← Previous Post: | Next Post: →

 

“The NCAA found that a former administrative assistant for the basketball team took an online course for a recruit to help him become eligible to play at the school. When the NCAA looked into the case, the assistant asked the player to lie to investigators, the NCAA said.”

UD has said it again and again: online is the salvation of big-time university sports. You can cheat like hell with online courses.

UD has no idea how Southern Methodist University – famous for having so filthy a sports program that in 1987 it got one of the very few death penalties the NCAA has handed down – its entire football season was cancelled that year – got caught. It apparently did what a lot of schools with this sort of program no doubt do – signed a player up for an online course and had someone else take it for him.

Once SMU got caught, it didn’t help that the school is just a longterm rascally ol’ give-a-shit sort of place.

In a conference call with reporters, [an NCAA representative] noted SMU’s history of violating NCAA rules. The school has been called before the NCAA infractions committee 10 times since 1958. The basketball program last ran into trouble in 2011, when it admitted that coaches sent impermissible text messages to recruits. [This] history of violations was taken into consideration when this year’s punishment was issued.

Or, to put it less delicately;

SMU is the NCAA compliance version of Old Faithful. Just a matter of time before it erupts again. The infraction dates: 1958, 1965, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1985, 1987, 2000, 2011 and now 2015. And for all that rule violating, the Mustangs have one football national championship it can claim, from 1935… SMU is historically corrupt.

I think this guy is getting at the fact that corruption is SMU. That’s it. That’s the school.

*****************

This puts SMU’s coach “3-for-3 in putting programs on probation.” If you’re shocked that a death penalty school hired a coach who put his two previous schools’ basketball programs on probation, you’re not reading this blog with care.

Margaret Soltan, September 29, 2015 3:33PM
Posted in: sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=50050

5 Responses to ““The NCAA found that a former administrative assistant for the basketball team took an online course for a recruit to help him become eligible to play at the school. When the NCAA looked into the case, the assistant asked the player to lie to investigators, the NCAA said.””

  1. charlie Says:
    September 29th, 2015 at 5:48PM

    Remember, it’s Southern METHODIST University. Baylor, you might get killed by a bballer, Texas Christian University, you get your dope from a footballer, SMU, a player will get someone to take classes for them. What the hell is up with TX religious unis?

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:
    September 29th, 2015 at 6:12PM

    charlie: The retention of the religious designations is really wild.

  3. theprofessor Says:
    September 30th, 2015 at 3:11PM

    SMU does not need the death penalty again. It needs the vampire penalty: a wooden stake, a silver bullet, several cloves of garlic, and some holy water, so it does not rise again from the not-so-dead NCAA “death penalty” recipients.

  4. john Says:
    September 30th, 2015 at 8:08PM

    why is Larry Brown allowed to coach any longer?
    after all, there’s hope that institutions might change over time as leadership changes, etc.
    but Larry Brown’s obviously incorrigible.

  5. Margaret Soltan Says:
    September 30th, 2015 at 8:54PM

    john: But so is SMU. A match made in heaven.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories