Chapin: Stringent action needed?

By now almost everyone has heard about the scandal at Oklahoma State University in which students in the school’s Center for Veterinary Health Sciences were paid cash bonuses for their classroom performance and tutors and school personnel completed school work for students, among other transgressions.

What’s that? It wasn’t the veterinary program? Then it must have been the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. No? The English Department?

Of course, it was the football program. It is so like our society that we put more emphasis on athletics than academics at our universities. No one is ever going to be caught trying to assist engineering students so that the old alma mater could be listed in the Top 10 of engineering schools in the country. Or math, or history, or ... well, you get the picture.

Sports Illustrated revealed all in an expos this week of the Oklahoma State football program but they could have chosen almost any big-time football or men’s basketball program.

This is not a new problem. At NCAA.org, the section on the history of the governing body of college sports starts with these two paragraphs:

“The NCAA was founded in 1906 to protect young people from the dangerous and exploitive athletics practices of the time.

“The rugged nature of early-day football, typified by mass formations and gang tackling, resulted in numerous injuries and deaths and prompted many college and universities to discontinue the sport. In many places, college football was run by student groups that often hired players and allowed them to compete as non-students. Common sentiment among the public was that college football should be reformed or abolished.”

Nowadays we carefully label the players “student-athletes” — whether they attend class or not — and no one is calling for the abolition of college football. (Maybe they should be?)

Just about every program out there has well-heeled boosters, benefactors and alumni willing to hire “student-athletes” and pay them for sham jobs or just slip them cash.

Before I go further, this disclaimer: Most colleges and universities do things right. They carefully follow NCAA rules and regulations regarding the recruitment of and treatment of student-athletes.

By the same token, the great majority of student-athletes playing collegiate sports are grateful for the opportunity to get an education for free while at the same time having the opportunity to play the sport of their choice.

College athletics in this country began long ago with a distinct amateur feel, almost like intramural sports today. Obviously that is no longer the case. Big money, mostly from television, has skewed the working model. The major entertainment entities that football and men’s basketball have become no longer fit well in the model of an institution of higher learning.

The NCAA struggles with credibility because it seemingly over-reacts on minor issues but seems unwilling to come down hard on major rules abusers. It did do so in the late 1980s, using the so-called death penalty on Southern Methodist University’s football program. Two years without football turned the SMU program into a shell of what it was but it cured it of major NCAA violations.

Perhaps such stringent action is needed again now.

Doug Chapin is a sportswriter at The Vindicator. Email him at dchapin@vindy.com.