I’m going to try to explain this in the clearest way possible, beginning with the most obvious statement of all.
The NCAA is the worst organization in the history of sports.
This multi-billion dollar, tax-exempt organizing body of collegiate sports; this watchdog of all things pure and amateur, is in the middle of the fight of its life in both the courtroom and public perception. So what does it do?
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It hires West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck in December to be No. 2 in charge behind beleaguered president Mark Emmert. Two months later, the NCAA places West Virginia University on two years probation for violations that occurred from 2010 to 2013 in 14 of its 18 sports.
Guess whose job, as athletic director at WVU, it was to oversee those sports from 2010-2013?
Guess who had been investigating WVU for months, knowing full well Luck was the athletic director at the very time NCAA violations had taken place?
Guess who then hired Luck to be its — are you ready for this? — regulatory executive vice president (a fancy title for top cop)?
I ask you, who gets it more than the NCAA?
"How do you talk your way out of this one?" one Power 5 athletic director told me Thursday morning. "The optics of it are so damaging."
Like that's anything new.
This is the same organization that can’t get out of its own way in court in any number of lawsuits, ongoing or pending. The same organization that had a North Carolina alum — a former student-athlete at UNC, no less — work the investigation into the biggest academic fraud case in the history of college sports, one that was botched so badly, the NCAA is now deep into Round 2 of the investigation.
The same organization that was forced — by threat of lawsuits and the reality that they’re going to lose multiple lawsuits — to completely revamp the way it treats athletes, from stipends to concussion protocols to lifetime scholarships to doing everything it possibly can to share the least amount of billions of dollars in television revenue.
The same organization that decided it would overstep its bounds and gut the Penn State program for a horrific crime against humanity perpetrated by a former coach, then over the next few years do everything it could to make it all right — with the lone exception of admitting it was wrong in the first place.
The same organization that gave Luck that fancy title, and then declared it was a new position overseeing academic and membership affairs, and eligibility and enforcement.
Basically what the NCAA did with the hire of Luck was tell Emmert, who has brought more shame and embarrassment on the NCAA than all previous presidents combined, to go sit in the corner and play with his Legos. The big boy will take over now and do the job Emmert should have been doing all along.
Except there’s this teensy-weensy issue: the big boy oversaw an athletic program that did the very thing he now has been charged to uphold.
For those who think I’m making too big a deal out of impermissible phone calls and texts to potential student athletes, consider this: these violations occurred while WVU was already on probation for a previous infractions case involving out-of-season coaching and the use of non-coaching staff to work with players.
In other words, trying to gain a competitive advantage.
So Luck ran a program that knew it was on probation, and knew it could ill-afford to take another wrong step — then did so. In 14 different sports.
And how did the NCAA respond, you ask? By placing WVU on double-secret probation.
I’m gonna puke.
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By all accounts, Luck has been a sharp, proactive administrator everywhere he has been, from his time as a general manager in NFL Europe to CEO of the Houston Sports Authority to his work with the MLS.
When the NCAA hired him late last year, my initial thought was this might be the perfect guy to get the house in order. With his background, he might be the one guy who could convince whoever is making critical decisions to dig in legally against athletes, to cut your losses and find a workable middle ground.
The one guy who could step in and save an organization with good intentions and an unshakeable mission statement from eating itself alive, despite the spectacularly horrible decision-making of years past.
The one guy who could look around the room and declare that yes, a street agent who got $25,000 for bogus recruiting information most certainly steered players to the school that paid him cash.
The one guy who could look around the room and declare that yes, a father shopped his son to the highest bidder — and yes, the son isn’t playing anymore.
The one guy who could look around the room and declare that yes, a university in the middle of an investigation that already took its beloved coach, had players accepting cash in envelopes four months after the previous separate investigation began — and that, unequivocally, is the definition of lack of institutional control.
Instead, the new top cop is caught up in a do as I say not as I do moment less than two months into his job.
I ask you, who gets it more than the NCAA?