General

Study: NCAA Hands Down Smaller Penalties for Bigger Schools, Sky is Blue

Sep 23, 2009, 8:30 PM UTC

This really has been a day of obvious news in college football. First, Les Miles reminds us that coaches probably shouldn’t be voting in any polls. Then, an enterprising lawyer releases a study that finds BCS schools receive lighter penalties for NCAA infractions than non-BCS schools. Insert “duh” here.â†µâ†µBlutarsky notes that the man behind the study, one Michael Buckner, is no fly-by-night NCAA detractor.â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥Mr. Buckner, a licensed attorney and private investigator, assists universities with conducting complex investigations of alleged NCAA rules-violations. Mr. Buckner has appeared before the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions and Infractions Appeals Committee. Mr. Buckner, as an independent consultant for the NCAA (2006-07), also conducted on-site investigative audits of non-traditional and prep schools in the United States and Puerto Rico.â†µâ†µâ†µThe NCAA’s denial is as predictable as it is unconvincing: The Orlando Sentinel reports that the organization says “the research relies on a very small sample size of a handful of institutions and a methodology that fails to tests the claims against standard statistical criteria.” But is a denial even really necessary? â†µ

â†µâ†µBuckner isn’t exactly dredging up the Dead Sea Scrolls of college football to find that bigger schools get slightly less stinging slaps on the wrist than small schools. This summer, Brian Cook wrote in this space about the knuckle rap the NCAA rightfully delivered to Southeast Missouri State. Compare the substance of those violations, which amount to small-scale deceit, to the substance of the alleged violations at USC in recent years, and it’s hard to see how a school like USC, wise to the ways of the system, would ever face even that gentle wave of wrath.â†µ

â†µâ†µCynics can point at those two situations and yammer about how bigger schools always get off easy because they’re bigger. I’ll be over here with the realists who know that the system the NCAA has built favors bigger schools and bigger compliance departments, the ones that know how to report a litany of little violations before they before they become one standard-size infractions. We also understand that the NCAA barely penalizes anyone anyway, and our resignation to that fact helps us sleep at night.â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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