Do you hate the way the NCAA does business? Do you think that some of the things that the organization does make no sense? Do you need another reason to dislike it? If you answered "yes" to all of these questions, then the latest story involving the NCAA is for you.
Earlier this week, about 500 pages worth of previously-sealed documents from a defamation lawsuit that was filed by former USC assistant football coach Todd McNair against the NCAA were released. McNair was the subject of an NCAA investigation involving Reggie Bush a few years back that resulted in Bush being stripped of his Heisman Trophy and the Trojans being subjected to a series of sanctions. So many of the documents featured private emails exchanged between members of the NCAA's infractions committee. And while you'd think that a lot of them would be boring, run-of-the-mill emails—and many of them were—there were also quite a few that featured NCAA employees discussing the USC scandal as if they were college football fans as opposed to a committee put together to hand out fair punishments.
In one email, NCAA Coordinator of Appeals Rodney Uphoff questions USC for hiring Lane Kiffin in 2010. In another, committee member Roscoe Howard says punishing USC is "a very easy call for me" based on the hiring of Kiffin. And at one point, Uphoff even compares the evidence against USC to the evidence against Oklahoma City bombing suspect Terry Nichols.
"This evidence in this [Bush] case is, for example, markedly stronger than in the OKC bombing case, which was built entirely on circumstantial evidence," he wrote in an email sent to fellow committee members. "In fact, there was no direct evidence that Nichols was ever involved in the bombing plot."
Uh, what?
Reading through the emails and seeing how the NCAA infractions committee operates is kind of like seeing how sausage is made. Only somehow, way worse. Because while most people kind of just assume that the NCAA doesn't have a clue, it sucks to have that confirmed by emails that illustrate just how inept the organization can be when it comes to dishing out punishments. And sadly, it's yet another reason not to trust the NCAA.
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[via Sporting News]
