Gene Smith (sorta) defends Urban Meyer

Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith issued a statement today in the wake of criticism of current Buckeye coach Urban Meyer. It doesn’t sound like Smith wants to hear about it from other coaches:

"I am disappointed that negative references have been made about our football coaches and particularly head coach Urban Meyer regarding recruiting.

“In our league appropriate protocol, if you have concerns, is to share those concerns with your athletic director. Then your athletic director will make the determination on the appropriate communications from that point forward.

“The athletic directors in our league are professionals and communicate with each other extremely well. Urban Meyer and his staff have had a compliance conscience since they’ve arrived."

Immediately after swiping a plethora of Big 10 prospects from other conference programs and signing them Wednesday, coaches in the league complained bitterly that Meyer was stepping over the line. Michigan State called Meyer’s tactics “unethical.” Wisconsin’s Bret Bielema suggested that what Meyer was doing ran afoul of NCAA regulations, an ominous allegation with the Buckeyes currently under probation for Jim Tressel’s TattooGate scandal.

According to a report from Brandon Castel at the-ozone,net, Meyer fired back during a speaking engagement at a high school coaches meeting earlier today.

"You're pissed because we went after a committed guy? Guess what, we got nine guys who better go do it again," he said motioning to his assistants in the front of the room. "Do it a little harder next time."

It doesn’t look like Meyer was impressed or intimidated by yesterday’s salvo from his colleagues.

Exit Question: How long before that league is absolutely run over by Meyer?

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The Urban Meyer – Ohio State romance has many story lines and plot twists

It’s like a dime-store romance novel. It’s on again. It’s off again.

It’s on again?

Earlier this week, former Florida Gators’ coach and current ESPN analyst told the Gainesville Sun’s Pat Dooley that he hadn’t visited Columbus and hadn’t interviewed for the Buckeye’s head coaching job.

But last night, news reports surfaced that he and the Ohio State powers-that-be agreed in principle to seven-year, $40 million nuptials. It’s a story that WE or Oxygen would drool over, isn’t it? After all, look at the story lines and plot twists, here.

Consider the jilted former lover in Gainesville, left behind by a coach who suddenly resigned, reversed himself, and then resigned for good. That page-turning chain of events was, according to Meyer, brought about first by health and then by family issues. Gator fans were saddened by his departure, but understanding and forgiving. That is, until reports surfaced that Meyer was the leading candidate for the job once held by the disgraced Jim Tressel at Ohio State.

It will be interesting to see how the Gator Nation handles the news if, as so many expect, Meyer and Ohio State finally consummate the relationship and join each other at the altar podium. Parting is indeed sweet sorrow, but it’s only sweet if your paramour isn’t jumping in the sack with the next pretty face.

And, as long as Florida was winning, Gator fans didn’t mind being in contention for the EDSBS Fulmer Cup. (for those of you who think college football coverage should be left up to professionals, the Fulmer Cup is awarded at the end of each offseason to the program with the collectively worst criminal record.)

Somebody should alert Columbus Police Department Chief Walter Distelzweig to let him know that his job may be about to get really interesting, and seeing how Ohio State fans deal with annual Fulmer Cup contention should be a storyline producing free blogging all offseason long.

Consider also the mean, hateful Alabama Crimson Tide. All Nick Saban and his 2009 National Championship squad did was show Meyer that competing in the SEC was a big boy’s job. They made his ass quit and made his quarterback cry. Does he really think the job of winning championships gets easier at Ohio State, where it took gaming the system to keep ineligible players on the field to get its first ever win over an SEC team?

This is another fascinating storyline to be played out--how does Meyer see his upcoming affair with the battling Brutuses? What would the ultimate goal of the relationship be? When he was introduced as the Florida head coach in December 2004, the stated goal was to compete at the highest level and contest for national championships. Meyer did just that—winning two national titles in 2006 and 2008. The goals at Ohio State are just as lofty.

But as Yahoo! Sports columnist (and BCS Anarchist) Dan Wetzel illustrates in a column yesterday, B1G commissioner Jim Delany isn’t thinking on such a scale anymore. In fact, Delany’s decision-making will likely make it difficult for even the B1G’s best to make beaucoup bucks in the BCS, much less compete for all the Tostitos and win a BCS title. A nine game season in the league makes it hard for even Ohio State and Michigan to emerge from the conference unbeaten, a task they are almost certainly required to complete before getting into the big dance. A one-loss Ohio State isn’t getting to the championship game like a one-loss 2006 Florida team did, because Ohio State is in the B1G, not the SEC.

