Beer and Moaning in the University of Nevada Athletic Department

↵The NCAA placed Nevada’s athletic department on probation for three years and fined it $1,500 on Thursday because of an ex-golf coach’s major rules violations but concluded there was no proof he gambled on college games and cleared all other sports of wrongdoing.↵The NCAA investigation that began more than two years ago determined that Rich Merritt, former coach of both the men’s and women’s teams at various times, bought athletes beer, paid for meals and lodging, and helped cover travel expenses for one to try to qualify for the U.S. Open.

↵He also broke the rules by paying one woman Wolf Pack golfer $25 to complete two “crass acts” on a dare, one “involving the regurgitation of food and the other, spitting,” the NCAA said.

↵↵The “crass acts” sound a little salacious, but paying for meals and lodging is the sort of ultimately benign thing that the NCAA gets worked up about because of some imagined sanctity of “student-athletes.” Buying beer for athletes is worse, because it might also be criminal, but that’s far less serious on the “My goodness, you gave the children alcohol!?” continuum than some things. Hosting parties for underage drinkers or looking the other way when drunk driving is about to occur are problems in suburbia in general, and those things often involve high schoolers, not collegians; for the severity of those “crimes,” probation, minor scholarship penalties, and public censure is probably plenty.

↵But the really serious allegation is what was leveled at Merritt by a former Nevada women’s soccer coach, who alleged “that he had bet on sports in Nevada casinos in violation of NCAA rules.”

↵It’s a predictable transgression -- gambling in Nevada, how novel! -- but juicy, because gambling on sports is a big no-no for people involved in NCAA sports. That coach was fired in 2007, is suing for her reinstatement, and has been blogging as the case progresses, throwing terms like “corruption” and “criminal prosecution” and “RICO crime organization” around. Read even a bit of that blog, and you will be forced to consider the possibility of a sweeping conspiracy that infects every level of the University of Nevada.

↵Of course, that also makes one wonder why she is suing to get her job back, and why she isn’t worried about taking down the entire system. But I suppose things sometimes aren’t as sensational as we want them to be.

↵(HT: Out of Bounds.)

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