts to maximize television revenue. Multi-million dollar contracts are at stake, and at many schools sports revenue plays a crucial role in funding academic programs. Meanwhile, the NCAA continues to pretend this is all about “scholar athletes,” even as top schools are penalized for virtually paying 350 pound “kids” to play ball. USC is the latest to be sanctioned, and what is interesting is that the case symbolizes how some good schools cheat the most, and some mediocre academic ones make an effort to really teach their players something of value.

By Dennis Mullin

LITERATE: What comes to mind was the tearful admission by Dexter Manley, an all-pro, very popular, defensive lineman for the Washington Redskins (and later drug addict) who was drafted after graduating from Oklahoma State, tearfully admitting after his first arrest that he had never learned to read. How does T. Boone Pickens’ alumnus give a degree to a fellow who cannot even read it?

And there is the old saw of a class only for football players at Notre Dame on “Irish Folk Music.” There was one question on the final exam, and the priest told the players that due to the honor system he was going to leave the room. Two songs would be played. The correct answer would identify either the first or second one as an Irish folk song. After he left the tape played the Clancy Brothers first, and then the Supremes. The genius was that you didn’t have to read to take the test.

NO CONTROL: In the USC case, the NCAA cited a loss of institutional control. The San Francisco Chronicle laughed out loud at the NCAA’s announcement which said:  "The committee noted that the violations in this case strike at the heart of the NCAA amateurism principal (sic), which states that intercollegiate athletics should be motivated primarily by education and its benefits." Noting that misuse of the word "principle" seemed like a nudge to the ribs, just in case anyone missed the joke, SFGate’s Gwen Knapp said the real howler was the incompetent math.

She goes on: The Bowl Championship Series paid out $22.2 million each to the SEC and Big 10, the conferences that placed two teams apiece in BCS games last season. The four other BCS leagues got $17.7 million each. The winning coach in the title game, Nick Saban of Alabama, drew a salary of $3.9 million. The runner-up, Mack Brown of Texas, made $5 million. How on earth does all of that add up to amateurism?” The Chronicle of Higher Education reported last year that USC paid Pete Carroll $4.4 million in 2006-07, close to five times as much as the school's president.

CHEATING: The case centers on Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush (the NCAA also cited the WOMEN’S TENNIS TEAM FOR CHEATING) who collected a full scholarship and, as the public report from the infractions committee notes, $1,000 a month in stipends to cover off-campus housing. To a lot of people, that might not seem like a great deal, but the NCAA prohibits players getting extra cash.

But a star basketball or football player has few options coming out of high school. The NBA and NFL, with the NCAA acting as a cheerleader, impose age barriers for young players, shoving the amateurism principle down their throats. Pious ideology covers for what is, in effect, discrimination against athletes. In a truly perverse spin, the fact that the victims are teenagers somehow makes the activity legally and socially acceptable.

HIGH PROFILE: "Elite athletes in high profile sports with obvious great future earnings potential may see themselves as something apart from other student-athletes and the general student population," the NCAA report said. "Institutions need to assure that their treatment on campus does not feed into such a perception."

OK, but that's an argument for the colleges not to pay athletes beyond their scholarships. Restraining their outside dealings, however, makes them "something apart." Students with academic merit scholarships are not prevented from inventing the next Facebook in their dorms, thereby profiting from the brains that brought them financial aid, Knapp argues.

Single tickets for USC home football games went on sale last week at $55 apiece. But anyone who wants to attend the Notre Dame game has to buy a $135 "two-pack" that includes seats to the relatively undesirable non-conference game with Virginia. The NCAA has no problem with this. It's capitalism in support of amateurism. They're a natural team. Sanctions: USC is banned from bowl games for two seasons.

EXPENSIVE: But if you are not on the football team, according to US News & World Report, you can join the 33,000 students who are among the 20 percent of the applicants accepted each year from the 5 times more who apply for the privilege of paying $40,000 for tuition and fees (not including room and board) for a total of close to $60,000 a year to learn how to read at the nation’s 26^th best school.

Fox News notes that “there’s no segment of American life in which crime pays quite as well as big-time amateur athletics.” And with the pending creation of super-conferences such as a Pac-16 and a Big 16, when the profit margins and the incentives to cheat increase proportionally, the situation is going to get much worse.