The only way Ohio State gets into a title match is if some sort of plus-one or multi-round playoff is installed. Delany wants none of it and remains the most powerful conference commissioner to oppose it. When the SEC’s Mike Slive and the ACC’s Jim Swofford proposed a weaksauce plus-one system last January, Delany shot it down. This January, Delany will propose that the BCS sponsor only a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup. While that would be awful for college football in general, it would be disastrous for an incoming coach who expects his team to win it all and coaches that way.

The plot will only get thicker as the story plays out. Chick flicks are fantasies but this is real, or something.

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Urban Meyer publicly denies deal for Ohio State job

Keep in mind that public denials of this nature mean absolutely nothing until Ohio State University (or any other big time program) makes its hire and holds the press conference.

But at least for now, former Florida Gators coach Urban Meyer is on the record denying that he has agreed to take over the Buckeyes.

Rumors flew last week that the deal was done and that Meyer had already visited Columbus and that there was already a contract in place.

Per GatorSports.com’s Pat Dooley—about as reliable of a reporter as you’ll find—Meyer says there is no deal in place because there’s been no offer made.

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The former Florida head football coach told The Sun he never interviewed for the Arizona job and has not interviewed for the Ohio State job. And if the Ohio State job is offered, the same issues that caused him to step away from coaching this past year are still in play.

“The concerns are still there,” Meyer told The Sun. “No. 1 — my health. No. 2 — my family. No. 3 — the state of college football. I've done some research into the second one. I've found that it is possible to have balance between your job and your family, that there are coaches out there who are doing it.

“I'm in a good place right now mentally and physically. So if something happens with Ohio State, I'll have a decision to make. But there has been no interview. There has been no offer to make a decision about.”

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ElevenWarriors.com—a prominent Buckeyes blog—posted last week that there was mutual interest between Meyer and Ohio State and that an agreement in principle had been worked out. EW also reported that the two parties were in agreement over waiting to hear the NCAA’s final verdict on the TattooGate scandal that cost former OSU coach Jim Tressel his job, and that Meyer had already made some decisions on staffing. To wit, Meyer was believed to be all but certain to take current LSU offensive coordinator with him. The two have coached together at Bowling Green.

Stay tuned—one way or another, Ohio State is almost certain to have a new coach at the Horseshoe and the deal will likely get done next month. Will it be Meyer?

It looks like remains to be seen. But keep in mind that if Ohio State decides to reach out to an existing head coach and Penn State goes shopping as well, the 2010-11 Coaching Carousel is set to spin like an Iranian Centrifuge.

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Around the web: What they’re saying about the Jim Tressel resignation

Monday’s sudden resignation of former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel literally rocked the college football world. Here’s a sampling of the shock waves that rippled through the national media and sports blogs.

ESPN’s Ivan Maisel wonders, “Can something be inevitable and surprising at the same time?”

Indyposted.com’s Paul O’Connor explains that When you are the target of an investigative reporter who happens to be the most recent sports journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize and his nickname is ‘the pitbull,’ you are in trouble.

Gregg Doyel says getting rid of Tressel was just a good start, but that it won’t be enough to save them from the mighty hammer of the NCAA.

Paul Newberry of Associated Press thinks a “death penalty” for rogue coaches is a good idea.

Ralph Russo puts it in a business perspective—keeping Tressel would have been too costly.

ESPN’s Pat Forde notes that Tressel and Ohio State only told the truth when damage control was the only option left.

CBSSports.com’s Adam Jacobi asks if the Tressel tenure was ‘worth it?’

To add my own two cents to the kitty: This Sports Illustrated piece from George Dohrmann and David Epstein reveals that Jim Tressel has a long, sordid history of playing ignorant while his players routinely broke NCAA rules against improper benefits.  As long as he was winning and as long as everything stayed under the radar, no one said a word.

It’s hard to imagine that the NCAA Enforcement staff won’t amend the Notice of Allegations it delivered to the school in March to include allegations that the program is/was guilty of the dreaded “lack of institutional control,” which brings a whole new fabric of sanctions into play.

Such a high profile case against such a significant football program doesn’t leave the NCAA much wiggle room on deciding sanctions and if the USC case is any indication, the penalties will have effects that will continue being felt for the better part of a decade. Sanctions are designed to hurt and punish the offenders.

Tressel’s resignation or eventual dismissal was widely expected. Few coaches have survived the Bylaw 10 breach of ethical conduct. But Buckeye fans need to brace for an even harder blow, a blow that will take a decade or more to recover from.

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The righteously indignant Pete Fiutak gets it wrong

Dear Mr. Fiutak:

Reinstatement decisions are NOT enforcement investigations.

