The NCAA Finally Drops the Blade
Last night the weather dipped blow zero for probably (and hopefully) the last time this season. Tomorrow, SU finishes out its lousiest season in a long time. Today, the NCAA set the program back for years.
It stinks. Everyone I've talked to today felt like the punishment went much farther than they expected. SU is taking that position. I agree.
With SU's spring break, I've got some extra time that I'm thinking about spending on an annotated reading guide of the NCAA's 94-page report. Look for that in this space sometime this weekend, hopefully. Until then, I thought I'd give my initial thoughts.
First of all, the thing that depresses me most is the effect on the team's role in bolstering the Central New York community. Our winters are tough. April is the end of the tunnel. The basketball team's March exploits give us something to enjoy in winter's final weeks. The city is a happier place to be when SU is playing into the second week of the NCAA tournament. Syracuse is now much less likely to compete for Final Fours and Championships. The Orange are more likely to be battling just to make the tournament rather than expecting Sweet 16s as the annual bar for a more or less successful season. Ugh.
Jim Boeheim has always seemed to run the team like a professional program. He's not a father-figure to the guys. He's not deeply invested in their lives. He's not a player's coach. He wants to win basketball games. He wants his guys to do what it takes to stay eligible, but he's going to let other people worry about what it takes to get that done. SU has, perhaps belatedly, but apparently by the present time, put in an effective structure for keeping players eligible, academically and otherwise, so that Boeheim can stick to the X's and O's. The NCAA says Boeheim "did not promote an atmosphere of compliance." That doesn't surprise me. That doesn't seem to be his personality or leadership style. The NCAA wants "monitoring the program" for compliance to be part of a basketball coach's job description. Ideally, Boeheim would do that, but I think the NCAA goes way too far in laying so much blame at his feet. A 9-game suspension PLUS the statement itself that focuses on him is tough stuff. Syracuse as a program should have structures in place to keep its student athletes compliant so its basketball coach can coach basketball.
In fact, SU now does have those structures, and one of the good things about this insanely long process is it has given the university time to patch up those structures. This afternoon I was talking to someone who works in the academic support office, and she says there are incredible restrictions in place in their interactions with students. They have to log every interaction they have, and all interactions MUST be within their building, in a glass room (!). They are not allowed to even write on a student's paper. They are even restricted in the kinds of advice they can give students - nothing substantive so that the student-athlete's work remains entirely authentic. As a TA, I was thinking about the kinds of advice I gave to students for the midterm they are turning in this afternoon. Apparently, the extensive feedback I gave some of them via email and conversation would not be proper if I was working with a student athlete as an official tutor.
SU also has had for a long time an academic structure in place to deal with cheating. That structure was triggered in the 2012 case that is one of the violations. It dealt with the case, as far as I can tell, appropriately.
Syracuse has its own voluntary drug policy, which apparently it didn't follow to the full letter in dealing with marijuana cases, which is an NCAA violation, even though if a University doesn't have a drug policy and a student-athlete smokes marijuana, there is no structural consequence.
SU also self-reported most of these violations. It sat players whenever it was concerned about eligibility. It proactively punished itself this year. Blah blah blah, you know all this.
I believe:
1.) SU is not dirty. Or, at least, it's as dirty as an average school with similarly prominent basketball programs. I suspect if the NCAA looked at hard at every major conference program, SU would fall in the middle of the pack in terms of severity of violations.
2.) There was no extensive, institutional cover-up of any of these violations. SU has behaved with transparency.
3.) If there was a lack of control over these NCAA issues, it was never willful, on either Boeheim's part or the University's. Boeheim wasn't intentionally turning a blind eye. He just let someone else worry about it. And the University did worry about it, only they didn't do a great job until recently.
4.) In 2015, SU is cleaner - more compliant - than it ever has been before. The focused glare of the NCAA was more than enough to accomplish that.
