The short answer to the question posed in our title is not a no. It's a hell no!
But... the truth is, I don't give a fiddler's fuck one way or t'other. I surrendered any remaining interest in NCAA football about fifteen years ago. Leading up to that time, there was a long-running and heated race between our major universities, and the NCAA as governing body for their athletic programs, to see which could earn the most of my contempt. That race is over; they both lost.
The culminating event was the way that the NCAA "dealt with" the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky scandal. It would have been quite enough for the corrective actions taken by the university, even if those were too far after the fact. It would have been enough for those guilty of any crimes to have been tried and convicted by the Commonwealth under statute. Those reactions could not erase what happened, but it would have been sufficient as an appropriate response from those institutions. The NCAA's further punitive sanctions were purely theater; a supreme demonstration of institutional virtue signaling.
I had long suspected it, but this occasion finally confirmed my belief that the NCAA is run by a pack of greedy buffoons. These are life forms spawned in that toxic petri dish of academia, which they presume to govern. Well, the athletic programs anyway. Ostensibly. What, if anything, did their sanctions in this case have to do with athletics? These were not events that happened on the field. Why should all of those players' accomplishments from 1998-2011 be erased? What advantage did any of them gain from these events occurring within their program?
Well, we have an answer to that. Sort of. At the time, NCAA President Mark Emmert stated that the sanctions were, "not to be just punitive, but to make sure the university establishes an athletic culture and daily mindset in which football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people." Nurturing? I'm sorry, what the fuck does that have to do with football? And further, do you really believe that Mark Emmert, or any other NCAA official, is sincerely interested in educating these young men? Was any of that 60 million dollar fine levied upon the university directed to education? And the Big 10 Conference, chiming in with a "Yeah! What he said!", to the tune of another 13 million? Translating from between the lines, it reads as "You better tell those fucking jocks to get their minds right!"
I'll tell you what the NCAA has become. It's very far afield from the original charter. Ironically, we find one of the most biting illustrations from the same year that the Penn State scandal broke. Go back to the year 2011, on the program South Park, season fifteen, episode five: The Crack Baby Athletic Association. It is a parody, no doubt; yet it mirrors precisely what the NCAA is in practice. They still mouth allegiance to a creed that their actions betray. The money raked in from NCAA Football, by the association and the big conferences, is somewhere on an order of a billion dollars annually. Mind you that a significant number of those member institutions are state universities.
The parade of greed and ineptitude on display from the NCAA was enough to turn me sour. Add to that, you have men who are rewarded with multi-million-dollar contracts to coach what are, I will remind you, are amateur athletes. Because according to the NCAA, they must be amateurs, lest they should lose their eligibility. The athletes are physically whoring themselves in exchange for that piece of paper their university will hand them, the very minute that their NCAA eligibility expires. The coaches are worth millions and the players? They get a deluxe crack baby orphanage.
Ok, I will admit. There are some institutions which may have provided financial or other material rewards to players. I won't say that it has never happened. These amounts are miniscule in the grander scope of monies pouring into the sport. Those monies pouring into the sport, at both collegiate and professional levels, are increasingly coming in the form of advertising dollars from online betting services. Directly or indirectly, those dollars are making their way to the NCAA.
Which is why, my friends, I contend that the U of M did not win that game. I think that what happened last Saturday was something more like this...
Somebody at "Sportsbet.com", or any such, has a hotline to the head of officiating in each major conference. About a fraction of a second after "Final" was flashed on the television screen, the head of officiating for the Big 10 Conference found his phone lit up with a simple, two-word command: FIX IT. That official in turn was in contact with the head of officials on the field. Probably less than thirty seconds later. I won't hazard a guess as to who among them hatched the ridiculous "clock" story, but it didn't take very long at all for that to become the official script. Yep. That's our story and we're sticking to it. We don't care what you saw. This is how it happened.
I had no dog in this hunt. Still don't. I'm not carrying anyone else's water for them. I am, however, as a native Buckeye obliged to offer this to all the U of M fans.
I still think you're number one
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