On presidential control, and links

(Hilarious illustration of Ohio State president Gordon Gee courtesy of DailyFinance.com.

If you're uncomfortable with what you believe to be hypocritical, sanctimonious, snooty presidents exerting excessive control over college athletics, you should read this opinion piece by Seth Davis.

Davis, a longtime college basketball writer and analyst, does a good job of framing the issue and its fundamental problems.

I didn't know the precise history of presidential control in college athletics until reading this passage by Davis:

The idea of assigning this enterprise to university presidents -- the vast majority of whom have never played, coached or administered a college sport -- is a relatively recent idea. The NCAA was founded in 1906, and for the first nine decades of its existence, it was run primarily by people who came out of the sports world. That began to change in 1984 when, in response to what was viewed as widespread greed, corruption and rulebreaking, the NCAA created a Presidents Commission so that the people who led its universities could get more directly involved in the scourge of athletics.

Fast-forward to now, and undoubtedly there are some ways college athletics has been cleaned up. But in many other ways, it seems they've just done a better job of hiding the warts that were so visible during the seemingly lawless, renegade days of the 1970s and 80s.

And the big-picture things -- most of them related to the gobs of money generated by and spent on college athletics -- can't be rationalized or defended by presidents who were supposed to have brought these things under control.

Now, let's ponder what presidential leadership has brought us these last 16 years. Have fewer schools been punished for cheating? Have costs been brought under control? Have we experienced a growth in academic integrity? Less chasing of the almighty dollar?

The answers are painfully obvious. At the very least, the presidents haven't done any better a job of running college sports than the athletics professionals and NCAA lifers who preceded them. More probably, they have made things worse -- in some respects, much worse.

For example, the Knight Commission complained in 1991 that "the best coaches receive an income many times that of most full professors." So where have coaches' salaries gone since the presidents took over? Way, way up.

And then:

The realignment feeding frenzy of the last three years has literally devoured the heart and soul of college athletics. And make no mistake, it's presidents who are engineering these moves. Public documents acquired by the Connecticut Post in January revealed that as Syracuse and Pittsburgh were getting ready to bolt the Big East, UConn president Susan Herbst wrote an email to a colleague that read in part, "In general, at this point at least, ADs are not running the discussion around the country and a lot is happening." That's right: As the landscape of athletics was being irretrievably altered, the people who know the most about athletics were not even in "the discussion."

Davis' solution:

".. sometimes, strong leadership requires admitting you're in over your head. So let me issue my own recommendation to the presidents now running the NCAA. Your hearts may have been in the right place, but there is no denying what happened: You took over college sports, and you screwed it up. Now do the right thing and give it back."

Some Friday links:

-- More on the suspension of LSU punter Brad Wing.

Earlier Thursday a source close to the situation told NOLA.com that Wing, a left-footed kicker from Melbourne, Australia, would miss the game for undisclosed reasons. Tiger Rag is reporting through an anonymous source that Wing failed a drug test.

Wing will be replaced by fellow Australian Jamie Keehn, a freshman from Queensland.

-- Pat Forde grades the college football coaching hires.

-- Great story here by S.L. Price on Eli Manning.

-- Georgia loses longtime defensive line coach Rodney Garner to Auburn, and it doesn't seem like many tears are being shed in Athens. The fact that the Doggies ranked 79th nationally in rushing defense, while giving up 350 and 230 yards on the ground in their losses to Alabama and South Carolina, might have something to do with the indifference. Every time I watched Georgia this year, with the exception of the Florida game, I came away thinking, "Why isn't that defensive front better?"

-- Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham tells our friends at UGASports.com that he's making the call on Garner's replacement.

Grantham said he will not assume the duties of coaching the Bulldog defensive line and will hire a coach solely to coach that position. He said coaches from "all levels" will be considered for the job and there is no timetable on when the hire might be made.

"It will be a good hire, just like Kirk (Olivadotti) and Scott (Lakatos)," Grantham said.


LW