The NCAA issued two formal letters and a series of informal guidance documents and trainings on what not to do. They are NOT “now saying it does matter.” They’ve said it all along. They have set out very specific limits and did so at the start. Arguably, FSU ignored it. We certainly did not.
In NASCAR, they didnt limit the total amount of fuel carried in a car for safety reasons. They limited the size of the tank for safety and competitive reasons. So a few drivers immediately installed more than two miles of tubing inside their cars as “the fuel line.” Theres countless other examples. College football is another redneck sport with a century of tradition of engineering how to break the spirit of the rules without breaking the letter of the rules. FSU tried here and failed.
If FSU has a problem, it’s that the boosters literally, on paper, by design, control the athletic department. And there’s a faction that believes they must break the rules because the industry will leave them behind if they don’t. That’s nothing new in the sport either.
If the NCAA has a problem, it’s their penalties hurt tv networks with bowl bans and kids with scholarship limits. You could make a convincing argument that the only thing that hurts schools is loss of money and prestige. They need to move to a monetary penalty model that requires offenders to post bonds for violations and results in automatic relegation to lower Divisions for a minimum of three seasons.
The nonsense would stop if Auburn faced losing all its players to transfer and having to play Furman and Citadel for years, not to mention having to lay off or reassign dozens of people.
But as we saw with SMU, something talked about 40 years later, the nonsense isn’t part of the sport. It’s the sport itself. Stop the nonsense, you stop the sport, because without the nonsense does anybody really care if Kansas State beat Wyoming last week or ten years ago?
The suspense isn’t whether Michigan beats Washington, it’s whether Michigan stole enough signs and brought in the right players one way or another to overcome their competitive issues particular to their campus and culture and whether that would be enough to beat Washington’s transfers. On a macro level, will each school be able to bring in enough new TV revenue to pay players without jeopardizing current operations or their whole $100 million or more operation going into bankruptcy.
Thats the sport. We need the FSUs. Without them, and the bookies, nobody cares if we beat Rice or not.
From that standpoint, you are a fool if you don’t think OSU went after Green because they wanted to pick up a player from a team on their schedule. Of course they wanted to flex their regional muscle on a smaller school. But they also were just looking for the best back available that wanted to stay in the area and he was available. They also probably had some NIL budget room left they didn’t think they would have, so they spent it on depth as an insurance policy on Gordon. How they did it or whether they did it in violation of the rules doesn’t matter. Because it’s the “did they or didn’t they” debate that makes this sport.
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