How low can you go?

Shoes keep dropping in the college football foyer - that's where I drop MY shoes, and I got Butch Davis fired! YAY

Like some others, I agree it's time for the NCAA, which only nominally controls college football anyway, to start dropping some hammers on schools like the U and even UConn.

One argument is that Miami deserves the death penalty for recent revelations that Nevin Shapiro - if that's his REAL name - provided improper benefits to dozens of Hurricanes football players.  The argument is 'It's time to make an example of Miami, similar to SMU in the 80s with their death penalty.' 

While that may feel good, did ANYONE or any school really learn from the SMU example?  It doesn't seem that the 'death penalty' of a school like SMU changed much, if anything.

Then again, giving a traditional power like Miami the death penalty would get people's attention.  Actually, Miami is still thought of as a renegade not a blue-blood; giving THE Ohio State University the death penalty WOULD do the trick.

However, I do agree with the proposed rule to tie graduation rates to bowl or tournament participation (a move that by the way would have disqualified UConn from this year's NCAA basketball tournament).  That seems obvious.

But in addition to that common sense move, college athletics needs to take it down a notch, not be so big time and try to take some of the money out of it.  That's the only way to fix a system that does not need reform so much as it's fundamentally corrupt.

Of course, proposing de-emphasizing money sounds crazy.  But remember, these are supposed to be institutions of higher learning that in the case of state schools are theoretically non-profits.

Anyway, to fix college sports the NCAA should do the following in addition to linking participation to graduation rates.

1. Make freshman ineligible to play any sport, revenue or non-revenue;
2. Use baseball's draft rules for all sports; you can get drafted out of high school but if you DON'T go pro you can't be re-drafted until you finish your junior year (and you have to make progress towards graduation while in school for those 3 years);
3. Limit conference sizes to 8 maximum; that would mean fewer games and practices for all sports, and shorter seasons, and therefore more time in the classroom, being a regular student, etc.;
4. Allow players to receive a percentage of money from sales of merchandise that use their likeness; seems only fair that the players should benefit from sales of THEIR jerseys, etc.;
5. Have a play-off system for all levels of football; get the bowls and their corporate shysterism out of college football;

Those are just a few.  I hope the NCAA makes some serious changes, but I'm afraid that until university presidents get the nerve to de-emphasize college sports a bit there will continue to be more Butch Davis-Jim Tressel-Nevin Shapiro-style headlines.  And more shoes all over the foyer.

Moron Butch Davis

Like the (subconscious?) dig at Butch Davis in this headline in The Old Reliable: "UNC supporters want more on Butch Davis' firing."

The timing of the firing has many alums and donors up in arms, but no matter how bad the timing it was time to Fire Butch Davis. 

I, too, am curious as to why the University and Chancellor Thorp stuck with Davis for so long but still surprised to see alumni organizing and even pressing for phone records, etc.  I think Davis' record speaks for itself, and was obviously bad enough and embarrassing enough to warrant getting fired. 

GO HEELS!