(01-23-2012 04:11 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote: You are preaching to the converted.
Back in the 90s when UC's official grad rate was 0.0, NCAA hated Huggins. They thought they finally had him on some academic hijinks to get a kid eligible until his top assistant took the fall, got run out of college coaching, and Bob pulled the head coach Sgt. Schultz defense. Stop me if you've heard this one before...Nearly every decision for years after that went against UC. He leaves, the grad rate is perfect under Cronin, we are finallt getting a fair shake.
Get used to this UCONN...NCAA is going to screw with you at every opportunity as long as Big Jim points fingers at underlings or finds loopholes.
HERE IS PART 2 TO THE NCAA-SS/BOATRIGHT SAGA:
Living in Fear of the N.C.A.A.By JOE NOCERA
It was early in the evening of Jan. 13 when Ryan Boatright, the freshman basketball player at the University of Connecticut, learned that he was being suspended from the team for the second time this season. Earlier that day, he had flown into South Bend, Ind., with his teammates for a game against Notre Dame. The 19-year-old point guard was excited because some 400 people from his hometown, Aurora, Ill., were coming to see him play.
When his coach, Jim Calhoun, broke the news that the N.C.A.A. was still investigating him, Boatright collapsed in Calhoun’s arms. In tears, he called his mother, Tanesha, who began weeping uncontrollably. As I chronicled on Saturday, it was her acceptance of plane tickets a year or so ago that had caused his first suspension. The N.C.A.A. had ruled the tickets an “improper benefit,” and had ordered him to sit out six games and pay a $100-per-month fine to repay the tickets. What more, she wondered, could the N.C.A.A. want?
A lot, it turned out. Tanesha is a single mother raising four children on a small salary. The N.C.A.A. investigators viewed her circumstances as a cause for suspicion, not sympathy. For instance, she owns a car. Where did she get the money to pay for it, they asked? How did she pay for her home? And so on.
Concluding that she had no choice but to cooperate — otherwise, her son would surely pay a severe price — Tanesha turned over her bank statements, as the N.C.A.A. demanded. Four N.C.A.A. investigators pored through her financial records and conducted interrogations in Aurora, seeking “evidence” that she was getting money from “improper” sources. (Tanesha declined to comment.)
When the investigators saw a series of cash deposits in her bank account, they demanded to know the source of the money. She told them: Friends had given her money so that she and her children could have a joyful Christmas. The investigators said they didn’t believe her; they felt sure that she must have gotten the money from an unscrupulous sports agent or some other party outlawed by the N.C.A.A.
Meanwhile, her son remains in limbo, unable to play the game he loves, his reputation unfairly besmirched, while he awaits the N.C.A.A.’s latest ruling. I keep hearing it might happen soon, but, so far, nothing. People associated with Connecticut basketball, including Calhoun, are said to be furious at the N.C.A.A.’s treatment of Ryan Boatright. But the university is as fearful of the N.C.A.A. as Tanesha. It has yet to say a single word publicly on his behalf.
When I asked the N.C.A.A. about the Boatright case, the response I received was deeply disingenuous. Refusing to discuss the actions of its investigators, it essentially said that Connecticut, not the N.C.A.A., declared Boatright ineligible. That is technically true. Schools declare athletes ineligible because if they don’t, the N.C.A.A. will deprive them of scholarships, force them to forfeit games and prevent them from playing in postseason games. Most astonishing, an N.C.A.A. spokeswoman told me that the organization does not have the legal authority to compel cooperation from parents. Again, technically true: Its real weapon — the threat of destroying their sons’ careers — is far more potent than any mere subpoena.
Over the past three weeks, as I’ve written a series of columns about the abuses of the N.C.A.A., one question keeps reverberating in my head: How can this be happening in America?
How can children be punished for the deeds of their parents — deeds that aren’t even wrong in any basic legal sense? How can the N.C.A.A. blithely wreck careers without regard to due process or common fairness? How can it act so ruthlessly to enforce rules that are so petty? Why won’t anybody stand up to these outrageous violations of American values and American justice?
The columns have also prompted e-mails, mostly from parents of college athletes, with their own examples of N.C.A.A. injustices. The women’s basketball player at Harvard who came to the United States from Britain and isn’t allowed to play because she struggled when she first got to the U.S. and had to repeat a year of high school. The team manager — yes, team manager! — who was forced out of his role because he knew a high school player that his school was recruiting. The A students forced off the court because the N.C.A.A. does not include their high school A.P. courses among its “approved” coursework. The coach whose career was ended when the N.C.A.A. accused him of “unethical conduct” without giving him a chance to defend himself.
“The N.C.A.A. is like the Gestapo,” wrote one parent in an e-mail. “It’s out there, we all fear it, and it is all-powerful and follows its own rules and makes them up as they go along. Who are they protecting? The same thing the Gestapo protected: themselves.”
Makes you rethink some things, doesn't it?
/
Husky fans, what's the story on Boatright this time?
