Rule #109: Governing bodies will always find a way to mess things up

I’m going to be blunt: The NCAA sanctions against USC are egregious, ridiculous, and atrocious.

I could go on with plenty more adjectives but in the end I would just be listing every word in the thesaurus that coincides with just plain BAD.

That’s not to say USC should not be punished.

There is no denying that the USC compliance office and Athletic Director Mike Garrett in particular made mistakes.

Could USC have done a better job monitoring Reggie Bush? Of course.

Should USC have been more diligent in baring Rodney Guillory from involvement with Trojan Athletics? Most certainly (In fact, Mike Garrett should lose his job for ever allowing that man near campus).

But given the content of the newly released NCAA report there is absolutely no reason USC should have received the penalties it has.

The two-year bowl ban, the reduction of 30 scholarships over three years, the four years of probation and the vacation of victories (including the 2005 BCS national championship) is as close as any school will come to receiving the “death penalty” in this era.

Quite frankly, the punishment does not fit the crime and an analysis of the charges and the evidence shows very clearly that the NCAA was not concerned with fairness when it was drafting this report.

Even if the worst of what USC is accused of is true, the precedent set by sanctions against other universities do not support the excessive penalties USC faces.

The NCAA was on a witch hunt and after a five year investigation they bended the facts to fit their assumptions. With the rabid college football establishment screaming for blood, they disregarded the burden of proof and slammed their hammer down with reckless force.

On what basis?

The word of a convicted felon and a man who willfully tampered with a USC student athlete.

Leading into the release of this report, it was clear to the more sane observers in college football that with the information available to the public the worst that USC could face were minor penalties. In order for the NCAA to rightfully impose major sanctions there would have to be a smoking gun, a damning piece of evidence that would bury USC that no one was aware of.

With the entirety of the NCAA’s findings now available, one thing is clear.

There is no smoking gun.

In fact, there is very little actual evidence at all and certainly none to warrant the excessive penalties handed down.

The closest thing the NCAA has to the all-important smoking gun is the testimony of a USC assistant coach assumed to be running backs coach Todd McNair.

They say they caught him in a lie and maybe they did. But as with most of this case, their evidence is circumstantial at best.

Lloyd Lake, the convicted felon who willfully tampered with a USC student, claimed that he called McNair at 1:34 a.m. on January 8, 2006 and told him to convince Reggie Bush to either honor his commitment to the would-be agent or reimburse him for everything. It is the earliest time Lake claims that McNair would have known about Bush’s violations (days after Reggie’s final game in a Trojan uniform).

McNair claimed that he could not recall such a call and that he had never spoken to Lloyd Lake in his life.

So Lake produced a phone record that proved a call occurred and that it lasted two minutes and 23 seconds. 

McNair says he doesn’t know how the two could have discussed such a weighty subject in the time it would take to order pizza.

The NCAA sided with Lake despite the fact that there is no recording of the call so the only people who know what was said are McNair and Lake.

Even if you make the assumption that the call did involve a discussion of violations and that McNair did in fact lie to investigators, there is no evidence to prove either.

Yet the NCAA still went ahead with nothing but assumptions and conjecture, deciding to take the word of an untrustworthy felon over the word of an untrustworthy liar.

In fact, the NCAA took the word (and only the word) of the untrustworthy felon quite often in the report:

Committee Rationale – Finding B-1-a-(2) – Impermissible cash payment to student-athlete 1's parents

The institution and the enforcement staff were in disagreement with regard to the facts of this finding. It was the institution's position that there is "no basis upon which to conclude that the facts (of the finding) are substantially correct," citing its belief that the allegation was based solely on statements made by agency partner A, whom the institution contends is not credible. The committee finds that the violation occurred.

As set forth earlier in this report, student-athlete 1's parents did not cooperate with the NCAA's investigation and, therefore, there was no opportunity to review financial records, which could have shed light on this issue. 

Translation: We have no hard evidence that Reggie Bush’s parents received any benefits from Lloyd Lake, but we believe the convicted felon who willfully tampered with a USC student-athlete anyways.

Committee Rationale – Finding B-1-a-(3) – Transportation to 2005 BCS Championship for student-athlete 1's family

The institution and the enforcement staff were in substantial disagreement with regard to the facts of this finding. It was the institution's position that "there is no basis upon which to conclude that (information in the finding) is substantially correct," citing the fact that the information supporting the finding is based on the testimony of agency partner A and the former brother-in-law and that there is no documentation regarding the purchase of the airline tickets. The committee finds that the violation occurred.

As set forth earlier in this report, the committee finds agency partner A credible. Moreover, the committee finds no reason to doubt the veracity of the former brother-in-law. 

Translation: We have no hard evidence that Lloyd Lake or his former brother-in-law paid for plane tickets for Reggie Bush’s family to attend the 2005 Orange Bowl but we believe the convicted felon who willfully tampered with a USC student-athlete anyways. We also believe his former brother-in-law, who “was mindful of not leaving a ‘paper trail’ and insisted the transaction be completed in cash” and would have thus been admitting to willfully aiding in the tampering of a USC student-athlete.

Committee Rationale – Finding B-1-a-(11) – Deposit of cash into student-athlete 1's banking account by agency partner A's former girlfriend

The institution and the enforcement staff were in disagreement with the facts of this finding. The institution's position was that there "is no basis to conclude that (the finding) is substantially correct," pointing to the fact that agency partner A's former girlfriend was not certain of the amount of the deposit and that agency partner A provided no corroborating records. The institution further maintained that there was no information showing that agency partner A's former girlfriend had student-athlete 1's account number, which, the institution contended, she would have needed to make a deposit into his account.

The committee finds that the violation occurred.

In making this finding, the committee relies on information provided by agency partner A and his former girlfriend… 

The committee found it persuasive that neither student-athlete 1 nor the institution could provide an alternative explanation as to how agency partner A's former girlfriend knew that student-athlete 1 banked at Washington Mutual.

Translation: We have no hard evidence that Lloyd Lake’s former girlfriend ever deposited money into Reggie Bush’s account but we believe the convicted felon who willfully tampered with a USC student-athlete anyways. We also believe his former girlfriend (who was only involved because the convicted felon was in prison at the time) who, if these allegations are true, admitted to willfully aiding in the tampering of a USC student-athlete. Furthermore, there is no possible way that the former girlfriend could have ever found out the Reggie Bush banked at Washington Mutual without depositing money into his account, because the name of the place where a person does their banking is one of the most highly guarded secrets a person could have (/sarcasm).

Ultimately, the NCAA has made it clear that despite their insistence that “the actions of these professional agents and their associates…struck at the heart of the NCAA’s Principle of Amateurism,” they are more concerned with continuing a cycle of stringing up scapegoats and punishing the wrong parties than truly tackling the problem of agents tampering with student-athletes.

USC is not innocent and deserves some form of punishment, but a FAIR form of punishment. Too much of the NCAA report is based solely on the word of – say it with me – a convicted felon who willfully tampered with a USC student-athlete, a man whose actions “threatened the efforts of the NCAA and its member institutions to sponsor and support amateur competition at the collegiate level” and violated the very principles the NCAA claims to hold so dear. The same man who will get off scott free despite his crimes.

(special thanks to several members of the WeAreSC.com forum community whose early analysis of NCAA report helped shape this posting, in particular 6DyNasTy6, from whom I gathered some more specific ideas)