In a column posted yesterday, Fox Sports’ Pete Fiutak takes the NCAA to task for what he sees as a glaring inconsistency in upholding the sanctions that hammer Southern Cal for the Reggie Bush case. He makes the mistake of comparing the Bush enforcement improper benefits case to the reinstatement decisions made by a completely different arm of the NCAA.

I probably shouldn’t single out Fiutak because honestly, he’s not the only one who gets it wrong. The sentiments he express are found in columns on sports pages across the country. They’re on websites, blogs and internet message boards. Very few of’em get it.

While Mr. Fiutak will get no argument from me that the NCAA’s “every case is different” approach to both enforcement and reinstatement matters is a recipe for chaos and confusion, his column contributes absolutely nothing to resolving the national confusion over the difference between the results of investigations conducted by the league’s enforcement arm and decisions rendered by a reinstatement staff with no investigatory powers whatsoever.

People want to compare the USC case to the other two highest profile cases of blatant violation of amateurism rules—the Cam Newton case at Auburn and the Tressel, Pryor et al case at Ohio State. In doing so, they try to make the case that Southern Cal is being made to pay a heavy price while Auburn and Ohio State get away scot free.

Here’s the key difference: The Bush case—after a half-decade of media and NCAA background investigation, a notice of inquiry, the formal enforcement investigation, a notice of allegations, a Committee on Infractions hearing, a decision, an appeal and a decision on the appeal—was a thorough, full-fisted anal exam conducted by people with no connection to the Trojan program. Meanwhile, the reinstatement processes that resulted in the eligibility decisions at Auburn and Ohio State were the result of dog-and-pony shows written, produced and directed by the schools themselves.

Repeat after me: Reinstatement decisions are NOT enforcement investigations.  Lather, rinse and for God’s sake repeat this to every college sports fan you encounter.

The Infractions Committee relied on information produced by the NCAA enforcement staff and that information was the closest to the truth that anyone could ever hope for. The reinstatement decisions were based on information provided by the schools, and that information was prepared in a manner that puts the best light on the school that anyone could hope for. It’s a huge difference and it seems to be completely lost on people who should know better.

I am the first to admit that while I know more about NCAA rules and procedures than I ever wanted to, I still have a great deal to learn. It would be helpful if Pete Fiutak and all the other master blasters in the national sports media would slow down, understand the processes involved and at least try to grasp this key distinction between enforcement and reinstatement matters. By not doing so, they’re not helping the public get their own arms around the concepts.

I’ll bet there’s one thing on which Fiutak and I can agree. That would be a standardized set of penalties with mandatory minimum sentences for major violations. This idea was posited by MrSEC. Such a system would end the “every case is different” approach currently in place in both the enforcement and reinstatement offices of the NCAA. To be certain, some unintended victims will suffer under such a cut-and-dried system. But if everyone understands what the penalties are—that all drug dealers, murderers and rapists go to prison, no matter what—there will be fewer people weighing the risk reward ratio and making the wrong decision.

We need that and if this week’s news is any indication, we might soon get it.

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NCAA Enforcement under the spotlight

Another good job by USA Today’s Steve Wieberg, who is in San Antonio covering the annual NCAA Convention being held there this week. In today’s story, Wieberg applauds the NCAA Enforcement staff’s progress in working with the NFL to round up the bad apples in the sports agent community. The applause is the kind you’d hear at the 18th fairway at Augusta, but at least he’s giving them some props, right?

But on the other hand, he notes the struggles that the division faces in increasing scrutiny of college athletics and exposing rules violators. Wieberg notes the difference in impressions gotten for the two efforts by the league, but he misses the real reason for the chaotic nature of the NCAA’s deliberation and decision-making process in the 2010 football season:

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At the behest of president Mark Emmert, the NCAA will work in the next three months to tighten the guidelines and interpretations that controversially gave Auburn quarterback Cam Newton and five Ohio State football players room to finish out their seasons despite findings of wrongdoing. Emmert also has called for a crackdown on academic fraud, which surfaced at North Carolina last year and was another issue tainting Newton's Heisman Trophy and national championship season.

"There is an incredible amount of attention on enforcement issues, for good reason, from our membership and from the media," said Julie Roe Lach, new NCAA vice president of enforcement. "So many issues are coming to light at the same, people think, 'Oh, they're finally doing something.' Actually, we've been working a long time on these issues. It's not a crossroads."

Schools and conferences nonetheless are taking notice.

