The Hammer Falls Down on Boise St.

The Hammer Falls Down On Boise St.

            As the Ambassador of collegiate athletics, I’ve been closely following recent investigations involving NCAA violations. The latest story out deals with big name athletics school, Boise State University. The Associated Press reports that Boise State will be placed on probation for the next three years, due to major violations committed by the football program and other sports regarding impermissible housing, transportation, and benefits to student-athletes. The penalties include scholarship reductions in football, women’s tennis, and men and women’s track and field. In addition to that, the NCAA limited the amounts of official visits each of the sports were allowed.

            In the NCAA preliminary statement, they said, “The University failed to provide adequate rules, education, and training to staff members to ensure compliance”.  While reading this I wonder, is Boise St. really at fault for lacking knowledge of NCAA rules? If that’s the case then why are numerous collegiate athletic programs also being punished for identical accusations? In my perspective, the NCAA is being over restrictive of programs such as Boise St. whose coaches clearly have a misinterpretation of what is allowed and what’s not. Either that, or most collegiate athletic programs simply don’t follow the rules which is less likely in my mind.

Andrea Adelson from ESPN reported that these violations were in fact secondary in nature. The “Lack of institutional control” that the NCAA indicted Boise St. for involved incoming players spending the night on couches or floors of current players on the team. All that and a lunch later on at McDonalds, sounds like one hell of a welcoming for those recruits.

Above all, accusations like these against Boise St. are destroying the nature of the game and are merely creating distractions that were never a issue in the past.