LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Somebody has to go to jail. I heard that in a movie, I think. That’s the expression that comes to mind when you stop to consider the repeat offender situation the University of Louisville men’s basketball program has gotten itself into with the NCAA.
The facts are what they are. An adidas executive breaking off money to pay high school kids to go to its schools and sign with the company down the road. Assistant coaches at Louisville alleged to have given money to a recruit’s family, even being in the room when the scheme was discussed (and, unfortunately for them, being caught by FBI surveillance).
Louisville officials were quick to point out that the NCAA Notice of Allegations the school received Monday is only that, a list of allegations, and they are right. But at this point, come on. Jim Gatto, Merl Code and Christian Dawkins all have been convicted on wire fraud charges and sentenced to prison. (All are appealing.)
The facts of this case haven’t changed a whole lot since the FBI investigation was made public nearly three years ago.
What has changed is just about everything else. Except this: From an NCAA standpoint, somebody still has to go to “jail,” and those three defendants don’t fit the bill, because they aren’t coaches, players or institutions.
So what shapes up in this case between U of L, repeat violator – in virtually a span of weeks, in 2017 – and the NCAA, all this time down the road and counting, is a fascinating exercise in how justice is handed down.
In fact, what justice even looks like in this case is an interesting debate.
As U of L pointed out, correctly, at the beginning of a conference call with reporters Monday, the school has done just about everything it could reasonably have been expected to do in response to the series of scandals that made it what many saw as a poster child for what was wrong with college basketball.
But now that the NCAA has come to exact its pound of flesh, all the bodies are gone. The world has kept turning.
University leadership got rid of the president who was in charge, then got rid of his replacement. The chairman of the board of trustees was replaced, and now that replacement has been replaced. They fired their Hall of Fame basketball coach, then went to court to avoid paying him more money. The guy who replaced him was replaced at the end of the season. They not only fired the athletic director but fired his whole family.
There is virtually nobody left in a key leadership position who had anything to do with any of that scandal. I guess they could go get sports information director Kenny Klein or head trainer Fred Hina, but those guys didn’t do anything wrong.
The university took down its 2013 NCAA championship banner and 2012 NCAA Final Four banner the very day its NCAA appeal was denied. It has endured scholarship reductions. U of L invites NCAA enforcement officials to meet not only with its current basketball staff but its football staff, too, on a yearly basis. The new leadership rolled out a list of things it is doing to promote compliance.
Short of bringing the banners out and burning them in a public ceremony, what else can the NCAA do to punish past transgressions?
And the NCAA, with its clunky penalty options -- vacating past victories, banning current players and coaches who had nothing to do with any of it from future NCAA Tournaments -- doesn’t seem to have options that fit.
So what does it do? Does it let this aggression stand? And with other schools (Kansas, N.C. State, Arizona, etc.) also in its crosshairs, does the NCAA not have to do something with Louisville?
Within its notice of allegations is a list of prior NCAA run-ins by the Louisville men’s basketball program. It encompasses different decades and administrations. The NCAA sees at the same time an institution that has in the past 25 years repeatedly run afoul of its rules while, in the past several years, completely overhauling its leadership.
In some ways, this Notice of Allegations itself was a victory for Louisville, which through its actions and collaboration with the NCAA escaped the most serious of Level I allegations while drawing only one Level I charge (the most serious) and three Level II allegations – one aimed at its former head coach and one at two former assistants.
Still, it is hard to see Louisville, in its repeat offender situation, not being hit with something, and probably something significant. The NCAA has all but done away with its death penalty in recent reforms. Anyone talking about death penalty now is off base. But postseason bans are on the table. Two years seems to be the going rate for the worst violators, and yet, in Louisville’s case, how can that be justified beyond just the notion that “somebody has to go to jail?”
In fact, it would be ludicrous for the NCAA to punish the current coaches and players, who had zero to do with any of the alleged violations, for transgressions committed in the not-even-recent past. In reality, these are the same transgressions that high-profile coaches at other schools have been accused of, while continuing to play in NCAA Tournaments despite them.
The challenge, then, for U of L, is to try to come up with an agreement that allows the NCAA to save face while also exacting some measure of justice to the institution.
Louisville AD Vince Tyra said on Monday, referring to a question over when and how the school would decide whether to proceed under the old NCAA infractions process or a new process, “I think that the notion that the Rice Commission came out and developed a new process … and the people involved with it are pretty interesting to me. Under one of the principles, I guess, and I'll take some liberties here, that individuals should be punished harder than the institutions. Some of them don't have to pay the price as much and I think that's what's intriguing to me as we watch this new process play out.”
To argue that individuals should pay the price more than the school would be rolling the dice a bit. But I’d suggest if Louisville is willing to roll the dice, it serve up the NCAA something even stronger.
NCAA punishments try to reach back into the past and right wrongs that can never be righted. And its probation process is laughable. It assigns repeat-violator status and promises enhanced penalties, but as the situation with Louisville shows, if a school cleans house, the NCAA is left looking a day late and a dollar short if it tries to come in and punish a whole new regime.
Instead, what is called for here is a suspended sentence. The NCAA and Louisville should agree to a three-year postseason ban for men’s basketball – and then suspend it. Louisville’s probation, which currently runs out in June of 2021, should be extended for a period of four years. And if at any point the men’s basketball program commits a Level I or Level II violation, that three-year ban goes into effect, along with any penalty carried by the new violation.
This is the only way to punish an institution, ensure hyper-compliance moving forward, and use the penalty structure to promote desired behavior. It takes into account the university’s strong action, but requires continued vigilance.
It would be a hammer hanging over the head of any program. It also would allow current coaches and players to have an opportunity to compete, so long as they remained compliant.
Regardless of what it does, the NCAA needs to do things differently. Its current system of penalties and enforcement has done nothing to stop programs from skirting its rules.
If the NCAA believes Louisville to be a rogue program that will only be back in front of the NCAA judge in a few years, then it is only a matter of time before the hammer falls. And if in fact the school is changing its ways, then that hammer will not have been applied needlessly.
Copyright 2020 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