Making matters more embarrassing, the universities refuse to admit that they are cheating. Following the release of the 67-page NCAA report, USC announced it would appeal the “excessive” punishment of its precious football team. Fox’s Mark Kriegel writes:  “I guess, at least by USC standards, this is progress. For years now -- an era during which Trojans football players could be seen living in LA like the cast of “Entourage” -- the coaches have been denying that anything at all was amiss.”

ILLICIT BENEFITS: He continues: “Back in January, Pete Carroll took great offense at the suggestion that he would take a job with the Seattle Seahawks to avoid the prospect of NCAA punishment. What sanctions? Why should he be worried? The story about Reggie Bush and his family receiving illicit benefits broke in 2006, and Carroll spent the rest of his tenure talking about how he and his staff had always done the right thing.

Just last month, he told Dan Patrick ‘it would surprise me’ if the program received any sanctions or probation. How’s four years of probation, a two-year bowl ban and losing 30 scholarships sound, Pete? It should come as no surprise that Carroll’s replacement --another guy who was front and center for the glory years -- as inherited his mentor’s sense of outrageous optimism, (not to mention a good bit of his outrageous salary).”

Kriegel goes on: “Walking out on Tennessee after a single season, Lane Kiffin appeared at a Heritage Hall press conference and proclaimed the NCAA investigation to be much ado about nothing. ‘I feel very confident that it will not affect us in recruiting,’ he said. ‘It will get resolved and we will move forward.’ How you know this, he was asked.

“Conversations with people I’ve had here.”

DEBRIEFED: Maybe it was Carroll who debriefed him. Whatever the case, he had to know the USC job represented a huge score. Carroll had been making about $4.4 million and ended up getting about $7 million per from the Seahawks. Kiffin -- with an aggregate record of 12-21 as a head coach in college and the NFL -- is getting “just under $4 million,” according to HBO’s RealSports.

His 70-year-old father, Monte, will make approximately $2 million as the Trojans’ defensive coordinator. Ed Orgeron, who once again assumes the title of “recruiting coordinator” he had under Carroll, had to get a big bump from the piddling $650,000 he was making back in the day. Orgeron, its worth mentioning, was named National Recruiter of the Year in 2004, not long after Bush was voted a Freshman All-American.

“High profile players demand high profile compliance,” Paul Dee, chairman of the NCAA Committee on Infractions, said. Oh, cut it out, Kriegel proclaims. High profile players demand compensation. Bush and O.J. Mayo, who stayed at ’SC just long enough to play in the 2007-08 basketball season, are what they are. They got paid by would-be agents and hustlers. Just the same, what they earned was a fraction of their market value.

REAL STORY: That’s the real story here, and it’s not likely to change. Actually, it should only get worse. Consider all those who reaped huge benefits from the Bush/Mayo era, beginning with Bush and Mayo themselves. There’s Carroll, Kiffin and Orgeron. Norm Chow, USC’s former offensive coordinator, went on to the Tennessee Titans and UCLA, where, last I looked, he makes $640,000.

Steve Sarkisian, another of Carroll’s former offensive coordinators, is guaranteed $1.85 million a year as the head coach at Washington. Even Tim Floyd, who spent a season in the NBA after resigning from USC, didn’t have much trouble getting a new job. He’s the head man at UTEP. Apparently, head coaches aren’t held responsible for institutional control, or in this case, lack thereof. “The penalties aren’t directed at an individual,” Dee noted. Of course not. Coaches are held accountable only for winning or losing.

PENALTIES: “Based on the penalties, I don’t think there is any incentive not to cheat,” said Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association. “The system makes cheating” -- or at least, less than vigilant compliance -- “profitable for the individuals running the programs. It’s just like the CEOs who ran the big banks and the mortgage companies. They were completely irresponsible, but they all got paid.”

And it will only get worse once these conferences become mega-conferences. “It’s economics 101,” said Huma, a former UCLA linebacker. “Players’ salaries are effectively capped. But the revenue they generate just gets bigger and bigger. So the coaches and the administrators, their incentive to cheat just got stronger.”

Fox’s Kriegel concludes: “The difference between what guys like Bush and Mayo are worth, and what they make in scholarship and book fees, results in a black market economy. The would-be agents and runners become illicit paymasters. And only the least corrupt coaches turn a blind eye.”

Huma says the system would be relatively clean if players could be paid something approximating their market values. Then again, a system like that also would have to treat student-athletes as men and women. And that would cause the NCAA a loss of institutional control over the “kids.”