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NCAA Basketball

Why Not Cheat? It'll Only Cost a Banner

Posted May 28, 2009 6:45PM By Greg Couch (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Memphis, Coaches

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"With the first pick in the 2008 NBA draft, the Chicago Bulls select Derrick Rose from the University of Memphis."

That's what NBA commissioner David Stern said 11 months ago. Now, the NCAA apparently thinks that someone else took Rose's SAT college entrance exam for him, helping him to be eligible at Memphis.

"With the second pick in the 2008 NBA draft, the Miami Heat select Michael Beasley from Kansas State University.''

When Beasley went to K-State, his AAU coach was hired as an assistant there. At $420,000 a year, that coach makes more than the entire assistant staffs at most schools. Consider it payment for delivery.

"With the third pick in the 2008 NBA draft, the Minnesota Timberwolves select OJ Mayo from the University of Southern California.''

The feds and the NCAA are looking into Mayo's relationship with USC and a street agent. An insider accused USC coach Tim Floyd of giving money earmarked for Mayo to the agent.

The news today about Memphis and Rose is seen as another knock on former Memphis coach John Calipari, who always seems to be suspected, but never convicted. He left Memphis this spring for one of the elite coaching jobs, Kentucky, and a huge payout.

How does Kentucky feel now about what it got itself into? What makes you think anything has changed? Kentucky knew what it was getting when it landed Calipari. He had a dirty rep, and he got the job. He is not, reportedly, accused of wrong-doing in this allegation, just like he wasn't when his program as UMass was busted years ago.

Now, Memphis, if found guilty, will likely have some smattering of minor penalties, fines and sanctions. And the talk is that it might even have to vacate its record 38-win 2007-08 season. Vacate its trip to the Final Four.

Vacate the Final Four? What does that mean?

The team went to the Final Four. It happened. Calipari got a better job, and more money. Memphis got its money, the NCAA got the money, CBS got the money. Rose certainly got his money. He was rookie of the year in the NBA, which got a Final Four-marketed player. And money.

But take down that banner.

Big deal.

I mean, Calipari had a Final Four vacated at UMass, too, over player Marcus Camby's connection to an agent. It never hurt him.

Kentucky knew all of that.

Here's the problem: The NCAA doesn't catch most rule-breakers. When it does, it doesn't give a meaningful punishments. So here's the dirty culture of college recruiting -- and that's not just about Calipari -- and a coach can go clean and miss out on stud recruits, or he can get dirty and feel confident he 1) won't get caught, 2) will get caught only after the stud recruit had played and his gone, or 3) will get weak sanctions.

Not to mention, the coach will already have slid to a better job off his dirty success.

Frankly, the NCAA makes things worth it to cheat.

That's exactly what Chad McEvoy has studied. He's an associate professor and coordinator of the Sport Management Program at Illinois State. He studied the major football programs that had received major NCAA penalties from 1987-2002, and found that teams in general didn't play any worse after the penalties than they did before them.

"So that begs the question,'' he said, "are the penalties penal?

"Having discussed this with the NCAA and the committee on infractions, they bring up counterpoints that to a certain degree the purpose on the penalties is not to impact negatively performance.

"But then what are they about? You can form a cost-benefit analysis, and in that way there's some incentives to cheat.''

Maybe the NCAA doesn't want to give too harsh of penalties, doesn't want risk hurting its best revenue earners. But the NCAA needs to be serious about penalties, and not just have the rulebook for PR reasons.

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Taking down a banner is no deterrent, and vacating victories means nothing, except, maybe to Florida State fans, who want football coach Bobby Bowden to win the bucket race with Penn State's Joe Paterno for career victories.

"The problem is the way that athletes cycle through, you end up penalizing people that didn't actually commit the penalties ,'' McEvoy said. "With Derrick Rose -- and that's just an allegation at this point -- but he is long gone. John Calipari is long gone, etc. O.J. Mayo is gone. You end up penalizing innocent victims that come along later.''

So the NCAA is reluctant to hit too hard, McEvoy said. But these coaches are acting on behalf of universities, and just because they leave, that doesn't mean the structure isn't still there. The old school and the old coach need to be smacked down.

Just something so that coaches think there can be a downside to cheating.

It doesn't pass the smell test that Calipari would be completely ignorant of one of his players having someone else take the SAT.

The NCAA doesn't specifically name Rose in its accusation, which was first reported by the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. But it accuses a player on the team only in 2007-08. Rose is the only one who fits that.

And Rose's AAU coach, Luther Topps, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the NCAA believes one of Rose's former teammates at Chicago's Simeon High took his SAT for him. The paper also reports that someone changed a grade for Rose at Simeon.

Memphis received notice of the allegations in January, and Calipari left for Kentucky on March 31. Kentucky knew. Calipari said in a statement that he will cooperate with the investigation, And UK officials, in an unsigned statement, said, "First and foremost, there are no NCAA allegations against UK Head Men's Basketball Coach John Calipari. Coach Calipari was forthcoming with the University of Kentucky during the hiring process... "

Why wouldn't he be? He's just thriving on the system.

Tags: derrick+rose, john+calipari, michael+beasley, oj+mayo

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