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Oklahoma Will Be The Next School To Get The NCAA’s Third Degree

May 21, 2010, 9:00 PM UTC

â†µAs we wait for the sanctions against USC, which will either be crippling or virtually nonexistent, here's something to pass the time: starting the countdown clock on the point at which the NCAA puts a postseason ban on Oklahoma basketball. Here is the sentence that will expose Oklahoma to harsh sanctions:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥The Sooners remain under NCAA probation until Sunday for major violations committed under former basketball coach Kelvin Sampson and by the football program.â†µâ‡¥

â†µâ†µâ†µThat makes them a repeat offender—this is the third major violation of the last five years for the football and basketball programs—and if a newly ferocious NCAA infraction committee wants a basketball equivalent for the USC program, Oklahoma is a fat hanging curveball thrown by a sixth-grader. â†µ

â†µâ†µThe latest AP story on the TMZ-broken Tiny Gallon (pictured) scandal at Oklahoma puts a lot of dots on the page but does not connect them. Allow your author to draw a picture:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥2000-2004: OU coach Kelvin Sampson makes 577 impermissible phone calls and is banned from off-campus recruiting just before being inexplicably hired by Indiana. Oklahoma manages to avoid a “lack of institutional control” ding and gets just two years of probation. Those years are later extended, leaving OU still under the guillotine when…
â†µâ‡¥March 18th: TMZ reports it has a document showing that Oklahoma center Tiny Gallon received a $3,000 wire transfer from Jeffery Hausinger, a Merrill Lynch advisor and agent.
â†µâ‡¥April: Oklahoma assistant Oronde Taliaferro resigns. In a three-sentence release, school says he wanted to “focus on other employment opportunities.”
â†µâ‡¥Thursday: University acknowledges its investigation has turned up communication between Taliaferro and Hausinger to the tune of “at least” 41 phone calls and 25 text messages.

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â†µDraw a line between the various events, add in a dash of Rhett Bomar color, and the resulting picture is the NCAA dropping a bomb on the Oklahoma basketball program. It went from one lawless coach who totally ignored NCAA regulations to an assistant coach who reportedly arranged payments for a player. Whether they knew about it or not doesn't really matter at this point. If Jeff Capel doesn't know that his assistant is making dozens of phone calls to a guy at Merrill Lynch, that is on him. â†µ

â†µâ†µIf the example set by—hey!—USC is any indication, the least Oklahoma can expect to get away with is a postseason ban of one year. I’ve previously advocated the NCAA ditch its current ineffective sanctions programs that penalize current players who have done nothing wrong and allow the athletic department to quickly put their problems behind them and get on with the sketch, and here’s an opportunity for the NCAA to do it right: ban Oklahoma for the tournament for multiple years starting in 2012, waive all transfer restrictions, and prohibit Oklahoma recruits from signing LOIs. Schools that violate the rules as flagrantly as Oklahoma has should see a five, even ten years of serious restrictions on their programs. The current setup makes cheating a viable option. 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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