The NCAA has always taken the violation of its rules seriously.
In October 1951 Alex Groza, Ralph Beard and Dale Barnstable of the 1948-1949 Kentucky basketball team were arrested as part of one of the most infamous point-shaving scandals in college basketball.
Groza, a two-time all-star in the NBA, was promptly banned for life from the league. The same went for Beard. Bill Spivey, who was still attending Kentucky when the charges came down, was charged with perjury and promptly suspended by the school. For the NCAA, those penalties were not sufficient.
Even after the Southeastern Conference barred Kentucky from league play for the 1952-1953 season, the NCAA went a step further and put the entire Kentucky athletic program on probation. According to the 1952 Kentucky infraction report, Kentucky’s opponents were advised to cancel its games with the school, effectively ending the Wildcats’ basketball season that year.
The University of Indiana has undergone similar penalties for former basketball coach Kelvin Sampson’s recruiting practices. Sampson, who joined Indiana in March 2006, came with some probation baggage of his own from his time at Oklahoma.
Sampson was prohibited from making any outbound calls to recruits as part of his probation. That didn’t stop him from making approximately 10 conference calls to recruits and initiating another 35 calls from his home, according to a notice of allegations against Sampson, which is still available on ESPN’s Web site.
For those phone calls, Sampson was forced out of Indiana with a $750,000 buyout of his contract. He was also slapped with a five-year show-cause order, which meant that any college team wishing to procure Sampson’s coaching services would have to show probable cause for wanting Sampson, and then endure the NCAA’s watchful eye8212;which can make the IRS look sweet.
Indiana basically took action against itself before the NCAA could and put limitations on its recruiting process and took away one of its basketball scholarships as a self-imposed penalty. The NCAA accepted Indiana’s self-imposed punishments and tacked on a three-year probation for the university, mostly for what happened under Sampson’s tenure.
These are just two of many examples of the NCAA levying out punishment to an entire university athletic program for the decision of a few individuals.
When point shaving and recruiting posed threats to the college sport’s integrity, the NCAA took a hard line. Performance enhancing drugs pose the same detriment to professional sports today and it’s about time the NBA, MLB, NFL, NHL and others took a similar stance as the NCAA.
Mass punishment is not new to professional sports, either.
In 2007, New England head coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 by the NFL for spying on opponent’s defensive signals. The league took a step further and fined the Patriots organization an additional $250,000 and ordered the Patriots to give up its 2008 first-round draft pick.
Imagine if a player was caught doing steroids and the entire team had to forfeit a draft pick, or even a playoff spot, on top of the player’s fine and suspension. How fast would guys on that team start policing their own and either deter or report illegal activities?
On Tuesday, six NFL players were suspended for violating the league’s anti-doping policy, including two Minnesota Viking defensive linemen, three New Orleans Saints players and a member of the Houston Texans organization.
In separate incidents, the San Diego Chargers have had at least two players suspended for performance-enhancing drug use, including Pro Bowl linebacker Shawne Merriman in 2006 and linebacker Stephen Cooper for the first four games of 2008.
In baseball, 21 players from 14 MLB teams have been suspended under the league’s new steroid policy since 2005, including stars such as Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Guillen, Jay Gibbons, Guillermo Mota, and Mike Cameron. On August 3, 2007, Neifi Perez became the first MLB player to be suspended twice and was slapped with an 80-game suspension.
This is just a sampling of a widespread problem within professional sports.
It might just be me, but 300 lbs. of peer pressure, combined with the possibility of ruining 25 of my baseball friends’ or 75 of my NFL teammates’ seasons might help me rethink whether sticking that needle in my butt is the right choice.
In the NCAA, point shaving and illegal recruiting were big problems in their heydays. Mass punishment hasn’t completely eradicated the prevalence of these problems, but it has reduced them.
The risk of personal suspension and fines haven’t done enough to deter professional athletes, so it’s time to try something else. I think professional sports can learn from the NCAA’s established M.O. by levying fines against entire organizations. Players will get the message one way or another.
