NCAA reverses course in Tez Walker saga; rules Walker eligible and blames UNC for its earlier ruling
The fact that the NCAA felt the need to throw mud back at UNC (coupled with its cheeseburger comments in the Harbaugh saga) indicates that it's increasingly conscious of its ruined reputation and that its PR department is flailing around trying to convince everyone it's not crazy.
Hey NCAA, how about you punish UNC for literally fabricating transcripts to keep its athletes eligible instead of punishing one of its kids for his mental health struggles?
October 6th, 2023 at 9:46 AM ^
October 6th, 2023 at 10:34 AM ^
So this is what it looks like when a University fights back against the NCAA?
October 6th, 2023 at 11:14 AM ^
Warde just recoiled in disgust...
October 6th, 2023 at 2:38 PM ^
The NCAA has power only because its member institutions allow the organization to function. Maybe there is something I am missing but why would anyone want the NCAA with its inept management and largely outdated rulebook to have any control over college athletics, at least with respect to the P-4/5 universities?
From a financial standpoint, there is no reason I can think of beyond a few years worth of content rights why March's Big Dance and the billion it brings in annually should go into the pockets of the universities/players playing in the tournament.
October 6th, 2023 at 3:42 PM ^
It makes sense that colleges should have a governing body. Every sport needs rules, but the NCAA has been boneheaded for most of my lifetime. Feels like they need a constitutional convention so that they can reform themselves.
October 6th, 2023 at 1:39 PM ^
Sounds like it was the AG, not AD. Or is that a typo?
October 6th, 2023 at 5:27 PM ^
The letter came from NC Attorney General Josh Stein.
He's been a reasonably effective AG, although he is not above a bit of grandstanding (I suppose that is true of most state AGs).
October 6th, 2023 at 11:52 AM ^
No "good" sides here. NCAA has become a joke, but UNC is not an honest party as we all know.
Also, I doubt a state AG would be able to have any kind of "anti-trust" action actually stick against the ncaa... especially if the NFL has never been subject to anti-trust legislation.
All just a PR show.
October 6th, 2023 at 12:01 PM ^
The NFL has a Congressional anti-trust waiver. Not sure if that applies to the NCAA...
October 6th, 2023 at 12:14 PM ^
The only exception granted to the NFL is to allow it to negotiate broadcast rights as a single entity rather than as individual franchises (as it was pre-1961):
October 6th, 2023 at 12:01 PM ^
I don't know if a failure to go after the NFL would be a defense to an anti-trust suit against the NCAA. Kind of like speeding, you don't have to be the worst violator, it just has to be provable that they are in violation of the law.
October 6th, 2023 at 12:08 PM ^
It is not meant as a defense (i.e. it is not an argument that would hold in court) but rather historical observation that a larger, more lucrative target (NFL) was not sued by someone - at some point in time - over a host of possible "antitrust" issues (beyond merely broadcast rights).
The NFL reference was just a sidenote; the *point* is that people often claim "anti-trust" without fully understanding what that means - and it is disappointing to hear claims like this come from state attorneys who should know better.
October 6th, 2023 at 1:07 PM ^
Yeah, the NC AG's letter was chockablock-full of bad reasoning, and managed to bury the lede under a pile of bullshit.
The best (and, IMO, only needed) argument for eligibility is that Walker had a reasonable expectation that the rules in force when he transferred would be the rules in force when he applied for a waiver. Ex post facto rules changes should not have applied.
All the blather about illegality and restraint of trade is just that: blather. The NCAA was not denying Walker the ability to accept the school's scholarship money not NIL money.
The AG could have made the relevant points in a single page but opted for three pages instead.
Having said that, I don't understand why the NCAA enforcement division didn't accept the "reasonable expectation" argument from the start.
October 6th, 2023 at 2:09 PM ^
N.C.A.A.
National Collegiate Accountability in Absentia
October 6th, 2023 at 9:47 AM ^
Are they also going to reverse time so that he can go back and play those 4 games that they made him miss?
