The Dirt on College Football’s top programs…

College Football has a major problem.  Almost every elite program has some level of dirt in it.  Players and coaches who get arrested, boosters paying the top players, Academic issues, and other problems plague all the programs.  How those programs handle that dirt determines whether or not the programs have the capacity to manage through the toughest of times.

It began long before SMU was handed the death penalty in 1987 for a boatload of issues, such as paying players, and drug abuses.  Since then, many National Champions have had problems with cheating to one level or another.  Miami in 1987, 1989, and 1991, Florida State in 1993, Ohio State in 2002, USC in 2004, Florida in 2008, Alabama in 2009, and Auburn in 2010 are just a list of National Title Winners who have had known issues with players or the NCAA.  And that’s just the ones we KNOW about.  Notre Dame may win the title this year with a rapist who was never charged and a victim who committed suicide over two years ago that the Irish administration has never really acknowledged or apologized to her family.  The other National Title Contender, Alabama, was in the NCAA doghouse so much about a decade ago that people wondered if the Crimson Tide would become the second school to receive the NCAA “death penalty”.

Today, several top programs besides Notre Dame and Alabama are facing problems, and I’ll name a few.  Penn State is deep in the NCAA doghouse, not for NCAA infractions, but for child rape at the hands of a longtime assistant, and a cover-up that included the administration and legendary football coach Joe Paterno.  They almost received the death penalty for it.  Miami (Fla.) has never really been a clean program when they were dominating college football, but with a new round of money issues, some are echoing the calls from 15 years ago that the Hurricanes should drop their football program.  North Carolina has been under perpetual investigation, with no clear outcome decided on how much the Tar Heels should be punished.  My beloved Georgia always seems to have players running into academic/law issues every year.  Please name for me the last time the Dawgs didn’t have someone suspended to begin the season.  LSU has great talent but dumb players who do dumb things.  See “The Honey Badger” and Jamarcus Russell if you don’t believe me.  And Ohio State’s issues began the moment Jim Tressel took the head coaching job.  They won a National Title in 2002, led by a freshman running back named Maurice Clarett, who claims to have been paid well as a Buckeye.  Then, the tattoo and selling of merchandise situations and lying by Coach Tressel led to a one-year postseason ban.  Ironically, the Buckeyes could have been playing for the National Title this year with a potential Heisman Trophy winner in Braxton Miller.  And if you think Urban Meyer is going to clean up Columbus, you ignore the 30-some odd arrests Florida players had during Meyer’s tenure at Gainesville.  That included a Heisman trophy winner.  No, I’m not referring to Tim Tebow, I’m talking about 2010 Winner Cam Newton, who left the Gators after his Freshman year for stealing computers from dorm rooms.  And don’t get me started about the pay to play scheme around the time he went to Auburn.

At the end of the day, every major program has some type of dirt on them.  How coaches respond to these situations and even how the head coaches act (see Bobby Petrino) determines whether or not they can manage without the NCAA stepping in.  If the NCAA steps in, it usually doesn’t end well.  Of course, if the NCAA did do their job, the only clean programs would be the service academies, Stanford, Northwestern, and maybe Duke.

At the end of the day, it’s not about student-athletes, it’s about business.  And right now, business is good.  Until someone decides to clean up football, the NCAA should just shut up about teams doing it the right way.  Few major programs does it exactly “the right way”.