NCAA’s Ruling on Oregon Latest Example of Selective Enforcement

Did you hear that sound this morning? Oh you didn’t? Probably because it was nothing more than a light slap that the NCAA gave the Oregon Ducks for violations against its football program.

By all means, this is not a shot at the Oregon Ducks-if the NCAA will let you get away with something, by all means bend those rules and set up an estate in the gray area of the association’s rules. No, this is about the NCAA.

Essentially here is what the Oregon Ducks football program did. They “hired” a recruiting service run by Willie Lyles in which the “service” Lyles provided was shuffling prospective student athletes to the Eugene campus. He became the facilitator between the Ducks coaching staff and these top athletes, much to the excitement of then coach Chip Kelly and his staff.

They were extremely grateful for all of Lyles' help. How grateful? They hand wrote him thank you letters for bringing this players to Oregon.

Now by any means I don’t think any of this warrants the NCAA dropping the hammer on the program, but I certainly don’t think it’s nothing to scoff at either.

To put it simply the NCAA’s punishments against Oregon are a joke: 3 years probation, ban on recruiting services, disassociation with Willie Lyles, a loss of a scholarship, limited evaluation days, and an 18 month show cause on Chip Kelly.

Yes, the same Chip Kelly who left Oregon earlier this year to take the Philadelphia Eagles job that is paying him $32.5 million over 5 years. Boy, the NCAA really showed him.

You might remember Alabama had to forfeit games and suspend student-athletes over the improper use of the textbook program-that the school self reported.

So by NCAA logic: street agents are bad, textbooks are way worse. Makes sense.

Like I said, this is not a shot at any particular institution except the one in Indianapolis. Its selective enforcement is laughable. Sometimes it seems like they want to take their job seriously, but sometimes it seems like they want these schools to be their friends.