AD Jim Sterk writes op-ed questioning precedent set by NCAA following Missouri's punishment despite cooperation
No doubt about it, the NCAA dropped the hammer on Missouri following an investigation into academic misconduct at the school.
We all know the story by now, a school-issued tutor assisted in academic work for some Missouri student-athletes spanning multiple sports but it was the school that notified the NCAA upon this discovery and following the NCAA’s investigation, the term “exemplary” was used by the NCAA to describe Missouri’s cooperation with the investigation.
Taking that into consideration, it is odd that schools that refuse to cooperate, such as North Carolina which recently had the NCAA investigation into academic misconduct, get completely off the hook. The logic there is baffling to many, including Missouri AD Jim Sterk.
In a recently published op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sterk outlines the biggest issue he has with the NCAA’s decision to ban the football team from postseason play and hand down recruiting restrictions for violations that had nothing to do with recruiting.
What are the expectations of athletic leaders when individuals break the rules?
A sanction should be designed to change future behavior. Based on this decision, what exactly is expected from all of us in the future?
The penalties that our program is now appealing were surprising in severity, particularly after investigators praised our “exemplary” cooperation throughout the joint investigation. Since the announcement, journalists, community members and Missouri leaders, and even our athletic competitors, have expressed puzzlement that integrity and truthfulness turned out to be a poor strategy.
In our case, we acted swiftly once bad behavior was discovered. We self-reported, we cooperated, we took responsibility, and we took further action to ensure our employees and students understood our “Win it Right” culture.
We removed the employee who acted alone in creating a tutoring violation, and we held 12 student-athletes accountable. We focused the consequences on those involved, but years later, the penalties delivered by the Infractions Committee did not.
We won’t know the result of Missouri’s appeal for some time, likely several months, but it’s fair to say Missouri is coming off as the sympathetic one when it comes to this case. Unfortunately, that seems to par for the course when it comes to the NCAA these days.
Missouri got railroaded plain and simple. The NCAA needs to go the way of the dodo bird. I think the power five and group of five conferences should pull out and create a new organization.
You still need rules and punishment. Just because you provided all the evidence against you doesn’t mean they should take it easy on you. Is it comparable to NC or Miami? No way. They should have both been hammered. But because you screw up with those doesn’t mean you screw up every other offender from now on.
But even if you want to punish mizzou, the punishment should fit the crime and CLEARLY this was an overreach. The fines and 3 year probation should have been the whole punishment, instead they tacked on cuts to scholarships, recruiting restrictions, AND a bowl ban. It’s truly absurd. Mizzou didn’t have anything to do with this rogue tutor who decided it was easier to just do the athletes homework instead of teach them.
Not to mention being forced to vacate wins… they threw every punishment they could think of at Mizzou.
The punishment should fit the crime and this doesn’t. The NC situation showed the college itself was in on the academic fraud yet no punishment. Mizzu had one person acting as a lone wolf. NC was the opposite of open and helpful. The NCCA has never been fair or equitable when handing down punishments. NC & Miami lied and received no punishment while Mizzu was honest and got hammered. So the lesson is lie.
Precisely
There was not evidence against them, that’s the whole injustice here. Stop repeating the original unfounded suspicion in this. If there was a booster or staffer who asked for the cheater to act she wouldn’t have said she did it on her own, and the NCAA wouldn’t have published that nobody associated with Missouri was involved.
That’s just part of being the redheaded stepchild. At the NCAA was a farmer he’s got prime livestock and he’s got his nags but we’re just a rented mule
rented mule = ass for hire?
It’s hard not to look at us that way. Another farm metaphor: NC = cash cow. No reason to block the udder from a cash cow when you’re the farmer (NCAA) and only care about money money money.
What is most appalling to me is that in the NC case…the foundation of the violations were directly contradictory to academics which is EXACTLY what the NCAA is supposed to uphold over anything and everything.
The correct way to look at this is to STOP believing the NCAA is ANYTHING BUT a business. It is a moneymaking venture pure and simple, and gets special consideration, eg gov tax exempt status for one, and does what it pleases.
The RIGHT WAY to deal with the NCAA from now on is to circle the wagons, DENY DENY DENY and DO NOT give them ANYTHING they can use against you, in fact it’s very much just like dealing with the police.
10 days since anyone wrote any thing concerning Mizzou. Let me go see if it’s just us..
10 days since anyone wrote any thing concerning Mizzou. Let me go see if it’s just us.. Nope it’s as I thought . just about everybody had something in the last day or so but not ud
You beat me to this observation.
TWO FRICKIN WEEKS AND YOU GUYS GOT NOTHING ON MU? WTF!-!!
I don’t know all of the exact details, but basically what missouri did here is about the exact same thing that FSU pulled almost a decade ago. They got caught and the NCAA called it the largest academic cheating scandal/fraud in college athletics of all time. They had to fire Bobby Bowden as their head football coach, amongst others. They had to retroactively give up something like 2 or 3 seasons worth of wins in multiple sports, not to mention the sanctions and lack of post season play for several years. They got hid harder than Missouri has, and yet they were one of the big boys, the power players in NCAA sports, but none of that saved them. A lot of us in the state wanted them to get the death penalty but that didn’t happen and we felt at the time that FSU got off lightly. By comparison Missouri is getting a slap on the wrist. I’m not condoning anything that went down with North Carolina here, but stop with the woe is us rhetoric or the act like Missouri is getting railroaded. You guys had a tutor cheating for players across multiple sports, that exactly what FSU did as well and they had to fire their greatest coach in school history as a result.
No, Not AT ALL the same case at all as FSU. I would elaborate, but this article is over 2-weeks old and it’s like pouring water on a dead plant.