<p>I would not expect that Mitchell will have any problems with anyone outside the upper administration - as bad as this incident was, we did not HAVE recruiting violations, or academic issues, or any of the other things that typically plague big football programs. I know some on here will say “none that have been discovered yet” but even with all that has been going on and with everyone with a bad story to tell coming out of the woodwork, we still haven’t had those issues. This is a school that graduates a huge number of athletes, more than any other public school (if I recall correctly), and produces a lot of academic all-Americans, so I am not sure how we can concentrate more on academics. Plus, I think it likely that any players prone to unsavory behavior are going to be desperately trying to transfer rather than live under a microscope. If Mitchell finds any problems it will be outside the athletic department with the people responsible for Clery act reporting and similar issues.</p>
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<p>I can’t post the link to the blog, but the “few” include the Penn State Football Letterman’s Club. They issued an impassioned statement which insists that it was the NCAA which “tarnished” the program – apparently ignoring everything that happened before last week – and that Penn State football was doing things “the right way” all along.</p>
<p>I think it must be very frustrating to see that even if you think you’re doing it the right way, and really are doing it the right way in most respects (recruiting, etc.), the actions of a few people at the top can bring the whole edifice crashing down. There must be some Penn State football players wondering why they didn’t go somewhere else where they could have had a Cadillac.</p>
<p>[Penn</a> State Letterman’s Club Releases Statement - Black Shoe Diaries](<a href=“Penn State Letterman's Club Releases Statement - Black Shoe Diaries”>Penn State Letterman's Club Releases Statement - Black Shoe Diaries)</p>
<p>I think the football alum were highly offended by Emmert’s assertion that Penn State football had chosen to ignore academics in favor of the program. Emmert himself, only a year ago, was praising PSU for its graduation rate (and many of the players have “real” majors , not basketweaving) and emphasis on academics. To have participated in your college activity of choice, done well in your field, held yourself with honor and THEN have a third party publicly denounce what you’ve done as inadequate and erase it would be hard to take quietly. I don’t blame them for issuing a statement, and I don’t see where they are in denial about the crimes or admins complicity in covering them up.</p>
<p>Still waiting for the uproar and NCAA sanctions against Montana. Truly surprised that in the wake of the PSU sanctions that it does not even seem to have traction.</p>
<p>The Problem: </p>
<p>A previously referenced article suggested that the Penn State scandal resulted from group think. The entire, nonsensical, college athletics system is based on group think. Given that the mission of colleges and universities is education, and that the majority of Division I offer (far) more athletic than academic scholarships, a visitor from Mars may fairly conclude that we are a nation of idiots. </p>
<p>How does it start:</p>
<p>The Offer</p>
<p>So, we have excellent universities soliciting/courting students who struggle to meet, and sometimes fail to meet, the minimum NCAA admission standards; for an average high school student around 700 on math and critical reading (combined). Those students, if they play football, may be choosing between, for example, Texas and USC. I don’t know a ton about Texas and USC but I know they are fine academic institutions with challenging admission standards (and if our guy plays hoop he may be choosing between Duke, Carolina, and UCLA). I don’t know much about this SATs eitherm but I know that 700 on one section is very good and 700 on two sections is not. Some schools, for sure, apply standards higher than the NCAA minimums, most (but not all) of those schools raise the bar only slightly (feeling very good about raising the bar at all).</p>
<p>I don’t think top tier, or middle tier, academic schools are designed to educate remedial students. Actually, I am sure they are not. But here is what they are thinking:</p>
<p>That kid can run and jump. Have you seen him jump? Man, that boy can flat out play. He is carved out of stone, benches 225 15 times, the boy’s only 19! He’s a wreck academically, of course; he should be in community college, or learning job skills, but wouldn’t it be great if we beat Oklahoma (or ND). We should admit him. We have to admit him. God I hope he accepts our offer. Can you have a few of those pretty girls from the dance team conduct his campus tour? They’ll take care of him.</p>
<p>He Accepts</p>
<p>Having accepted students academically unprepared for college, and spectacularly unprepared for study at an elite university, an academic plan must be implemented. The typical plan has two parts. The first part involves a procedural gimmick that would make LBJ blush. By providing early registration for athletes, schools can create athlete only courses. Once we have a course with all athletes (no normals) we can feel free to test our “students” on the number of quarters in a half, and the point value of a three point basket. While actual students slug it out to earn degrees, and to learn, athetes receive easy A s in classes on nothing. The second part, and this can get a bit messy, is strong- arming faculty members in core courses to “do the right thing” and to give a kid a chance by changing that F to a C. Our solution is two parts eligibility insurance and one part public relations (not only is Johnny tearing up the ole SEC, he is also mastering his academics). It is all, of course, a massive collective fraud. </p>
<p>Here is the thought process:</p>
<p>That boy is even better than we thought, we need to keep him eligible. Man he is going to get torn up in clases here. I am not sure if the fella can read or write at all. Can we get him in Stanley’s English 101; Stanley knows what to do. We will let him register early for all of his classes and tell him which profs to take, you know, fellows who know how important he is to what we are doing here.</p>
<p>And if we need to talk to a few of those egg headed professors that turn on us after add/drop we can have Coach give them a call. Not a man or woman on this campus going to stand up to Coach. No sir, that won’t be a problem.</p>
<p>See the problem. The culture of worship, displaced values, group think? Can you imagine what happens when our star athlete gets into an altercation with a student, or, and this is the ugliest, when a date goes horribly wrong? What is a female student to do when she feels she has been violated by a person to whom rules don’t apply?</p>
<p>I have been involved in athletics my entire life, as a player and a coach. I am not sure why sports are so important to people who don’t play the game, but the current culture of athletic worship defies logic and reason.</p>