5.) The punishment seems to be for a lot of little things rather than one big thing. Don't get me wrong, academic fraud is huge. But the YMCA stuff...the "improper benefits"...those could happen anywhere. Players smoking pot...that DOES happen everywhere. Boeheim being disinterested in the specifics of compliance...even perhaps being a pain in the neck PR-wise...that's all SU-specific. But the NCAA did not uncover a huge fraud or cheating system or anything else so substantially rotten.
Three scholarships taken away each year for four years - that is devastating. SU will also have to recruit with only one arm, as only two recruiters can travel on recruiting trips, rather than the usual four. I'd rather trade another year of post-season play to get back those things. Boeheim's suspension is more like an F-you to the old man, rather than anything that will hurt the program long term. But the other penalties DO hurt the program long term. It might take a REALLY long time for SU to get back to where it was the last 12 years. Like, more than a decade. It might never get back. Is that really what the NCAA should do in this specific case? It seems harsh to my (admittedly Orange) blood.
Anyway, I'm sure my thinking will continue to evolve. And I haven't talked about my increasing belief players should be paid...or at least allowed to get money for, say, refereeing a youth basketball game on their own time. Or the fact that the NCAA, as an organization, seems totally whack in almost everything they do. Or the incomprehensibility of taking away wins. I'll leave those points for others to make. For now, I'm going to go put on my SU sweatshirt and check the weather report. We might hit 40 any day now!
It stinks. Everyone I've talked to today felt like the punishment went much farther than they expected. SU is taking that position. I agree.
With SU's spring break, I've got some extra time that I'm thinking about spending on an annotated reading guide of the NCAA's 94-page report. Look for that in this space sometime this weekend, hopefully. Until then, I thought I'd give my initial thoughts.
First of all, the thing that depresses me most is the effect on the team's role in bolstering the Central New York community. Our winters are tough. April is the end of the tunnel. The basketball team's March exploits give us something to enjoy in winter's final weeks. The city is a happier place to be when SU is playing into the second week of the NCAA tournament. Syracuse is now much less likely to compete for Final Fours and Championships. The Orange are more likely to be battling just to make the tournament rather than expecting Sweet 16s as the annual bar for a more or less successful season. Ugh.
Jim Boeheim has always seemed to run the team like a professional program. He's not a father-figure to the guys. He's not deeply invested in their lives. He's not a player's coach. He wants to win basketball games. He wants his guys to do what it takes to stay eligible, but he's going to let other people worry about what it takes to get that done. SU has, perhaps belatedly, but apparently by the present time, put in an effective structure for keeping players eligible, academically and otherwise, so that Boeheim can stick to the X's and O's. The NCAA says Boeheim "did not promote an atmosphere of compliance." That doesn't surprise me. That doesn't seem to be his personality or leadership style. The NCAA wants "monitoring the program" for compliance to be part of a basketball coach's job description. Ideally, Boeheim would do that, but I think the NCAA goes way too far in laying so much blame at his feet. A 9-game suspension PLUS the statement itself that focuses on him is tough stuff. Syracuse as a program should have structures in place to keep its student athletes compliant so its basketball coach can coach basketball.
In fact, SU now does have those structures, and one of the good things about this insanely long process is it has given the university time to patch up those structures. This afternoon I was talking to someone who works in the academic support office, and she says there are incredible restrictions in place in their interactions with students. They have to log every interaction they have, and all interactions MUST be within their building, in a glass room (!). They are not allowed to even write on a student's paper. They are even restricted in the kinds of advice they can give students - nothing substantive so that the student-athlete's work remains entirely authentic. As a TA, I was thinking about the kinds of advice I gave to students for the midterm they are turning in this afternoon. Apparently, the extensive feedback I gave some of them via email and conversation would not be proper if I was working with a student athlete as an official tutor.
SU also has had for a long time an academic structure in place to deal with cheating. That structure was triggered in the 2012 case that is one of the violations. It dealt with the case, as far as I can tell, appropriately.
