… judge that Syracuse University has misbehaved.
I guess they would know.
Read the hilarious everything plus the kitchen sink list of violations that these two wise men of the university athletics scene perceived within the Syracuse program here.
It would take an Ionescu – or a Molière ? – to capture the absurd convolutions in this NCAA decision, with Hypocrite #1 sternly determining the proper punishment for Hypocrite #2…
But let’s not go there. Let’s instead enjoy some highlights:
Syracuse had a written [drugs] policy; however, the head basketball coach and athletics director admitted they did not follow the policy. The athletics director said the department followed an “unwritten policy” because the written policy was confusing. As a result, basketball students who tested positive on more than one occasion were not withheld from practice and games, as the written policy directed.
One, two. When you can’t count, things get confusing!
These guys could count high – like, up to a million in salary and shit… But the lower end of the scale… (UPDATE: Sorry: Two million.)
Syracuse discovered and self-reported 10 violations in this case, which primarily involved men’s basketball but also football. The self-reported violations, dating back to 2001, include academic misconduct, extra benefits, the failure to follow its drug testing policy and impermissible booster activity. The other violations found included impermissible academic assistance and services, the head basketball coach’s failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance and monitor his staff, and the school’s lack of control over its athletics program.
Well, that says it all, doesn’t it?
And it says it all for most other big-time athletics programs.
Sometimes shit happens and the school ethicist has to resign. But most of the time most of the programs look exactly like Syracuse.
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Syracuse/Basketball: The legend continues.
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Okay. One more thing. UD wonders how Syracuse faculty – even students? – feel about the man who earns by far the highest salary on campus also running – for years and years – a program so filthy that even the NCAA had to notice. UD suspects no one cares.
Or worse: It seems to UD that Americans admire slimy winners – Ira Rennert, Donald Trump…
But it’s not just Americans. It seems to be universal. Russians absolutely adore Vladimir Putin.
Syracuse to Jim Boeheim: Kick me again, Master! (“Syracuse loves basketball more than life itself, and Boeheim probably more than basketball…”)
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And there’s more! UD‘s pal Dave sends her this absolutely wonderful description of the way online courses work in the athletics program. As you know, UD has long called online courses the salvation of university athletics programs, especially now with the Independent Study scam on everyone’s radar… And you wanna know why? Read and learn. Learn how Coach Boeheim earns two million dollars every year.
[A]thletics staffers were actively posing as basketball players, logging into their university accounts, and reading and sending emails to professors as if they were the players.
No student! No muss, no fuss!
A Deadspin writer summarizes:
Rather than requiring the players hand his assignment to a tutor, getting it back completed, and turning it into his professor, Orange players could stay out of things altogether and let the tutors just pretend to be them at every step.
And it never occurred to any of those professors all those years… I wonder why not.
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More boys in the band.
West Virginia was placed on two years’ probation for 360 infractions in 14 sports in its speakeasy. For all this, though, exactly one person was punished — an assistant women’s gymnastics coach. Gymnastics! Assistant! Crack down on a women’s sport! Hey, now that’ll get all those assistants in football and basketball to straighten up and fly right.
Not only that, but the director in charge of the Mountaineer speakeasy, Oliver Luck, was himself not implicated. No. Instead, he moved on — are you ready for this? — to the NCAA, where he is now executive vice president of regulatory affairs.
LOL.
March 6th, 2015 at 8:28PM
“UD wonders how Syracuse faculty – even students? – feel about the man who earns by far the highest salary on campus also running – for years and years – a program so filthy that even the NCAA had to notice. UD suspects no-one cares.”
What do we feel? I don’t know, UD. What did GWU faculty feel when they learned that their employer had been fiddling the US News statistics so brazenly that they had to be thrown out of the rankings entirely for a while?
Embarrassed? Weary of the whole pantomime that so often is contemporary academia? But also personally helpless to do much about it? And determined, at least, to try to keep their own little corners as clean as possible, even in the face of corporate idiocy and greed and cynicism?
This is not just a counterblaat of snark, by the way. I’m genuinely interested. What did you all feel?
March 6th, 2015 at 9:36PM
by and large the higher-money players are channeled into classes run by faculty booster types and or classes that haven’t really changed the exams and all in years, many faculty there don’t follow school sports those who do pretend there aren’t any conflicts that involve them (who are they to have a say about academic standards after all?) plus at these tuition driven private schools there is so much grade inflation all around (student retention rules) that it gets a little murky in these matters to say the least…
March 6th, 2015 at 10:32PM
Alan: I felt embarrassed but not that surprised to discover that people were fiddling with our rankings – and by the way I’m pretty sure I recall the GW business school trying a bit of the same thing a few years back, so it seems not uncommon at my school…
But I think the Syracuse thing is worse than having tried to game the rankings. After all, as you point out, GW was punished. Plus heads rolled. Syracuse hasn’t really been punished. You’ve still got the coach. You lose some scholarships and vacate some wins. Big deal. The essential reality goes on.
March 7th, 2015 at 4:29AM
Ur such a stickler for rules n such Ms UD.
Where is the American Public?
That ship has largely sailed.
The voting public elected W twice
Well at least probably the 2nd time
Well… U see what I mean
March 7th, 2015 at 6:30AM
UD: one could argue that the “essential reality” that encouraged GWU to cheat is exactly the same today as it was in 2012 – and it’s a reality shared by every expensive but non-elite, tuition-driven private school (yes, Syracuse too). We all accommodate some hypocrisy in our working lives, largely because we have to. It’s not that we’re unfamiliar with it, or like it.
Tear into SU as an institution all you like: it deserves it right now. You’ll get no argument from me. But don’t forget that the faculty here are no stupider or less self-aware or, when you get down to it, more morally compromised than your own colleagues.
March 7th, 2015 at 7:19AM
Alan: I’d say this. GW has basketball, and I’ve heard very few peeps out of that program over many years – not big-time enough for all the corruption, I figure.
GW, to its eternal credit and good fortune, does not happen to have football. Or the sort of fan/booster base Syracuse has.
These differences do I think mean that the Syracuse faculty has more of an obligation to produce a least a few loud Jay Smiths (UNC), Tom Palaimas (Austin), William C. Dowlings (Penn State), James Gundlaches (Auburn) etc. etc. Many big sports schools produce vocal and persistent critics from the faculty, strong writers who manage to get a local paper to give them a column or who squawk endlessly to the campus paper and finally get noticed … If the Syracuse program has been this dirty for this long, there should have been more faculty outcry (there has been some – about money – but not about academic fraud, unless I’m missing something).
Oh, and of course I agree with you that the essential reality on my campus in regard, for instance, to gaming systems (look at the poaching our law school is doing) has not changed.