THEY’RE ALL OUT OF ORDER

FBI probe reveals why NCAA must start over

Every time there is another bad story out of college sports, and the one on Friday from Yahoo Sports about corruption in college basketball uncovered by the FBI might be as bad as it gets, I think about the famous scene at the end of the Al Pacino movie “And Justice For All,” when Pacino’s lawyer character is told by a corrupt judge that he’s out of order.

“You’re out of order!” Pacino yells at the judge. “You’re out of order. This trial is out of order!”

That is the current culture and the current world of big-time college sports, as it now comes out that some of the most legendary programs in college basketball — it would also mean some of the legendary coaches in college basketball — are being accused of corruption and various violations by the feds. And why are the feds involved, you ask? Because the NCAA is unable to properly police the money machine that it has become, at least without subpoena power, which you have to say is far more powerful in this world than a rousing slam dunk.

So now the feds have set their sights on coaches and agents and players and their families for what is essentially tip money when you compare it to the fortunes the biggest programs create for their schools, and the further fortunes that come to the schools, and the NCAA, because of network television contracts. Maybe some of these people named in the Yahoo Sports story stole small because they were well aware how big the ultimate stakes really were.

It has always been assumed that this system, one built on the backs of what we still are told are “student-athletes” — even though one-and-done college freshmen are essentially college students for a single semester — is too big to fail. But perhaps not.

You always caution yourself when a story like Yahoo’s comes out that stories like it are not indictments and indictments are not convictions. So as much as we learned on Friday, there is more to know. But what even the people in charge have to know by now, as blinded as they have been by greed and power, is that the current system for those “student-athletes” is simply no longer sustainable; the way of the old-time vision for the NCAA is no longer sustainable.

You may think that room and board and tuition, even with an idiotic NCAA rulebook that can sometimes get that same book thrown at you for a meal or a plane ride, should be more than enough of an inducement for a star high school player to come play basketball for your school. The latest rights fee to the extension to television of the NCAA basketball tournament is more than $8 billion — with a B — for eight years. So even though we still do constantly hear about those studentathletes, this isn’t the Lawn Tennis Association out of the past, where everybody wore white and played for the love of the game.

Here is part of the statement from NCAA president Mark Emmert after the Yahoo Sports story, as Emmert begins to fight for his own job:

“These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures that must be fixed and fixed now if we want college sports in America. Simply put, people who engage in this kind of behavior have no place in college sports….. (We) are completely committed to making transformational changes to the game and ensuring all involved in college basketball do so with integrity. We also will continue to cooperate with the efforts of federal prosecutors to identify and punish the unscrupulous parties seeking to exploit the system through criminal acts.” Knowing what we know about the current state of college sports, and reading the story written for Yahoo Sports by Pat Forde and Pete Thamel about these “unscrupulous parties” over which Emmert is wringing his hands, you have to say that the integrity ship sailed a long time ago at the highest levels of college sports, where they are still desperate to convince the world that professionals masquerading as college basketball stars are practically the same as the woodwind section of the school band.

Every time there is another story like this one, you hear the same explanation of why schools simply can’t pay their star players: Well, it’s simply too complicated to pay the basketball players and the football players, because then what do you do about lacrosse and soccer and swimming?

Well it is time for them to figure out a way, simply because the way they’re doing things now isn’t working. It is the system that is the shame here, I’m sorry, not the athletes being shamed by the current story just by having their names out there. And as all this goes on in front of our eyes — and again, the allegations here are against programs as big as there are — you cannot help but see the NCAA crumbling as if it is the old Roman Empire.

I’ve said this before, but when you compare the money coming into college basketball, and you realize that it is ultimately the players who are filling these arenas and television hours, the only athletes who share less in profits of their work are thoroughbred racehorses. And until you can figure out how to pay these athletes, let them earn money on their own at the very least.

It’s time to change things once and for all in college sports and figure out a way to pay the players because the way things are now, this is about so much more than the players being put on trial by Yahoo Sports. The system is out of order. The NCAA is out of order. They’re all out of order.