The rambling wreckage

"Big-time players make big-time plays."

We've heard the cliche a thousand times, and maybe more.

Maybe now, in the wake of the extra-benefit scandals at a bunch of major schools whose numbers now include Georgia Tech, we should amend the phrase.

Big-time players make big-time headaches.

Frankly, not sure my opinion on the revelations at Georgia Tech can be boiled down to a focused, central thought.

So here are a few unfocused, scattered thoughts:

-- Demaryius Thomas allegedly took a little more than 300 bucks worth of clothing not from an agent, but from a friend of someone who worked for an agent.

My first thought upon hearing this is ... yawn. Same reaction to hearing that A.J. Green had the audacity to take some cash for one of his jerseys. Look, we better get used to stuff like this. College football is bigger than ever, generates more money than ever, players are worshiped in the recruiting process more than ever, and we're surprised when a few elite players make a little coin?

The lesson to fans who take joy in these sort of transgressions by their rivals is ... don't gloat too much, because this stuff is probably going on at a lot more places than you think.

-- The mistakes made by its players doesn't exactly paint Georgia Tech as a renegade program. But the brass on The Flats is guilty of no small amount of stupidity.

If there's one thing the NCAA has long since established it absolutely does not like, it's lying and misleading and obstructing. Looks as if Georgia Tech is guilty of all of the above, and it's almost inexplicable because otherwise these violations would've been regarded as secondary.

I've always thought Dan Radakovich was a really good AD -- energetic and unafraid to make the tough or outside-the-box decisions. But good gosh, these revelations don't speak particularly well for his competence.

-- The NCAA is certainly creating the appearance that it's getting serious about policing stuff like this. It's expanded its enforcement staff, and you have to like the NCAA VP for enforcement giving Gene Chizik a very public smackdown at the recent SEC meetings.

But when assessing the penalties handed down in the Georgia Tech case, you have to wonder if any of this will be an effective deterrent to others in the future. Couple of years ago, coaches discovered that racking up secondary violations wasn't such a bad idea because there was no teeth in the penalties. Now, in the wake of the Georgia Tech episode, coaches and administrators elsewhere are noticing that, save for a trophy and some cash and a little public humiliation, the Yellow Jackets aren't impeded much at all from going about their business as usual in the future. Hard to imagine these penalties striking much fear into the college football world.

The way to truly strike fear into people is scholarship reductions or the elimination of bowl trips. Anything short of that is ... meh.

-- In Athens, the Doggies have to be absolutely giddy over this news. But they're probably also a bit rankled that a lengthy investigation of Georgia Tech never saw the light of day until yesterday.

A Georgia player jaywalks, and it's stop-the-presses news. But the Atlanta media never got wind of this bombshell that was almost two years in the making?

It's a sad portrait of the newspaper industry, because I remember a time not long ago when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution would've been all over this story.

For years, newspaper bigwigs have told their readers and their employees (at least, the ones who are still left) that they'll produce an even better product despite massive budget cuts, layoffs and other reductions.

In recent years, highbrow newspaper types have thumbed their noses at newer forms of media and held strong to the belief that newspapers were still the province of serious, hard-hitting scoops that everyone else was afraid to touch.

Eh, not so much.

Great newspapers like the AJC are shells of what they used to be, and that's sad.

LW