Aaron Hernandez, Jameis Winston nor the signing limit have anything to do with this rule. Somebody has to do what's right for the sport and young people, why not us?
That's my point. This rule doesn't help anything at all. The real problem, the real issue, is looking the other way while players do terrible things. How does this address this in the least? Do what's right? We know what's right, and this doesn't touch that...
Let's consider what the core of the problem is, which ultimately is a societal problem. How many PSU fans boycotted Penn State after what happened? Not many if at all, but they cheered Joe Paterno didn't they? How many FSU fans boycotted FSU after what happened? Same.
That's the core of the problem and I am disgusted by it, I do find it revolting. Now, Nick Saban was accused of "winning at all costs", but that doesn't ring true does it? I mean the counter to signing Taylor was always that Nick Saban could easily have recruited other players, so how can one argue that was what happened here? However, with covering up for Sandusky, with covering up for Winston, we know what that was, there's no doubt. That's sickness, that's what's wrong.
Now, as I said before and I'll keep repeating, I think Nick Saban screwed up with Taylor, I think he went a little too far, to apparently try to give a guy a second chance. I don't think he'd have gone that far again, but then again I'm not privy to what he was told, what information was given to him, so I can't fully judge. I just know that's
not the problem, that's not what's wrong. Who covered up for Taylor? I'd have been sickened to have found out months later that Taylor had assaulted a women and it was covered up for the sake of the football program, but it wasn't, no one covered up for him, no one hid his actions, no one excused his actions, he was promptly kicked off the team. That was handled properly, was it not? Nothing Alabama did helped Taylor continue to harm people, and that's relevant.
So, with this rule, the SEC doesn't actually set any standards for behavior, they don't. All they did, was set this weird arbitrary parameter, which says if you get kicked off for a specific crime, you can't play football in the SEC. That sounds good, sure, but it fixes nothing and it creates another problem.
Now, I thought it over and tried to consider what might actually address the issue. I thought perhaps an SEC committee to review all cases in which a player was kicked off the team, might make sense. That way, the facts as they are known (not merely the crime they are charged with) would be the determining factor. This way they can determine logically, if the player is a threat to others or if his actions were so bad he's nonredeemable. That's not this though, but really... if you really wanted to do something which is "right for the sport and young people", you could have an NCAA wide rule which strictly held universities accountable for their player's actions if they either covered up for them, or the players themselves were not held accountable.
What we have is in my mind almost, well perhaps it is, worse than doing nothing. Because it doesn't encourage universities to better police their players at all, if anything it does the inverse.