THE TIDE IS ROLLING - DOWNHILL AS USUAL

About a month ago I saw an ISP news item about two U of Alabama football players' being cleared to play in some game or other.



The final three sentences in the article addressed a different player on the same team. "Brandon Deaderick probably won't play Saturday. Deaderick was shot in the arm during a robbery attempt. He was released from the hospital Tuesday night."



I believe it is less a commentary on my perception of college team thugs than on the frequency of such reports, that my initial reaction was, "What the heck was he trying to steal?" Later it occurred to me that perhaps the victim was not the felon in the case but had been a bystander. Hanging around the venue of a robbery, a person may not qualify for the adjective "innocent," but who knows?



The main issue was that a "businessman" named Curtis Anderson had given the pair a Gulf Coast fishing trip. What? Is it illegal to give athlete-students gifts? If so, what do their loved ones do at birthdays and Christmas, e.g.? Clearly the NCAA view was that this gift had been a bonus for playing football, an illegal perk, a component of the invisible pay athlete-students earn at professional football factories like Alabama.



The primary focus of the piece was that a highly tolerant NCAA had reinstated them. This absolution was contingent upon the pair's repaying the cost of the excursions. Repayment had been made to charity, and, naturally, we suppose the $ came from their own pockets. :-)



In 25 lines, including report of the shooting, the laughable term "student-athlete" appeared 5 times!



We also read, "The institution reported the violation and declared the s-a's ineligible," and that "the institution required the s-a's to make repayment ... to charity ..." This translates as follows; "Word of the impermissible benefits got out, so the school did a CYA maneuver to try and avoid punishment."



Another interesting bit of information was that the Alabama athletic empire has a "compliance department," meaning that it takes some bureaucrats to make sure no one gets caught. We have also the football coach's own, unimpeachable assurance that "the institution has handled the situation with tremendous professional [one correct word, anyway] integrity."



Get serious, Saban. Does anyone know a school that has been in trouble more often than Alabama? See the P.S. below



Years and years ago I recall they were caught with a 35-year-old guy with NO college eligibility playing for them! More recently, in the Stallings years, they played a guy that had already signed with an agent, and when the NCAA got wind of that, they put a 0-11 record into their books for them for that year, though this data never filtered down to the school's and local newspaper's respective archives. That was another time when, at the breaking of the damaging news, the school immediately convened the faculty athletic committee (the PREMIERE committee, whose members have all been loyalty-tested over the years, whose appointments are made by telephone invitations from the university president, himself, and who are guaranteed to rubber-stamp anything the athletic department wants), tried to broadcast the impression that that group had some control, and said, "Handle this, faculty."

Later than that "flagrante delicto" event there was another slip that got them bowl-ineligible for a number of years. This is cruel punishment, for it cuts into the slush fund resources out of which they pay players and make other invisible arrangements. At Alabama it seems to be fairly accessible knowledge that each of the army of coaches is provided a new car annually by one of the slavering dealers, and rumors are rife that girls from the Dept. of Criminal Justice - a sham major but appropriate in this instance - are regularly hired as whores for the football players. One can only suppose that these little information leaks address only the tip of the iceberg.

Certainly, everyone knows that this institution is far from isolated in malpractice, but I can't think of another place that has been apprehended so frequently. Can you imagine the cheating that goes unnoticed?

The word "university" is derived from "universe." So tragic it is that a noble concept is trampled underfoot by thugs, dissemblers, cheats, and liars. Watching the U.S. star set in the constellation of nations, I wish people of influence would remember what "higher education" is supposed to mean.

P.S. In late-breaking, related news 21 of their coveted victories have been removed by the NCAA for new indiscretions. 201 athletes in 16 sports obtained textbooks disallowed under their scholarships. 22 violaters, 7 footballers among them, obtained supplies for other students. The NCAA described Alabama as having "an abysmal history of infractions" and an "extensive recent history of infraction cases unmatched by any other member institutions in the NCAA." This is quite a testament to an educational institution, isn't it? It must give Criminal Justice lots of material for case studies. Why don't you roll right off the scene, Tide?