"Mark is sending the right message," Atlantic Coast associate commissioner Shane Lyons said of the tone set by Emmert at the annual NCAA convention, which ended Saturday. "That's what the membership really needs at this point from the leadership of the NCAA … understanding there's going to be accountability out there."

The Newton and Ohio State decisions have dominated much of the recent conversation, drawing backlash from outside and inside the NCAA. And officials worked through the convention to explain them.

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Of course, unless you’ve been living under a rock or simply not following these cases very closely (either is a sin, mind you), the problem is not that the NCAA doesn’t have enough authority in its rule books to punish violators. It’s their patent inability to follow their own damned rules and treat similar cases similarly.

As I pointed out in this space about a month ago, the NCAA’s treatment of the cases  it investigates and how it decides punishment for violations is fatally flawed. That flaw is expressed by Emmert himself, and in virtually every statement, press release or public comments from NCAA officials:

"All these situations are case-specific, so you can't easily or appropriately generalize.”

The NCAA’s “all cases are different” approach is the diametric opposite of order and predictability. In fact, if there’s one thing that’s consistent with the NCAA’s investigative and punitive procedures, it’s that there’s no consistency whatsoever.  It lets offenders develop loopholes where none exist and lets rules get enforced arbitrarily. It’s also opened up a whole new loophole the size of an SEC lineman—the ignorance defense, used by both Newton and the Pryor Gang.

The result is chaos.

Imagine if the criminal justice system were modeled like this, where no two cases are ever treated similarly. No two serial killers would be given life in prison without parole or the death penalty. What about two mob bosses convicted of extortion, money laundering, illegal gambling and drug trafficking? Don’t they both get life in the federal lockup?

Not in the NCAA model. Until the NCAA learns to treat similar cases similarly, the chaos will continue and lead to more WTF moments like the ones that followed the Auburn and Ohio State decisions.

Now granted, the Auburn and Ohio State decisions were both rendered by the Reinstatement Division of the NCAA. The Enforcement Division, which is a completely separate arm of the governing body, handles matters related to institutional wrongdoing. Reinstatement investigated facts provided by Auburn and Ohio State and made eligibility determinations regarding student-athletes based on that information. Whether those decisions led to your own personal WTF moment is irrelevant to this fact: Enforcement conducts a separate investigation into whether the institutions themselves committed rules violations.

Wieberg and most other national sports journalists acknowledge that while Reinstatement might have ruled, Enforcement isn’t through yet. Not by a long shot, and it’s looking more and more like the federal cases winding through the system in Alabama might make this a long, painful process for some fans. Unfortunately, as I pointed out here yesterday, the media in the state of Alabama can’t wrap their heads around that fact yet.

The best step forward that Emmert, Roch and the rest of the NCAA Enforcement gurus can do is develop a set of standard guidelines by which all cases that fall under them are treated similarly. It’s time to install order and predictability, and end the WTF moments produced by the reigning chaos.

 

TattooGate: Given the opportunity to do it right, the NCAA screws it up AGAIN

Sports by Brooks has the whole story.

Ohio State Football players Mike Adams, Dan Herron, DeVier Posey, Solomon Thomas and Terrelle Pryor have been suspended for the first five games of the 2011 season. Jordan Whiting is suspended for the first game.

The students were accused of receiving a host of improper benefits, ranging from tattoo discounts to proceeds gained from sales of championship memorabilia. The violations of NCAA rules regarding student-athlete improper benefits began occurring well before the start of the 2010 season, so each of the athletes involved (or at least some of them) have been ineligible to play all season long in 2010.

Compare this to the AJ Green case.  The Georgia standout receiver sold a jersey on Ebay and was forced to sit 4 games in the current season.

Compare it also to the Marcel Dareus case. The Alabama standout defensive lineman accepted improper transportation benefits from an agent and was forced to sit 2 games in the current season.

But compare it as well to the Cam Newton case, in which Newton exploited a loophole in the NCAA regs to remain eligible by claiming not to know that his father shopped him around SEC schools for a cool one-eighty large.

Want to know how the Ohio State players got off with no 2010 sanctions and no vacated wins?

“We didn’t know that was against the rules.”

The NCAA eligibility staff’s pathetic willingness to accept the ignorance defense makes the organization a toothless whore. Student-athletes, their parents, extended family members and “handlers” are now free to represent those players however they want. Just make sure Junior has plausible deniability. The players are also free to use their reputations and sell all their bling and swag to the highest bidder.  Just give’em the puppy dog eyes and say, “I didn’t know that was wrong.  I’m so sowwy.”

The NCAA had a chance to get it right after the Newton fiasco.  They have screwed it up again, and have made fools of themselves all over again.