NCAA Rules: ‘Cheat like crazy and don’t stop until you win’

What follows is not a complaint about NIL. It is a condemnation of NCCA rules and the process that fails to enforce them. More directly stated the  NCAA is complicit in a no-rules environment.

The NCAA has been ineffective for many decades. In some ways, it has never provided the consistent oversight needed.

A new NCAA President is hoping the federal government will help it control the misuse and abuse of NIL. Outside of the corridors of the NCAA’s headquarters in Indianapolis, there is scant hope the NCAA will do anything but be massively wrong again.

Recently, Paul Finebaum perfectly defined the state of college athletics, when he said,

"The message is clear. Cheat like crazy and don’t stop until you win. I never thought I would say that, but it’s the truth. It simply doesn’t matter anymore. …I am long past getting outraged and upset that someone like Will Wade gets away with whatever he got away with, or someone else."

Finebaum was talking about more than the Will Wade saga, in which an NCAA show cause amounted to the equivalent of a child’s timeout. The recent NCAA decision on how to punish LSU and Wade is illustrative of how the NCAA, through its likely ‘best’ effort, proved its uselessness.

The Wade story is so well known, it bears little re-telling. He bought players and was caught on an FBI wiretap admitting it. As reported by Yahoos Sports, the FBI would not share the wiretap with the NCAA. So the NCAA decided it could not use Wade’s statement as evidence.

Millions of people have heard the wiretap through a 2020 HBO documentary titled The Scheme. The NCAA reviewed media reporting of the phone call and concluded the information was “in and of itself not persuasive and credible.”

So LSU and especially Wade skated. There is little value in asking why because asking implies the possibility of an acceptable answer. There is no acceptable answer to why the NCAA did more than look away – it ran away from egregious action from one of its member institutions.

The truth may have scared off the NCAA. Facing it and responding with commensurate penalties would have required harsh punishment. The NCAA only applies harshness to lower-profile programs than LSU.

Don’t count on NCAA rules for anything

After discarding all expectations for the NCAA, there is some hope on the horizon. Something close to market conditions may be leading to NIL fatigue. Writing for On3, Eric Prisbell claims donor fatigue is becoming evident.

In conversations with multiple credible sources, Prisbell concluded generous dollars to NIL collectives have a “mirage element.”

"The thirst for success ignites the pursuit of a large war chest – table stakes in the high-stakes recruiting and retention game. Heightened on-field expectations only elevate the need for a more robust war chest, which further fuels visions of rosters strewn with five-star performers. Wash and repeat – the space is engulfed in a feed-the-beast cycle with a hefty price tag and no endpoint."

When mega-dollars from big donors don’t pay off with promised championships, the fatigue that ensues could be akin to the bursting of a market bubble.

Borrowing an idea from an old Aaron Sorkin screenplay, NIL donors may ante up for a mirage, but not after they realize there is nothing to drink but sand.