Re: Yahoo Sources: NCAA to formally charge Mississippi with rules violations
Freeze is acting like Tressel here, and I just don't see how the school administration and fans could let something like this go. Do they care so little about the reputation of their school? When you get caught cheating, you fire those responsible or you make it clear to everyone that integrity is not important to your institution.
There's an interesting contrast here, because in some ways the beginning of the erratic NCAA was with the Ohio State situation. For starters, there were a few issues that popped up over the years (Clarett and Troy Smith) that left us scratching our heads. I'm not saying the should have been hammered, but I know I personally wondered why the NCAA wasn't looking at the smoke going on over there. We'd been conditioned to think taking money from a booster should darn near be a death sentence to a program.
Then, even when they did punish Ohio State, they did something that I and many others found inexplicable. The whole, not-suspended for the bowl game thing. None of us even knew that was a thing, it was clear the NCAA was trying not to hurt Ohio State and only when more came out did they finally drop the hammer.
The takeaway from that though, is that the NCAA was clearly not consistent and not reliable in how they did things. Tressel thought he could get away with a lot, because he did get away with a lot. So, I won't defend him, and I won't defend Ole Miss, but after what went on at Auburn, Miami, and North Carolina, it is easy enough to see why those guys thought they'd get away with pressing their luck. I just hope the NCAA can at least establish that you know, you're not supposed to pay football players. That would help.
