Whipped Cream Difficulties

Waves of about 4,300 cyclists were taking trips of up to 100 miles long in the Livestrong Foundation’s 15th annual Ride for the Roses, raising $1.7 million for cancer research, organizers said.

I’m glad folks are out there doing this: cancer sucks. However, the Statesman doesn’t discuss how this figure differed from last years: did they get about the same number of riders, more, or less?

Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong is no longer a Tour de France winner. I wish I had something profound and insightful to say about this, but I need time to think.

“Never again”, in this case, will the NCAA apply the “death penalty” to a college athletic program.

Not because they didn’t do it to Penn State. Because they didn’t do it to Texas Southern University.

I had not been following the saga of the TSU athletic program closely, until I ran across a nice summary post on the TM Daily Post site.

Investigators said the Tigers’ athletic department from 2004 through 2011 was guilty of improper recruiting tactics, academic impropriety and financial aid and eligibility violations that, based on a review of NCAA records, could be of unprecedented scope, totaling 129 student-athletes in 13 sports.

The phrase “unprecedented scope” is never a good one, especially when the NCAA is using it. In addition, the NCAA also invoked the dreaded “lack of institutional control”.

Plus, TSU has “been on probation or engaged in rules violations for 16 of the last 20 years”. The NCAA refers to them as a “double repeat violator”. In addition, the NCAA claims that “the university reported to the committee it was taking certain remedial actions when it actually was not”.

But what, exactly, have they done? I like the ESPN blogger who says they’ve “pretty much willfully broken every NCAA rule under the sun for the past two decades”; that seems like a good summary. Boosters. Recruiting violations. Players getting financial aid and travel expenses they weren’t eligible for. Lying to the NCAA. Ignoring limits on scholarships imposed by the NCAA previously.

In a particularly original twist, the basketball team was accused of stashing two of its players on the football team and granting them scholarships, though they did not actually play football.

And what did they get? Five years probation, apparently because the NCAA thinks the current TSU administration is committed to reform. (And the school is going to be subject to “stringent” outside supervision.)

Sanctions, both self-imposed by TSU and imposed by the NCAA, include postseason bans for football through 2014 and men’s basketball through 2012-13, football scheduling and scholarship restrictions and an order vacating won-loss records and championships from 2006 through 2010 in all sports and through 2011 in women’s soccer and football.
That penalty wipes out the Tigers’ 2010 Southwestern Athletic Conference football title, their first since 1968.

And the former football and basketball coaches are under three year “show cause” orders, “making them effectively unemployable in college sports during that period, as they are banned from all recruiting, and any school attempting to hire them would be subject to NCAA scrutiny.”

Cheese louise, if they won’t pull the trigger on a school that is that far out of control, who will they pull the trigger on?