NCAA recruiting volations and logic

On November 20th, the NCAA suspended Bruce Pearl of Tennessee for the first eight games of the SEC conference play. Until that point in time, he will be able to coach the team during games and lead practices. So, when is the beginning of the SEC season to cause the suspension to begin? Try January 8th.

In the meantime, Pearl will have plenty of time to teach his system, coach the players, and make certain that the assistants know exactly who to play when. Also, he gets to lead practices and implement game plans - he just can't lead practices on game days. This led to Bruce Pearl uttering the following quote: "I have been a very public advocate for playing by the rules," Pearl said Friday. "When you don't play by the rules, these are the things that can happen. So while these penalties that we've self-imposed and now the commissioner's imposing are unprecedentedly strong, it sets a very high standard and a high standard that I agreed to."

Let me get this straight: not being able to coach the team for a total of eight days in a span from January 8th until February 5th is a strict penalty? Especially when the coach can lead practice on every other day and see to it that the game plan he comes up with is implemented for the opponent? Seems to me that this is nothing more than a token slap on the wrist.  At first glance, this appears to be a strong punishment if one focuses strictly on the eight games. However, in reality, this is barely a punishment at all.

If the NCAA and the conferences were serious about cleaning up recruiting violations and improper benefits to 'student' athletes, they would suspend these coaches for entire seasons and put crippling sanctions on the programs they coach. Instead, typically the punishments are nothing more than something to appease the other schools while chiding the violators for being careless enough to get caught.

It is, in a way, pathetic that one can almost safely assume that every major school in the major college sports (football and basketball) is doing something underhanded in order to gain an edge. Seemingly each week, there are new reports and scandals.  This over-saturation of scandals and violations has done nothing more than to desensitize those that follow college sports. At this point, I would be shocked to find out that a major school in a major conference was running their program in a legitimate fashion.

College athletics is supposed to be about amateur players playing for a love for the game and trying to follow their dream of making it to the professional ranks. Instead, it is nothing more than a cash machine for their schools. And this is not going to change unless the NCAA gets serious about punishing any violations of the rules in place.