Big 12 commissioner says ‘cheating pays.’ But the rules are the problem

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby is worried about rampant cheating in college sports. Not in his own conference, of course, but when he looks at the landscape across college football, he sees a “broken” enforcement system, and one that allows cheating to “pay.”

The first takeaway is that Bowlsby is obviously an avid reader of SB Nation and has read about all the ways that cheaters can get around the rules and get money to the players they want.

But what he didn’t address at Big 12 Media Days is whether he sees the cheating as an actual problem and what he’d like to do about it. And when the topic of changing college football’s rules came up, Bowlsby was quick to defend how great the current system is.

We tend to see cheating in the context of college football as morally wrong, just as we tend to see cheating as morally wrong in basically any context. That’s what we’ve been taught through the implementation of rules over a century. But in a closer examination, it’s easy to see why cheating takes place in college football: the acts that are considered cheating really aren’t morally reprehensible.

The best way to stop the cheating Bowlsby is talking about — for instance, athletes taking money to help their families — might be to stop banning it altogether. That isn’t to say “don’t have rules because someone might break them” is always a good strategy, but considering how little would change about the game if some of the NCAA’s rules were relaxed, it’s probably a good strategy in this case.

But as long as the rulebook stays cluttered, the enforcement of the rules is going to stay broken. If commissioners want to stop cheating but aren’t willing to change the rules, they’re going to be just as disappointed in the future.