Out here in the real world I have not talked with one person who views the NCAA as an honorable, consistent and credible entity. I believe, personally, that your reputation is so damaged that the NCAA can never recover. In short, y’all are in big trouble and you don’t have a clue.

yes I get that if not punished, selling these things opens the door to worse, but appropriate punishment is not suspensions. Think about this for a minute. What if the 5 players suspended were the entire offensive line? What if you are going into a big game and your QB who has a promising future in the NFL, gets blindsided because he has an inept line blocking for him. So he suffers a career ending injury because some kids sold THEIR OWN PROPERTY.

I’m sick of the NCAA rushing to suspensions when other punishments might be more appropriate. For instance, when you can establish what an item was sold for, why not fine the player the amount the item cost the university, plus the amount the item was sold for, plus an additional fine on top? This can be collected after the student graduates.

A year of eligibility can be taken away.

Scholarships can be removed for years already received. In other words, make the player pay back money for a year of education they received.

Boosters caught could be banned from NCAA events. In other words, they can’t go to the games.

The thing here is that suspending players hurts not only that player, but everybody else as well, especially the other, innocent players. Bowl game suspensions are the worst. The NCAA should do something about that right now. Create a rule that states suspension, except for the most egregious violations, will not take place during bowl games. Egregious being defined as things that actually break the law. How would you feel as a fan to buy tickets, pay for airline tickets, make reservations, etc. for a bowl game, then find out your team, or the other team now has some of it’s key players suspended. Now you aren’t getting what you paid for, since what you paid for was seeing your favorite team play it’s best game against an opponent playing it’s best game. I’m not talking about the lawyer’s definition of what you actually paid for. I’m talking about what a fan expects when they pay their hard earned cash for it. They certainly aren’t expecting to see a game between two teams, one of which is depleted by suspensions.

Of course, there can be a bright spot to this. I have a friend who was spared the agony of seeing the beat down his MSU Spartans took at the hands of Bama. He refused to pay to go see that game because he had to witness too many bowls where his team was depleted by suspensions, and he wasn’t going to do it again.

The idea of the NCAA accepting the explanation of “we didn’t know the rules” is ludicrous. The recent statement from the NCAA says:

“In relation to the decision last week involving rules violations with football student-athletes at Ohio State, several current student-athletes were interviewed as part of our fact-gathering process. They indicated they were not aware there was a violation and learned of the issue based on later rules education, which was confirmed by OSU through interviews and supporting documentation.”

This is contradicted by statements from Ohio State players, including Terrelle Pryor himself! “I already knew what I shouldn’t have done back two years ago.” Plus, anybody familiar with college football saw Georgia WR AJ Green get suspended by the NCAA at the beginning of the season for selling his jersey.

This is why the public has had such an adverse reaction to the NCAA ruling. Dan Wetzel’s column on the situation is informative:

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news;_ylt=AseMPzU2Pd_e1oM0blNNS0ocvrYF?slug=dw-pryor010311

Take the Enes Kanter situation you mentioned; he took expenses you deemed “excessive,” yet his intent was clearly to remain an amateur. He did not, at any point, intend to violate any of the NCAA’s “rules” it set out. Yet, those who did have such intentions (Cam Newton’s father, the Ohio State team and maybe even Selby), receive a punishment far less than that of Kanter.

The NCAA’s decision is clearly not in the kid’s best interest because it had led him into a false sense of hope by dragging out the process. By doing so, it cost his family millions of dollars (turning down the Turkish national team), all the while killing a child’s dream of suiting up and representing a higher institution of learning on the basketball court in the process. And might I ask, all over what? Some goofy and clearly archaic rule that states that a player can’t receive money for educational expenses? How petty!

The NCAA’s decision was further illogical because it failed to take into consideration anything but the letter of the rules. Fairness and logic should prevail over what it deems as “consistent” solely according to the rules. Rules should be in place to guide a process, not to define the process. Just because they feel justified in saying they are staying in accordance with their own rules, doesn’t mean that they are being consistent. Its blatantly obvious to anyone who subjectively looks at this situation (without taking into consideration by-laws put in place originally for situations with little to no relevance to Kanter’s) that there is an element of hypocrisy in the rules in place. That is what is not consistent.

The NCAA needs to worry less about its own rules (as nearly anybody outside of its committee would agree they are flawed) and more about what is reasonable (which is a much more intellectually honest way of looking at a situation; something a body representing universities should understand). Common sense should rule the day.

Please explain to UK fans the difference in the above statements. It doesn’t matter if money was received. The crux of the matter is that neither kid KNEW their father was negotiating. Why should the kid be punished if they didn’t KNOW? The NCAA took that stand with Newton, why can’t they take the same position with Kanter?