October 6th, 2023 at 9:57 AM ^
I keep saying the NCAA should be sued each and every time they limit a players ability to earn NIL. If I were a lawyer, that'd be easy money there...
October 6th, 2023 at 10:21 AM ^
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying neither the NCAA or its member schools has the right to keep a student off the field?
Because they didn't "limit [his] ability to earn NIL." At all.
They denied him the right to play. Are you suggesting the NCAA should be sued every time it denies someone the right to play ... for whatever reason? Like, drug dealing? Sexual assault?
By that logic, Cade could have sued Michigan for making him the backup last year, thereby "limiting his ability to earn NIL."
October 6th, 2023 at 11:54 AM ^
The NCAA would simply respond "you didn't provide all the necessary paperwork" and that would likely be enough. Even here UNC basically admitted they had to submit additional information when it became available (I have no idea what that would be but whatever), and then the NCAA allowed Walker to play. It was a bad situation all around and Walker should have been allowed to play once he applied early on but this also sounds a bit like UNC messed up somewhat and then (rightly) tried to shame the NCAA in public over it.
October 6th, 2023 at 9:51 AM ^
Like any institution that exists too long without meaningful reform, I believe the NCAA is now thoroughly corrupted. I think that often times the investigations that they choose to pursue involve personal or institutional animus toward individuals or institutions with the public discourse on all sides being far removed from the reality of what is really happening, and why.
October 6th, 2023 at 10:31 AM ^
"Now"? They cracked down on a single program, once. That was almost forty years ago, and the lesson they learned was to make themselves obsolete, right then and there. They haven't done more than slap wrists ever since.
October 6th, 2023 at 10:36 AM ^
Investigations and wrist slaps do have significant impacts on institutions. They don't have to impose a "death penalty" to cause unnecessary chaos on undesirables.
October 6th, 2023 at 1:33 PM ^
"Investigations and wrist slaps do have significant impacts on institutions." Really? I am not seeing sea-changes in the SEC, or in state of Texas, or Columbus, or in a host of other places because of NCAA investigations. I know I am a little tunnel-visioned, but it seems like only Michigan takes these buffoons seriously. If Harbaugh goes to NFL, the NCAA and their clown-show will have been a contributing factor.
October 6th, 2023 at 12:07 PM ^
Well, they've only applied the death penalty once, but they used to regularly issue things like TV bans, postseason bans and heavy scholarship reductions. PSU after Sandusky only had like 60 scholarships to give for a couple years.
October 6th, 2023 at 5:08 PM ^
No, Penn State lost 40 scholarships spread over four years.
October 6th, 2023 at 9:54 AM ^
Talk about a shot across the bow after correcting their mistake. Good leaders don't blame others, they take responsibility and fix the problem.
October 6th, 2023 at 10:17 AM ^
the NCAA are full of people who aren't good leaders. They're basically HOA members
October 6th, 2023 at 11:47 AM ^
most recent NCAA convention
October 6th, 2023 at 10:09 AM ^
Thank you for NOT letting people forget about the phony degree program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_North_Carolina_academic-athletic_scandal
October 6th, 2023 at 11:08 AM ^
And this was the NCAA's response to one of the worst academic scandals in the history of collegiate sports:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/sports/unc-north-carolina-ncaa.html
October 6th, 2023 at 12:10 PM ^
That reasoning was ridiculous. So what if non-athletes were (theoretically) allowed to take "paper classes"? A joke class is still a joke.
October 6th, 2023 at 1:11 PM ^
The reasoning was spot-on. The classes were bogus, but not designed for, or restricted to, athletes facing eligibility issues. The scandal was an academic scandal, not an athletic one, and the NCAA rightly deferred judgement and sanctions for an academic scandal to the relevant academic authorities.