<p>It is easy to fix. But the people with the power to fix it have a financial disincentive to do so. Sad.</p>
<p>I agree cosmic fish…I was never a “fan” of the NCAA getting involved into the criminal punishment arena and at Penn State it didn’t even involve a playe and they mucked around in it. Now they have set their precedence. Now they must do something with Montana State. If they don’t…and if I were Penn State, I’d be right back at the NCAA renegotiating the terms of the settlement. Jeesh either the NCAA DOES get involved in criminal activities or the NCAA DOESN’T get involved in criminal stuff…they can’t have it both ways and they knew they were treading in uncharted territory with Penn State. Well they are in up to their necks now.</p>
<p>“we did not HAVE recruiting violations,”</p>
<p>Penn State had the dirtiest recruiting in the history of college athletics. We already know that - the former Professor Emeritus’ out-of-town, and out-of-state recruiting efforts. No one at the NCAA ever imagined that football recruiting would be a cover for child sex trafficking.</p>
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<p>I don’t believe the NCAA has gotten involved with Florida A&M’s fiasco either. They had one of their marching band members killed in a hazing incident…</p>
<p>Is marching band an NCAA sport?</p>
<p>No, but if you knew anything about Historically Black Colleges and Universities you’d know that the marching band is a BIG part of football gameday at those schools. Those marching bands often travel with the teams to their big “classics” that the teams play each year…</p>
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Stats21, I really appreciate your humor!</p>
<p>You have hit the nail on the head. So much of the criticism of the sports culture has been justified by saying it exists everywhere in this country, and at other universities. So what? That doesn’t make it any more sane.</p>
<p>But, again, money has its own rights in this country. Outsource jobs? Of course! We will make more money, no one can fault us for that. Does it mean thousands out of work here? Not our problem; we have to take care of the money.</p>
<p>After the late 2008 financial meltdown, with people getting laid off left and right, the country scrambling to get back on its feet, in January 2009 Microsoft announced it would lay off up to 5,000 people, or about five percent of its total workforce. Why? Because they only had revenues of $16.6 billion in the quarter, a two percent increase but $900 million lower than it had expected. They had to take care of the money.</p>
<p>So the odds of money-making sports being segregated from universities is practically nil.</p>
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I don’t recall the NCAA, the body explicitly responsible for investigating and prosecuting such claims, making even a hint of an allegation that what you say is true, and they certainly have had the opportunity to make such a claim.</p>
<p>Jeesh, no need to be snooty. I do know about the marching bands and the drum corps, etc. My question is this…do these bands sign agreements to be under the umbrella of the NCAA? Or is there another umbrella orgnaization on the collegiate level for these bands, their competitions, road trips, etc? And has that group done anything re the death due to hazing.</p>
<p>Even if they participate in the games as halftime shows etc, how would the NCAA have a say in what they don if the bands are not having agreement with the NCAA.</p>
<p>Penn state and its football program are part of the NCAA, so must abide by their decisions. But a marching band, even if they are “part of the festivities” what power would the NCAA contractually have? I am not saying the shouldn’t, but could they say, ban the band from marching at games? How can they penalize an entity thats not officially part of their organization?</p>
<p>I hope that is clear enough for everyone</p>
<p>“I don’t recall the NCAA, the body explicitly responsible for investigating and prosecuting such claims, making even a hint of an allegation that what you say is true, and they certainly have had the opportunity to make such a claim.”</p>
<p>It’s so dirty, they don’t even have a rule for such. We know that Sandusky took kids on trips where he was recruiting.</p>
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That certainly has not stopped them so far.</p>
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Yes… and? If you want to claim that it constitutes child sex trafficking, that is an issue for the courts, not the NCAA (although again, that would not stop them). If you want to claim that it somehow constitutes a recruiting violation, please inform me how the NCAA should address it - or better yet, inform them. I think, under the circumstances, that if the NCAA thought that there was a real recruiting violation in Sandusky’s activities that they would have mentioned it by now in an attempt to bolster their justification for action, something that they already had to explicitly spell out in the sanctions because it was so shaky.</p>
<p>Still waiting for action on Montana…</p>
<p>Whoops not Montana State…sorry, I had Bozeman on my mind regarding something totally different when I typed post 7787.</p>
<p>Regarding Montana and NCAA sanctions- Im not in Missoula but the sports section of my local paper does occasionally report on Montana FB. Montana fired their head coach and the AD and voluntarily reduced FB scholarships and practice sessions. They have instituted assault prevention/reporting and counseling programs and a few other programs. It is my understanding that the NCAA encourages programs to self report violations and propose sanctions as well as measures to insure violations wont recur in the future.</p>
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<p>It is indeed a problem, and few schools do it differently. However, teams are not universally loaded with students who enter and leave college with the same lacking skills. Since you mentioned Texas, the story of Vince Young, the remarkable QB of Texas, and his poor scores on the Wonderlic test made plenty of headlines. </p>
<p>However, not every athlete on a team is cut from the same cloth:</p>
<p>[Kalen</a> Thornton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalen_Thornton]Kalen”>Kalen Thornton - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>xiggi–don’t leave out</p>
<p>Sam Acho</p>
<p>St Marks–UT–Arizona Cardinals</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/arizonas-brilliant-talented-olb-acho-set-up-for-big-sophomore-season/2012/08/02/gJQAdo06SX_story.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/arizonas-brilliant-talented-olb-acho-set-up-for-big-sophomore-season/2012/08/02/gJQAdo06SX_story.html</a></p>
<p>[MackBrown-TexasFootball.com</a> - Official website of the Texas Longhorns - Texas Football](<a href=“http://www.mackbrown-texasfootball.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/acho_sam00.html]MackBrown-TexasFootball.com”>http://www.mackbrown-texasfootball.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/acho_sam00.html)</p>