Major college football is big business and about the only thing that stands between it being a totally out-of-control big business and merely the hottest ticket on any given Saturday in the fall is the NCAA and the rare college athletic director with a conscience.
The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) is a bunch of self-righteous scolds with a rulebook as thick as the Manhattan telephone directory, but these rules do serve a purpose: They are a check on programs that emphasize football to the detriment of academics and help ensure fair competition.
The rules are anything but ambiguous, but this has not prevented many big-time programs from ignoring them and, in some cases, getting sanctioned by the NCAA in the form of loss of scholarships, games won and the Holy Grail of post-season competition.
Now comes an explosive story in the Detroit Free Press that the University of Michigan under semi-new coach Rich Rodriguez, has repeatedly violated NCAA rules. The source of the allegations are players themselves.
Michigan's program has been sanctions free, but that may be about to change, and while one can feel some sympathy for the players, Rodriguez was a known quantity to the people in Ann Arbor who hired him:
A guy who comes up short in the scruples department and played hardball with and then dumped the University of West Virginia, where he had previously coached, cries on cue and begs for understanding when he comes under fire. But then this is about winning games and championships. All other considerations are secondary.
Photo by Julian H. Gonzalez/Detroit Free Press
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