Syracuse has its own voluntary drug policy, which apparently it didn't follow to the full letter in dealing with marijuana cases, which is an NCAA violation, even though if a University doesn't have a drug policy and a student-athlete smokes marijuana, there is no structural consequence.
SU also self-reported most of these violations. It sat players whenever it was concerned about eligibility. It proactively punished itself this year. Blah blah blah, you know all this.
I believe:
1.) SU is not dirty. Or, at least, it's as dirty as an average school with similarly prominent basketball programs. I suspect if the NCAA looked at hard at every major conference program, SU would fall in the middle of the pack in terms of severity of violations.
2.) There was no extensive, institutional cover-up of any of these violations. SU has behaved with transparency.
3.) If there was a lack of control over these NCAA issues, it was never willful, on either Boeheim's part or the University's. Boeheim wasn't intentionally turning a blind eye. He just let someone else worry about it. And the University did worry about it, only they didn't do a great job until recently.
4.) In 2015, SU is cleaner - more compliant - than it ever has been before. The focused glare of the NCAA was more than enough to accomplish that.
5.) The punishment seems to be for a lot of little things rather than one big thing. Don't get me wrong, academic fraud is huge. But the YMCA stuff...the "improper benefits"...those could happen anywhere. Players smoking pot...that DOES happen everywhere. Boeheim being disinterested in the specifics of compliance...even perhaps being a pain in the neck PR-wise...that's all SU-specific. But the NCAA did not uncover a huge fraud or cheating system or anything else so substantially rotten.
Three scholarships taken away each year for four years - that is devastating. SU will also have to recruit with only one arm, as only two recruiters can travel on recruiting trips, rather than the usual four. I'd rather trade another year of post-season play to get back those things. Boeheim's suspension is more like an F-you to the old man, rather than anything that will hurt the program long term. But the other penalties DO hurt the program long term. It might take a REALLY long time for SU to get back to where it was the last 12 years. Like, more than a decade. It might never get back. Is that really what the NCAA should do in this specific case? It seems harsh to my (admittedly Orange) blood.
Anyway, I'm sure my thinking will continue to evolve. And I haven't talked about my increasing belief players should be paid...or at least allowed to get money for, say, refereeing a youth basketball game on their own time. Or the fact that the NCAA, as an organization, seems totally whack in almost everything they do. Or the incomprehensibility of taking away wins. I'll leave those points for others to make. For now, I'm going to go put on my SU sweatshirt and check the weather report. We might hit 40 any day now!
posted by Prof. A at 5:44 PM
2 Comments:
I only disagree with #1. Seems possible we went farther: Providing log-ins, etc. Not sure that's a difference in kind (seems like a difference in degree), but it does seem like a nefarious innovation.
Scholarship loss hurts the most. Obviously. But vacated loss count speaks most vividly to the passion that inflamed the committee. Thus investigation dragged on, and on, and on. Both sides pointing the finger on that. From here, hard to place blame. But easy to identify as an aggravating circumstance.
I am very unhappy with the whole thing. I feel sad. I dont feel especially surprised, though. More unlucky. This kind of thing--if not this exact thing--could happen to anybody.
The Fab Melo debacle was pretty nefarious. I read Christ Carlson's (Shout out SU '04 !) solid write-up on that incident. It doesn't seem like the three people involved acted under instruction from Gross or Boeheim or other superiors, but it does suggest they acted under pressure. Gross probably should've insisted, "We need to get Melo back on the court ASAP WITHOUT CHEATING THE SYSTEM!"
You can imagine how getting access to a players account would go from "I'm just making sure he is covering all his bases" to "I'm going to start responding to these emails for him" to "I'm going to start doing his work for him." Still, to me it is huge that they weren't doing this for everyone. Just Melo and three others. Wouldn't the NCAA have found evidence if this was the widespread norm?
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