College basketball can be entertaining on TV and profitable for schools that play it at a high level. It provides opportunity for players, walk-on or scholarshipped. It can raise students’ spirits on campus and pry open the wallets of alumni.
We’re not
here today to tamp down enjoyment, just to remind about the river of sleaze
that has run beneath the sport since Dr. Naismith blew up the first ball. The
latest incident involves Southern Miss and its former coach, Donnie Tyndall.
From Inside Higher Ed:
Showing how the pressures of Division I college
athletics can breed academic fraud far beyond the walls of a single campus, the
university’s basketball staff completed more than 100 assignments in online
courses for recruits attending two-year institutions.
Dissecting:
Southern Miss administrators were not going to allow Tyndall to bring in JUCO
players who didn’t have a diploma or enough transferrable credits. So he sent
assistants on the road to game the system. Since having the athletes go to
class and learn was out of the question, online courses were the ticket. In
some cases, Southern Miss paid for those courses. The trail of metadata is
fascinating. One athlete in Florida supposedly submitted 30 psychology
assignments from Jamaica. One assignment was completed by a graduate
assistant’s mother.
The NCAA
Committee on Infractions threw the book at Southern Miss. Will it similarly
cripple North Carolina’s famed basketball program, under a similar investigation?
Likely not. CBS would pitch a fit. From Eleanor Myers, a Temple law professor
who oversaw the Southern Miss case:
“We’ve been focused very much on academic
fraud over the last year. But it’s hard for me to say if it’s on the rise.”
It’s not on
the rise. It’s always been there, because coaches who lose too many games get
fired.
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