October 6th, 2023 at 3:26 PM ^
Disagree. The NCAA clearinghouse shouldn't have considered a course like that to be legitimate, regardless of whom it was offered to. Undergraduate student-athletes are required to be full-time students, and a course like that shouldn't count toward their minimum number of credits. Athletes who would not have been above the threshold without that course should have been ruled academically ineglible for that term.
October 6th, 2023 at 4:38 PM ^
When was the last time a football or basketball player at a P5 program missed games due to being academically ineligible? This doesn’t happen anymore thanks to the full teams of academic support staff who are basically handholding some of these athletes through 3 years of eligibility.
October 6th, 2023 at 7:02 PM ^
To my knowledge, the fact that these were sham classes is undisputed. So then the question becomes: why were these sham classes created and why weren't they eliminated when administrators realized they were sham classes? If the answers to either of those questions have anything to do with athletics or keeping athletes eligible, then it doesn't matter that they were also made available to non-athletes.
October 6th, 2023 at 1:28 PM ^
Completely irrelevant to the issue at hand
October 6th, 2023 at 10:19 AM ^
The NCAA is trash. I don't understand why the conferences even tolerate them. They can't get out of their own way on so many things. Every time they open their mouth I have to cringe and then roll my eyes. I just loathe them and blame them for most of the problems with NCAA sports. My rant is concluded.
October 6th, 2023 at 10:27 AM ^
I honestly don’t even understand the NCAA’s purpose re college football these days. They don’t sanction any type of playoff, the states oversee NIL, scholarship numbers are essentially meaningless - what do they do?? To your point, why the conferences allow some figurehead organization with such wild swings in rulings and punishments to govern them is beyond me.
October 6th, 2023 at 11:07 AM ^
The conferences (i.e. the universities that constitute the conferences) tolerate the NCAA because the NCAA is controlled by the universities. The universities nowadays are more interested in maximizing their revenue from sports than they are in the sports themselves (e.g. the rule changes that decrease and distort game play in order to increase commercial exposure, the conference realignments chasing broadcasting revenue), much less the interests of the student athletes themselves.
The NCAA is still around because it makes a very convenient scapegoat. The more dysfunctional the better.
(Not to get political, but the analogy to Congress is irresistible – voters hate Congress, but they love their particular Member)
October 6th, 2023 at 12:08 PM ^
To that end, is the NCAA going after Harbaugh because he is in favor of sharing that money with the players? I would hope that if they try to extend his punishment at all he would respond with alleging that they are retaliating for getting in the way of their monopoly, and that anti-trust measures should be explored.
October 6th, 2023 at 12:13 PM ^
You have to have some kind of organizing body. Each school can't just make up its own rules. That wouldn't be a very fair competition. But the NCAA could be better at enforcing its own rules.
October 6th, 2023 at 10:27 AM ^
Fuck the NCAA
October 6th, 2023 at 10:34 AM ^
+1. Succinct
October 6th, 2023 at 11:29 AM ^
He kind of waffled by dragging it out with saying "the"
October 6th, 2023 at 1:30 PM ^
Fair
October 6th, 2023 at 10:37 AM ^
I would try to find a joke that describes the NCAA - however, any attempt would adequately do justice to what an incompetent organization they are.
Perhaps - regarding the academic aspects of North Carolina, they could have shared their information with the AAU and let the AAU take appropriate actions for academic fraud / limited compliance.
October 6th, 2023 at 10:41 AM ^
NCAA - can't become totally irrelevant and fade into obscurity fast enough.
October 6th, 2023 at 10:49 AM ^
The NCAA are a bunch of Tuckers A.K.A. jackoffs.
October 6th, 2023 at 11:03 AM ^
Wow. So a kid misses 4 games of the season due to NCAA incompetence and all they can say is "Not our fault?" What a world we live in now.
October 6th, 2023 at 11:06 AM ^
Corruption Power Rankings
1) FIFA
2) NCAA
3) Soviet Politburo
October 6th, 2023 at 11:48 AM ^
You left out the IOC which is probably in between FIFA and NCAA.